Stephen Duggan was a born in White Plains, NY. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University and Columbia University. At Columbia he met Beatrice Abbott, whom he married in 1936 and had four children with. Stephen graduated from Columbia Law School and began working at the Wall Street firm of Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett where he became partner. In 1963-64 both Stephen and Smokey Duggan helped found the Scenic Hudson Preservations Conference – an organization whose mission was the prevention of Consolidated Edison’s plan for a pumped-storage power plant at Storm King Mountain. The case was an important founding moment in the development of environmental law and Stephen Duggan himself is often credited as a pioneer of the concept of environmental interest law. In 1970 Stephen and Smokey Duggan founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, a public interest law firm dedicated to the protection of natural resources. Smokey Duggan was appointed as the NRDC’s representative to the nongovernmental organization of the United Nations. The Duggan Family Papers is a collection of letters, legal documents, financial records, administrative correspondence, published information, newspaper clippings and photographs relating to the lives of Stephen and Smokey Duggan and their involvement in the Storm King Case and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Also included is the collected research and notes of Mary Vance Duggan resulting from her screenplay on the Duggans and the campaign against the Con-Ed plan for Storm King Mountain.