Special Collections Acquires Papers of Lawyer Andru Volinsky

The Milne Special Collections and Archives at the University of New Hampshire Library has acquired the Andru Volinsky Papers, with materials spanning from 1990 to 2002, a period during which Volinsky served as the lead counsel representing the school district of Claremont, N.H. in its lawsuit against the state.

Volinsky was hired alongside Arpiar Saunders and John Garvey after the Claremont School District lost its accreditation due to a lack of state funding. The resulting court cases, known as Claremont I and Claremont II, established that the State of New Hampshire was required to define and fund a constitutionally adequate education. 

"People don’t create records with the future in mind," says Special Collections Processing Assistant Caroline Tango, who processed the collection in order to make it available and accessible to researchers. "So when I received Mr. Volinsky’s papers, I had to decide, OK, what is the story here? And how can I arrange the materials so that someone else can read it?" 

The Volinsky Papers include court documents, background research, photographs, newspaper clippings, journal articles, correspondence, and Volinsky's notebooks as he and his team moved through the case. 

"What struck me most was Mr. Volinsky’s dogged determination throughout this process," says Tango. "It’s one thing to read newspaper clippings or trial transcripts—if you know where to look, you can find those things online. But to read his personal notebooks, his correspondence with his team, and see the photographs of the schools he was fighting for—you really get a sense that this mattered to him. Not just as a case to win, but as a cause to champion." 

Volinsky is the author of The Last Bake Sale: The Fight for Fair School Funding. His legal work has encompassed significant cases related to government overpayments, racial profiling, and environmental concerns, in addition to funding for public education. He has defended against the death penalty throughout his career and was part of the successful effort to abolish the death penalty in New Hampshire in 2019. 

The UNH Library is grateful to Andru Volinsky for his donation of the collection.

The Milne Special Collections and Archives maintains approximately 18,000 linear feet of rare books, manuscripts, University records, photographs, sound recordings and other materials. Researchers are welcome to use items from the collection in our reading room, located in Dimond Library, Room 101. You can schedule an appointment online, email us at archives@unh.edu, or call us at (603) 862-2714.