The Higgins Papers document his life and work from the 1940s when he was in school at The Catholic University of America to the early 2000s when he assisted the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with organization efforts in Catholic hospitals. The bulk of the collection consists of paper records in the correspondence, subject, writing, and labor series. Much of the material overlaps into other series, reflecting Higgins' busy life as a labor supporter, writer, and self-described church bureaucrat. Papers digitized here relate particularly to his correspondence with Catholic intellectual Richard John Neuhaus.