Correspondence, diaries (1941-1963), legal case files, speeches, writings, reports, broadsides, maps, newspaper clippings, printed matter, and photographs, chiefly relating to Burton's service as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1945-1958) and U.S. senator from Ohio (1941-1945). Subjects include his Cleveland law practice, Ohio and Republican Party politics, social life in Washington, D.C., Townsend Plan, Inc., the Truman Committee (U.S. Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program), U.S. Office of Price Administration, United Nations, Alaska, American Association of the Red Cross, American Unitarian Association, American Legion, Bowdoin College, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Included in Burton's extensive Supreme Court files are bench and certiorari memoranda, conference lists, notes, drafts, opinions, docket books, and other files relating to such cases as Standard Oil v. Federal Trade Commission, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, and Brown v. Board of Education. Also includes material on the Hitz family.

Correspondents include William J. Brennan, Owen Brewster, John W. Bricker, Styles Bridges, Harry Flood Byrd, Tom C. Clark, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, John M. Harlan, Earl E. Hart, William Hitz, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert Houghwout Jackson, Frank J. Lausche, Sherman Minton, Frank Murphy, Stanley Forman Reed, Donald R. Richberg, Harlan Fiske Stone, Robert A. Taft, Harry S. Truman, Fred M. Vinson, Henry Agard Wallace, and Charles Evans Whittaker.