Legal and Ethical Issues in Oral History Linda Shops

Legal and ethical issues are often discussed sequentially within oral history, with the law understood as defining state-sanctioned rules for specific elements of practice and ethics as setting a higher standard for the right conduct of relationships within the broad context of an interview or project. Thus, in this essay legal and ethical issues within an overall historical framework will be discussed. Three stages in oral history’s evolution will be identified: its origins as an archival practice; its expansion as a means of democratizing both the historical record and the act of doing history, and its maturation as a complex intellectual and social practice. While these stages have occurred somewhat in succession over the past half century, they also overlap chronologically and conceptually. Discussion of the first stage is heavily weighted toward fundamental legal issues, for they are closely related to oral history’s archival origins; discussion of the second and third stages extends to broader ethical concerns.