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Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Charles DiSalvo, WVU School of Law Professor and Gandhi Scholar, Papers, A&M 5284, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Charles DiSalvo via the WVU George R. Farmer Jr. Law Library, 2021-2023.

Biographical / Historical

Charles DiSalvo is the Woodrow A. Potesta Professor of Law at West Virginia University where he teaches one of the few law school courses in the United States on civil disobedience. He has represented civil disobedients in state and federal trial and appellate courts, written widely on the subject of civil disobedience and the law, and lectured on the subject here and abroad. He is an expert on Mohandas Gandhi's law practice. (Before he took up the cause of Indian independence from British rule, Gandhi served as an attorney in South Africa from 1893 to 1911 – a time during which Gandhi invented and experimented with his philosophy of nonviolence.) Professor DiSalvo has published what has been called a landmark book, M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man Before the Mahatma (2012), on Gandhi's life as a lawyer. In it, he argues that Gandhi was led into civil disobedience by the failures of the South African legal system.

Professor DiSalvo was educated at St. John Fisher College (B.A., history, 1970), Claremont Graduate School (M.A., East Asian studies, 1971), and the University of Southern California (J.D, 1974), where he was a member of the Southern California Law Review. Upon his graduation from law school, he was awarded a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship to practice poverty law for the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky.

He came to West Virginia University after serving as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School from 1978-1979. In addition to teaching a course on civil disobedience and the law, he teaches courses on civil procedure and trial advocacy. He has won college, university, state, and national awards for his teaching.

He is the co-founder of the West Virginia Fund for Law in the Public Interest.

Source: Charles R. DiSalvo | College of Law | West Virginia University. www.law.wvu.edu/faculty-staff/faculty-information/charles-r-disalvo.

Scope and Contents

This collection contains twenty years of documented research for DiSalvo's well received biography on Gandhi's time as an attorney in South Africa: M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man Before the Mahatma (2012). Notable materials include facsimiles of rare South African newspaper articles collected from libraries and repositories around the world. DiSalvo and his team read over 10,000 issues in all to put together this valuable resource for anyone studying Gandhi's time at law.

The collection also includes materials from DiSalvo's tenure as a member of the WVU School of Law Academic Planning Committee, ca. 1980s to 1990s, including meeting minutes and proposals for new courses, as well as notable records from the West Virginia Supreme Court Rules of Civil Procedure Revision Committee, ca. 1995-1997, of which DiSalvo served as vice-chair. Highlights include early drafts of the committee's revisions to the West Virginia Rules of Civil Procedure, which could be of significant interest to legal historians.

Series include:

Series 1. Gandhi Biography Research, 1893-1914 (boxes 1-14): Research includes facsimiles of rare, historical newspaper articles and handwritten notes by DiSalvo and his graduate assistants.

Series 2. WVU School of Law Academic Planning Committee Records, 1982-1997 (box 15): Assorted records from DiSalvo's time serving as a member of the WVU School of Law Academic Planning Committee, including meeting minutes and proposals for new courses.

Series 3. WV Supreme Court Rules of Civil Procedure Revision Committee Records, 1995-1997 (boxes 14 and 16): Materials, including meeting minutes, proposal drafts, and correspondence between members, from the West Virginia Supreme Court Rules of Civil Procedure Revision Committee, of which DiSalvo served as vice-chair. The committee was appointed by the West Virginia Supreme Court in the 1990s to make recommendations about possible revisions to the West Virginia Rules of Civil Procedure.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948
• Law -- Study and teaching
• South Africa -- History
• Supreme Court of West Virginia
• West Virginia University College of Law Archives