Erwin Nathaniel Griswold (/ˈɡrɪzwɔːld, -wəld/;[1] July 14, 1904 – November 19, 1994) was an American appellate attorney and legal scholar who argued many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1946, just after Griswold was made dean, Soia Mentschikoff was appointed visiting professor, the first woman faculty member in the history of Harvard Law School.

[11] In the 1950s, Griswold served as an expert witness for Thurgood Marshall, who was then the legal director of the NAACP, in several cases that the association brought to lay the foundation for the Supreme Court's desegregation order in Brown v. Board of Education.

[12] Earlier in the 1950s Griswold denounced Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in his book The Fifth Amendment Today,[13] which examined the constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

On May 8, 1963, in the midst of police violence and massive arrests of schoolchildren in Birmingham, Alabama, Kennedy held a press conference in which he answered a reporter's question about the matter of improving U.S. race relations, and a suggestion there was need for a fireside chat on civil rights, with the claim that the federal government had done all it legally could do about the issue.

"[18] On June 11, after another crisis—Governor George Wallace blocking the door to the University of Alabama—Kennedy finally gave his Report to the American People on Civil Rights.

It is the nature of man's habit of thought that when he seeks to bring about or to recognize change, he finds it easier if he can say with some measure of plausibility that what is new is simply an ancient truth.

"[21] On the same day that Griswold retired as dean and Langdell Professor of Law in 1967, President Johnson appointed him United States Solicitor General.

Years later, he reversed his position in an op-ed piece entitled "Secrets Not Worth Keeping" in The Washington Post, writing, "I have never seen any trace of a threat to the national security from the publication" of the Pentagon Papers.

[25] In 1973, Griswold resigned as Solicitor General and joined the international law firm of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C.

Griswold was also active in the Supreme Court Historical Society, serving as chairman of the board of trustees at the time of his death in 1994.

In 1978, the American Bar Association awarded Griswold the gold medal for his outstanding contributions and service to the legal community.

[27] Griswold was on President Jimmy Carter's selection committee for the District of Columbia Circuit which recommended Ginsburg to sit on the United States Court of Appeals there.

He was survived at the time of his death by his wife of 62 years, Harriet Allena Ford (died 1999), two children, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.