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= William_O._Douglas =
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Introduction
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William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898January 19, 1980) was an
American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States from 1939 to 1975. Douglas was known for
his strong progressive and civil libertarian views and is often cited
as the most liberal justice in the U.S. Supreme Court’s history.
Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, Douglas was
confirmed at the age of 40, becoming one of the youngest justices
appointed to the court. He is the longest-serving justice in history,
having served for 36 years and 209 days.
After an itinerant childhood, Douglas attended Whitman College on a
scholarship. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1925 and joined
the Yale Law School faculty. After serving as the third chairman of
the Securities and Exchange Commission, Douglas was successfully
nominated to the Supreme Court in 1939, succeeding Justice Louis
Brandeis. He was among those seriously considered for the 1944
Democratic vice presidential nomination and was subject to an
unsuccessful draft movement prior to the 1948 U.S. presidential
election. Douglas served on the Court until his retirement in 1975 and
was succeeded by John Paul Stevens. Douglas holds a number of records
as a Supreme Court justice, including the most opinions.
One of Douglas's most notable opinions was 'Griswold v. Connecticut'
(1965), which established the constitutional right to privacy and was
foundational to later cases such as 'Eisenstadt v. Baird', 'Roe v.
Wade', 'Lawrence v. Texas' and 'Obergefell v. Hodges'. His other
notable opinions included 'Skinner v. Oklahoma' (1942), 'United States
v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.' (1948), 'Terminiello v. City of Chicago'
(1949), 'Brady v. Maryland' (1963), and 'Harper v. Virginia State
Board of Elections' (1966). Douglas joined the unanimous opinion in
'Brown v. Board of Education' (1954), which outlawed segregation in
American public schools. He wrote notable concurring or dissenting
opinions in 'Dennis v. United States' (1951), 'United States v.
O’Brien' (1968), 'Terry v. Ohio' (1968), and 'Brandenburg v. Ohio'
(1969). He was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War and an ardent
advocate of environmentalism.
Early life and education
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Douglas was born in 1898 in Maine Township, Otter Tail County,
Minnesota, to William Douglas and Julia Bickford Fisk. Douglas's
father was a Scottish itinerant Presbyterian minister from Pictou
County, Nova Scotia. The family first moved to California and then to
Cleveland, Washington. Douglas said he suffered from an illness at age
two that he described as polio, although a biographer reveals that it
was intestinal colic. His mother attributed his recovery to a miracle,
telling Douglas that one day he would be President of the United
States.
His father died in Portland, Oregon in 1904, when Douglas was six
years old. Douglas later claimed his mother had been left destitute.
After moving the family from town to town in the West, his mother,
with three young children, settled in Yakima, Washington. William,
like the rest of the Douglas family, did odd jobs to earn extra money,
and a college education appeared to be unaffordable. He was the
valedictorian at Yakima High School and did well enough in school to
earn a full academic scholarship to attend Whitman College in Walla
Walla, Washington.
At Whitman, Douglas became a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He
worked at various jobs while attending school, including as a waiter
and janitor during the school year, and at a cherry orchard in the
summer. Picking cherries, Douglas would say later, inspired him to
pursue a legal career. He once said of his early interest in the law:
Douglas was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, participated on the debate
team, and was elected as student body president in his final year.
After graduating in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and
economics, he taught English and Latin at his old high school for the
next two years, hoping to earn enough to attend law school. "Finally,"
he said, "I decided it was impossible to save enough money by teaching
and I said to hell with it."
Military service
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In the summer of 1918, Douglas took part in a U.S. Army Reserve
Officers' Training Corps training encampment at the Presidio of San
Francisco. That fall, he joined the Student Army Training Corps at
Whitman as a private. He served from October to December, and was
honorably discharged because the Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended
the war and the army's requirements for more soldiers and officers.
Law school
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He traveled by train from Yakima to New York in 1922, taking a job
tending sheep on a Chicago-bound train, in return for free passage,
with hopes to attend the Columbia Law School. Douglas drew on his Beta
Theta Pi membership to help him survive in New York, as he stayed at
one of its houses and was able to borrow $75 from a fraternity brother
from Washington, enough to enroll at Columbia. Six months later,
Douglas's funds were running out. The appointments office at the law
school told him that a New York firm wanted a student to help prepare
a correspondence course in law. Douglas earned $600 for his work,
enabling him to stay in school. Hired for similar projects, he saved
$1,000 by semester's end. In August 1923, Douglas traveled to La
Grande, Oregon, to marry Mildred Riddle, whom he had known in Yakima.
Douglas graduated from Columbia in 1925 with a Bachelor of Laws
degree, ranked second in his class.
During the summer of 1925, Douglas started work at the firm of
Cravath, DeGersdorff, Swaine and Wood (later Cravath, Swaine &
Moore) after failing to obtain a Supreme Court clerkship with Harlan
F. Stone. Douglas was hired at Cravath by attorney John J. McCloy, who
later became the chairman of the Board of Chase Manhattan Bank.
Yale Law School
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Douglas quit Cravath after four months. After one year, he moved back
to Yakima but soon regretted the move and never practiced law in
Washington. After a period of unemployment and another months-long
stint at Cravath, he started teaching at Columbia Law School. In 1928,
he joined the faculty of Yale Law School, where he became an expert on
commercial litigation and bankruptcy law. He was identified with the
legal realist movement, which pushed for an understanding of law based
less on formalistic legal doctrines and more on the real-world effects
of the law. Teaching at Yale, he and the fellow professor Thurman
Arnold were riding the New Haven Railroad and were inspired to set the
sign Passengers will please refrain... to Antonín Dvořák's 'Humoresque
#7.' Robert Maynard Hutchins described Douglas as "the most
outstanding law professor in the nation." When Hutchins became
president of the University of Chicago, Douglas accepted an offer to
move there, but he changed his mind after he was made a Sterling
Professor at Yale.
Securities and Exchange Commission
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In 1934, Douglas left Yale after President Franklin Roosevelt
nominated him to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). By
1937, he had become an adviser and friend to the President and the
chairman. He also became friends with a group of young New Dealers,
including Tommy "The Cork" Corcoran and Abe Fortas. He was also close,
both socially and in thinking to the Progressives of the era, such as
Philip and Robert La Follette Jr. That social/political group
befriended Lyndon Johnson, a freshman representative from the 10th
District of Texas. In his 1982 book 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The
Path to Power', Robert Caro wrote that in 1937, Douglas had helped to
persuade Roosevelt to authorize the Marshall Ford Dam, a controversial
project whose approval enabled Johnson to consolidate his power as a
representative.
Supreme Court
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In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the Court, and on
March 20 Roosevelt nominated Douglas as his replacement. Douglas was
Brandeis's personal choice to be his successor. Douglas later revealed
that his appointment had been a great surprise to him (Roosevelt had
summoned him to an "important meeting"), and Douglas feared that he
would be named as the chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 4 by
a vote of 62 to 4. The four negative votes were all cast by
Republicans: Lynn J. Frazier, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Gerald P. Nye,
and Clyde M. Reed. Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939,
becoming, at age 40, the fifth-youngest justice to be confirmed to the
Supreme Court.
Relationships with others at Supreme Court
============================================
Douglas was often at odds with fellow justice Felix Frankfurter, who
believed in judicial restraint and thought the court should stay out
of politics. Douglas did not highly value judicial consistency or
'stare decisis' when deciding cases. "But the origin of Douglas and
Frankfurter's deep-seated animosity went beyond important
jurisprudential differences. Temperamentally, they were opposites.
From the beginning of their close associations as justices, the two
men simply grated on each other's nerves.... Although in 1974 Douglas
claimed that there had been no 'war' between him and Frankfurter, the
evidence to the contrary was overwhelming. Frankfurter and Douglas,
two important American jurists whose decades-long bitter debates
(indeed, whose 'wars') contributed a great deal to our understanding
of constitutionalism in a modern society, could not tolerate each
other. Intentionally and unintentionally, they went out of their way
to harass each other for over two decades."
Judge Richard A. Posner, who was a law clerk for justice William J.
Brennan Jr. during the latter part of Douglas's tenure, characterized
Douglas as "a bored, distracted, uncollegial, irresponsible" Supreme
Court justice, as well as "rude, ice-cold, hot-tempered, ungrateful,
foul-mouthed, self-absorbed" and so abusive in "treatment of his staff
to the point where his law clerks--whom he described as 'the lowest
form of human life'--took to calling him "shithead" behind his back."
Posner asserts also that "Douglas's judicial oeuvre is slipshod and
slapdash," but Douglas's "intelligence, his energy, his academic and
government experience, his flair for writing, the leadership skills
that he had displayed at the SEC, and his ability to charm when he
bothered to try" could have let him "become the greatest justice in
history." Brennan once stated that Douglas was one of only "two
geniuses" he had met in his life (the other being Posner).
Judicial philosophy
=====================
In general, legal scholars have noted that Douglas's judicial style
was unusual in that he did not attempt to elaborate justifications for
his judicial positions on the basis of text, history, or precedent.
Douglas was known for writing short, pithy opinions that relied on
philosophical insights, observations about current politics, and
literature, as much as more conventional judicial sources. Douglas
wrote many of his opinions in twenty minutes, often publishing the
first draft. Douglas was also known for his fearsome work ethic,
publishing over thirty books and once telling an exhausted secretary,
Fay Aull, "If you hadn't stopped working, you wouldn't be tired."
Douglas frequently disagreed with the other justices, dissenting in
almost 40 percent of cases, more than half of the time writing only
for himself. Ronald Dworkin wrote that because Douglas believed his
convictions were merely "a matter of his own emotional biases,"
Douglas would fail to meet "minimal intellectual responsibilities."
Ultimately, Douglas believed that a judge's role was "not neutral" as
"The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the
government off the backs of the people."
Douglas has been widely characterized as a civil libertarian. On the
bench, Douglas became known as a strong advocate of First Amendment
rights. With fellow justice Hugo Black, Douglas argued for a
"literalist" interpretation of the First Amendment, insisting that the
First Amendment's command that "no law" shall restrict freedom of
speech should be interpreted literally. He wrote the opinion in
'Terminiello v. City of Chicago' (1949), overturning the conviction of
a Catholic priest who allegedly caused a "breach of the peace" by
making anti-Semitic comments during a raucous public speech. Douglas,
joined by Black, furthered his advocacy of a broad reading of First
Amendment rights by dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision in
'Dennis v. United States' (1952), which affirmed the conviction of the
leader of the U.S. Communist Party. Douglas was publicly critical of
censorship, saying, "The way to combat noxious ideas is with other
ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth."
In 1944, Douglas voted with the majority to uphold the wartime
internment of Japanese Americans in 'Korematsu v. United States' after
having initially planned to dissent, a vote he later regretted, but,
over the course of his career, he grew to become a leading advocate of
individual rights. He was suspicious of majority rule as it related to
social and moral questions, and he frequently expressed concern about
forced conformity with "the Establishment". For example, Douglas wrote
the opinion in 'Griswold v. Connecticut' (1965), which stated that a
constitutional right to privacy forbids state contraception bans
because "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras,
formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life
and substance." That went too far for Hugo Black, who dissented in
'Griswold' despite having been allies with Douglas. Justice Clarence
Thomas would years later hang a sign in his chambers reading, "Please
don't emanate in the penumbras." Conservative Judge Robert Bork had no
objection to the concept of penumbras, writing, "There is nothing
exceptional about [Douglas's] thought, other than the language of
penumbras and emanations. Courts often give protection to a
constitutional freedom by creating a buffer zone, by prohibiting a
government from doing something not in itself forbidden but likely to
lead to an invasion of a right specified in the Constitution." Prof.
David P. Currie of the University of Chicago Law School called
Douglas's 'Griswold' opinion "one of the most hypocritical opinions in
the history of the Court."
Douglas and Black also disagreed in 'Fortson v. Morris' (1967), which
cleared the path for the Georgia State Legislature to choose the
governor in the deadlocked 1966 race between Democrat Lester Maddox
and Republican Howard Callaway. Whereas Black voted with the majority
under strict construction to uphold the state constitutional
provision, Douglas and Abe Fortas dissented. According to Douglas,
Georgia tradition would guarantee a Maddox victory but he had trailed
Callaway by some 3,000 votes in the general election returns. Douglas
also saw the issue as a continuation of the earlier decision 'Gray v.
Sanders', which had struck down Georgia's County Unit System, a kind
of electoral college formerly used to choose the governor. According
to political scientists Andrew D. Martin and Kevin M. Quinn, he was by
far the most liberal justice in the history of the Supreme Court with
a Martin-Quinn score of -8 at his most liberal. He voted to strike
down the death penalty in 'Furman v. Georgia', argued that the
environment should be granted legal personhood, tried to declare the
Vietnam War unconstitutional because Congress had never declared war,
and generally showed an uncompromising defense of individual rights
from which even stalwart liberals Brennan and Marshall shied away.
Douglas was notable as a public pre-Stonewall supporter of gay rights.
Douglas dissented in Boutilier v. INS in which the Court ruled that
gays and lesbians were included in the list of “psychopathic
personalities” that Congress could deport, arguing that the term
“psychopathic personality” was unconstitutionally vague, and even if
it were not, not all gays and lesbians are psychopaths. In 1968, in a
concurring opinion in the case of 'Flast v. Cohen', Douglas indicated
that he did not believe in judicial restraint:
There has long been a school of thought here that the less the
judiciary does, the better. It is often said that judicial intrusion
should be infrequent, since it is "always attended with a serious
evil, namely, that the correction of legislative mistakes comes from
the outside, and the people thus lose the political experience, and
the moral education and stimulus that come from fighting the question
out in the ordinary way, and correcting their own errors"; that the
effect of a participation by the judiciary in these processes is "to
dwarf the political capacity of the people, and to deaden its sense of
moral responsibility." J. Thayer, John Marshall 106, 107 (1901).¶
The late Edmond Cahn, who opposed that view, stated my philosophy. He
emphasized the importance of the role that the federal judiciary was
designed to play in guarding basic rights against majoritarian
control. ... His description of our constitutional tradition was in
these words: "Be not reasonable with inquisitions, anonymous
informers, and secret files that mock American justice. Be not
reasonable with punitive denationalizations, ex post facto
deportations, labels of disloyalty, and all the other stratagems for
outlawing human beings from the community of mankind. These devices
have put us to shame. Exercise the full judicial power of the United
States; nullify them, forbid them, and make us proud again." Can the
Supreme Court Defend Civil Liberties? in Samuel, ed., Toward a Better
America 132, 144 -145 (1968).
"Critics have sometimes charged that [Douglas] was result oriented and
guilty of oversimplification; those who understand how he thought, and
who share his compassion, conscience, and sense of fair dealing, see
him as courageous and farsighted." "There is no necessary
contradiction between these two views."
Rosenberg case
================
On June 17, 1953, Douglas granted a temporary stay of execution to
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been convicted of selling the
plans for the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The
basis for the stay was that Judge Irving Kaufman had sentenced the
Rosenbergs to death without the consent of the jury. While this was
permissible under the Espionage Act of 1917, under which the
Rosenbergs were tried, a later law, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946,
held that only a jury could pronounce the death penalty. Since at the
time the stay was granted the Supreme Court was out of session, this
stay meant that the Rosenbergs could expect to wait at least six
months before the case was heard.
When Attorney General Herbert Brownell heard about the stay, however,
he immediately took his objection to Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who
reconvened the Court before the appointed date and set aside the stay.
Douglas had departed for vacation, but on learning of the special
session of the Court, he returned to Washington. Because of widespread
opposition to his decision, Douglas briefly faced impeachment
proceedings in Congress but attempts to remove him from the Court went
nowhere.
On June 17, 1953, U.S. Representative William M. Wheeler of Georgia,
infuriated by Douglas's brief stay of execution in the Rosenberg case,
introduced a resolution to impeach him. The resolution was referred
the next day to the Judiciary Committee to investigate the charges. On
July 7, 1953, the committee voted to end the investigation.
Vietnam War
=============
Douglas took strong positions on the Vietnam War. In 1952, Douglas
traveled to Vietnam and met with Ho Chi Minh. During the trip Douglas
became friendly with Ngo Dinh Diem and in 1953 he personally
introduced the nationalist leader to senators Mike Mansfield and John
F. Kennedy. Douglas became one of the chief promoters for U.S. support
of Diem, with CIA deputy director Robert Amory crediting Diem becoming
"our man in Indochina" to a conversation with Douglas during a party
at Martin Agronsky's house.
After Diem's assassination in November 1963, Douglas became strongly
critical of the war, believing Diem had been killed because he "was
not sufficiently servile to Pentagon demands." Douglas now
outspokenly argued the war was illegal, dissenting whenever the Court
passed on an opportunity to hear such claims. In 1968 Douglas issued
an order blocking the shipment of Army reservists to Vietnam, before
the eight other justices unanimously reversed him.
In 'Schlesinger v. Holtzman' (1973) Justice Thurgood Marshall issued
an in-chambers opinion declining Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman's request for
a court order stopping the military from bombing Cambodia. The Court
was in recess for the summer but the Congresswoman reapplied, this
time to Douglas. Douglas met with Holtzman's ACLU lawyers at his home
in Goose Prairie, Washington, and promised them a hearing the next
day. On Friday, August 3, 1973, Douglas held a hearing in the Yakima
federal courthouse, where he dismissed the Government's argument that
he was causing a "constitutional confrontation" by saying, "we live in
a world of confrontations. That's what the whole system is about." On
August 4, Douglas ordered the military to stop bombing, reasoning
"denial of the application before me would catapult our airmen as well
as Cambodian peasants into the death zone." The U.S. military ignored
Douglas's order. Six hours later the eight other justices reconvened
by telephone for a special term and unanimously overturned Douglas's
ruling.
"Trees have standing"
=======================
Douglas was highly innovative in legal theory. For example, in his
dissenting opinion in the landmark environmental law case 'Sierra Club
v. Morton', 405 U.S. 727 (1972), Douglas argued that "inanimate
objects" should have standing to sue in court:
He continued:
Douglas biographer M. Margaret McKeown found that he was influenced in
his opinion by reading a pre-publication copy of a 'Southern
California Law Review' article by Christopher Stone. In "Should Trees
Have Standing?Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects", Stone advanced
an argument that would later be the basis for the legal concepts of
Environmental personhood and Rights of nature.
Environmentalism
======================================================================
Douglas was a lifelong mountaineer. In his autobiographical 'Of Men
and Mountains' (1950), he discusses his close childhood connections
with nature. In the 1950s, proposals were made to create a highway
along the path of the C&O Canal, which ran on the Maryland bank
parallel to the Potomac River. 'The Washington Post' editorial page
supported the action. However, Douglas, who frequently hiked on the
Canal towpath, opposed the plan and challenged the newspaper's editors
to hike the 185-mile length of the Canal with him. After the hike
(which the journalists were unable to complete), the 'Post' changed
its stance and advocated preservation of the Canal in its historic
state. Douglas is widely credited with saving the Canal and with its
eventual designation as a National Historic Park in 1971. He served on
the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1960 to 1962 and wrote
prolifically on his love of the outdoors. In 1962, Douglas wrote a
glowing review of Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring', which was
included in the widely-read Book-of-the-Month Club edition.
He later swayed the Supreme Court to preserve the Red River Gorge in
eastern Kentucky, when a proposal to build a dam and flood the gorge
reached the Court. Douglas personally visited the area on November 18,
1967. The Red River Gorge's Douglas Trail is named in his honor.
In May 1962, Douglas and his wife, Cathleen, were invited by Neil
Compton and the Ozark Society to visit and canoe down part of the free
flowing Buffalo River in Arkansas. They put in at the low water bridge
at Boxley. That experience made him a fan of the river and the young
organization's idea of protecting it. Douglas was instrumental in
having the Buffalo preserved as a free-flowing river left in its
natural state. The decision was opposed by the region's Corps of Army
Engineers. The act that soon followed designated the Buffalo River as
America's first National River.
Douglas was a self-professed outdoorsman. According to 'The
Thru-Hiker's Companion', a guide published by the Appalachian Long
Distance Hikers Association, Douglas hiked the entire 2000 mi trail
from Georgia to Maine. His love for the environment carried through to
his judicial reasoning. His interests in natural history are also
reflected in the fact that he collected plant specimens for the
herbarium of the University of Texas at Austin. They curate at least
14 vascular plant specimens collected by Douglas together with
botanist Donovan Stewart Correll, Head of the Botanical Laboratory,
Texas Research Foundation in February and June 1965. The specimens
collected in February were from Presidio and Brewster
Counties--several from Capote Falls. The specimens collected in June
were from Blanco, Gillespie, and Llano Counties--near Austin, Texas.
The Rocky Mountain Herbarium at the University of Wyoming curates a
lichen collected by William O. Douglas in Snoqualmie National Forest.
Douglas's active role in advocating the preservation and protection of
wilderness across the United States earned him the nickname "Wild
Bill". Douglas was a friend and frequent guest of Harry R. Truman, the
owner of the Mount St. Helens Lodge at Spirit Lake in Washington.
Truman would later become known for his death in the 1980 eruption of
Mount St. Helens, a few months after Douglas died.
In 1967, on a hike to save Sunfish Pond on the Appalachian Trail in
New Jersey, Douglas was accompanied by more than a thousand people. He
said: "It's a vital element in the need to save some of our wilderness
from the encroachment of civilization."
* Brinkley, Douglas. 'Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy,
Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great
Environmental Awakening' (2022)
[
https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-Revolution-Environmental-Awakening/dp/0063212919/
excerpt]. chapter 4 on Douglas.
* Caragher, James M. "The Wilderness Ethic of Justice William O.
Douglas". 'University of Illinois Law Review' (1986): 645+.
[
https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/unilllr1986&div=30&id=&page=
online]
* Douglas, William O., and Joseph W. Meeker. "Nature’s Constitutional
Rights". 'The North American Review,' 258#1 (1973), pp. 11-14.
[
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117421 online]
* Douglas, William O. 'Of men and mountains' (1990)
[
https://archive.org/details/ofmenmountains00doug online], a memoir
* Douglas, William O. 'The three hundred year war: A chronicle of
ecological disaster' (1972)
[
https://archive.org/details/threehundredyear00will online]
* Douglas, William O. 'My wilderness: the Pacific West' (1960)
[
https://archive.org/details/mywildernesspaci00doug/page/n7/mode/2up
online]
* Huber, Richard G. "William O. Douglas and the Environment," 'Boston
College Environmental Affairs Law Review' (1976), 5:209-212
[
https://lira.bc.edu/work/sc/1189a5c7-0c35-4d77-96bf-ec5a8752dc5c/reader/f2b68b47-ec03-43bc-96a1-bad141e264ca
online]
* McKeown, M. Margaret. 'Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of
William O. Douglas--Public Advocate and Conservation Champion' (U of
Nebraska Press, 2022).
* Rakoff, Jed S. "The Frontier Justice". 'New York Review of Books'
(May 25, 2023)
[
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/05/25/the-frontier-justice-william-o-douglas/
online]
* Sowards, Adam M. 'The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglas and
American Conservation' Oregon State University Press, 2009).
** Sowards, Adam M. " 'He's a Natural': Justice William O. Douglas and
the American Environmental Tradition" (PhD Dissertation, Arizona State
University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2001. 3004138).
* Sowards, Adam M. "Protecting American Lands with Justice William O.
Douglas". 'The George Wright Forum' 32#2 (2015) pp. 165-173.
[
https://adamsowards.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/322sowards.pdfonline
online].
* Wilkinson, Charles F. "Justice Douglas and the Public Lands". In
'"He Shall Not Pass This Way Again": The Legacy of Justice William O.
Douglas', ed. Stephen L. Wasby, (1990) pp 233-248.
Travel writing
======================================================================
From 1950 to 1961, Douglas travelled extensively in the Middle East
and Asia. Douglas wrote many books about his experiences and
observations during these trips. Other than writers from 'National
Geographic'--whom he sometimes met on the road--Douglas was one of the
few American travel writers to visit these remote regions during this
period in time. His travel books include:
* 'Strange Lands and Friendly People' (1950)
* 'Beyond the High Himalayas' (1952)
* 'North From Malaya' (1953)
* 'Russian Journey' (1956)
* 'Exploring the Himalaya' (1958)
* 'West of the Indus' (1958)
* 'My Wilderness, The Pacific West' (1960)
* 'My Wilderness, East to Katahdin' (1961)
In his memoir, 'The Court Years', Douglas wrote that he was sometimes
criticized for taking too much time off from the bench, and writing
travel books while on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Douglas
maintained that the travel gave him a world-wide perspective that was
helpful in resolving cases before the Court. It also gave him a
perspective on political systems that did not benefit from the legal
protections in the American Constitution.
Presidential politics
======================================================================
When, in early 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided not to
support the renomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace at the
party's national convention, a short list of possible replacements was
drafted. The names on the list included former senator and Supreme
Court justice James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, former senator (and
future Supreme Court justice) Sherman Minton, former governor and high
commissioner to the Philippines Paul McNutt of Indiana, House speaker
Sam Rayburn of Texas, Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, Senator
Harry S. Truman of Missouri, and Douglas.
Five days before the vice presidential nominee was to be chosen at the
convention, on July 15, Committee chairman Robert E. Hannegan received
a letter from Roosevelt stating that his choice for the nominee would
be either "Harry Truman or Bill Douglas". After Hannegan released the
letter to the convention on July 20, the nomination went without
incident, and Truman was nominated on the second ballot. Douglas
received two votes on the second ballot and none on the first.
After the convention, Douglas's supporters spread the rumor that the
note sent to Hannegan had read "Bill Douglas or Harry Truman", not the
other way around. These supporters claimed that Hannegan, a Truman
backer, feared that Douglas's nomination would drive Southern white
voters away from the ticket (Douglas had a strong anti-segregation
record on the Supreme Court) and had switched the names to suggest
that Truman was Roosevelt's real choice.
By 1948, Douglas's presidential aspirations were rekindled by Truman's
low popularity, after he had succeeded Roosevelt in 1945. Many
Democrats, believing that Truman could not be elected in November,
began trying to find a replacement candidate. Attempts were made to
draft popular retired General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a war hero, for
the nomination. A "Draft Douglas" campaign, complete with souvenir
buttons and hats, sprang up in New Hampshire and several other primary
states. Douglas campaigned for the nomination for a short time, but he
soon withdrew his name from consideration.
In the end, Eisenhower refused to be drafted, and Truman won
nomination easily. Although Truman approached Douglas about the vice
presidential nomination, the justice turned him down. Douglas's close
associate Tommy Corcoran was later heard to ask, "Why be a number two
man to a number two man?" Truman selected Senator Alben W. Barkley and
the two won the election.
Impeachment attempts
======================================================================
Political opponents made two unsuccessful attempts to remove Douglas
from the Supreme Court.
1970 impeachment attempt fails
================================
Douglas maintained a busy speaking and publishing schedule to
supplement his income. He became severely burdened financially because
of a bitter divorce and settlement with his first wife. He sustained
additional financial setbacks after divorces and settlements with his
second and third wives.
Douglas became president of the Parvin Foundation. His ties to the
foundation (which was financed by the sale of the infamous Flamingo
Hotel by casino financier and foundation benefactor Albert Parvin)
became a prime target for House Minority Leader Gerald Ford. Besides
being personally disgusted by Douglas's lifestyle, Ford was also
mindful that Douglas's protégé Abe Fortas was forced to resign because
of ties to a similar foundation. Fortas would later say that he
"resigned to save Douglas," thinking that the dual investigations of
himself and Douglas would stop with his resignation.
Some scholars
have argued that Ford's impeachment attempt was politically
motivated. Those who support this contention note Ford's well-known
disappointment with the Senate over the failed nominations of Clement
Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to succeed Fortas. In April 1970,
Ford moved to impeach Douglas in an attempt to hit back at the Senate.
House Judiciary Chairman Emanuel Celler handled the case carefully and
did not uncover evidence of any criminal conduct by Douglas. Attorney
General John N. Mitchell and the Nixon administration worked to gather
evidence against him. Ford moved forward with the proceedings.
The hearings began in late April 1970. Ford was the main witness, and
attacked Douglas's "liberal opinions", his "defense of the 'filthy'
film", the controversial Swedish film 'I Am Curious (Yellow)' (1970),
and his ties to Parvin. Douglas was also criticized for accepting $350
for an article he wrote on folk music in the magazine 'Avant Garde'.
Its publisher had served a prison sentence for the distribution of
another magazine in 1966 that had been deemed obscene by some critics.
Describing Douglas's article, Ford stated, "The article itself is not
pornographic, although it praises the lusty, lurid, and risqué along
with the social protest of left-wing folk singers." Ford also attacked
Douglas for publishing an article in 'Evergreen Review', which he
claimed was known to publish photographs of naked women. The
Republican congressmen, however, refused to give the majority
Democrats copies of the magazines described, prompting Congressman
Wayne Hays to remark, "Has anybody read the article - or is everybody
over there who has a magazine just looking at the pictures?" As it
became clear that the impeachment proceedings would be unsuccessful,
they were brought to a close without a public vote.
According to Joshua E. Kastenberg of the University of New Mexico
School of Law, there were several purposes behind Ford's and Nixon's
push to have Douglas impeached. First, while it was true that Nixon
and Ford were angered at the Senate's determination not to confirm
Haynsworth and Carswell, Nixon had a deep-seated hatred of Douglas.
An attempt to have Douglas impeached and then brought to a Senate
trial would further cement the alleged "Southern Strategy", as most of
Ford's congressional allies against Douglas were Southern Democrats.
Additionally, Nixon and Kissinger had secretly planned for an April 30
- May 1 invasion of Cambodia and Nixon thought that there was a
possibility of using a House investigation into Douglas to deflect
news coverage. Professor Kastenberg notes in his recent book on the
subject that Attorney General John Mitchell and his deputy, William
Wilson, had promised Ford that the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation had evidence of Douglas's criminal
conduct. In the end, however, none of these agencies had any evidence
of wrongdoing by Douglas, but the promise led Ford to accuse Douglas
of consorting with organized crime and Communists, and therefore of
being a threat to national security.
Around this time, Douglas came to believe that strangers snooping
around his Washington home were FBI agents, attempting to plant
marijuana to entrap him. In a private letter to his neighbors, he
said: "I wrote you last fall or winter that federal agents were in
Yakima and Goose Prairie looking me over at Goose Prairie. I thought
they were merely counting fence posts. But I learned in New York City
yesterday that they were planting marijuana with the prospect of a
nice big TV-covered raid in July or August. I forgot to tell you that
this gang in power is not in search of truth. They are 'search and
destroy' people."
Judicial record-setter
======================================================================
During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Douglas set a number of
records, all of which still stand. He sat on the U.S. Supreme Court
for more than thirty-six years (1939-75), longer than any other
justice. During those years, he wrote some thirty books in addition to
his opinions and dissenting opinions and gave more speeches than any
other justice. Douglas had the most marriages (four) and the most
divorces (three) of any justice serving on the bench.
Nicknames
======================================================================
During his time on the Supreme Court, Douglas picked up a number of
nicknames from both admirers and detractors. The most common epithet
was "Wild Bill" in reference to his independent and
often-unpredictable stances and his cowboy-style mannerisms, but many
of the latter were considered by some to be affectations for the
consumption of the press.
Retirement
======================================================================
Since the 1970 impeachment hearings, Douglas had wanted to retire from
the Court. He wrote to his friend and former student Abe Fortas: "My
ideas are way out of line with current trends, and I see no particular
point in staying around and being obnoxious." However, he did not want
to do so when a Republican was in the White House and would nominate
his successor, saying "I won't resign while there's a breath in my
body --until we get a Democratic President."
At 76 on December 31, 1974, on vacation with his wife Cathleen in the
Bahamas, Douglas suffered a debilitating stroke in the right
hemisphere of his brain. It paralyzed his left leg and forced him to
use a wheelchair. Douglas was severely disabled but insisted on
continuing to participate in Supreme Court affairs despite his obvious
incapacity. Seven of his fellow justices (with Byron White vehemently
disagreeing) voted to postpone until the next term any argued case in
which Douglas's vote might make a difference. Douglas finally retired
on November 12, 1975, after 36 years of service. He was Franklin
Roosevelt's last sitting Supreme Court justice. Indeed, Douglas had
outlasted the last of Harry S. Truman's appointments by eight years
and was the last sitting justice to have served on the Hughes, Stone,
and Vinson Courts.
Douglas's formal resignation was submitted, as required by federal
protocols, to his longtime political nemesis, then-President Gerald
Ford. In his response, Ford put aside previous differences and paid
tribute to the retiring justice: May I express on behalf of all our
countrymen this nation's great gratitude for your more than thirty-six
years as a member of the Supreme Court. Your distinguished years of
service are unequaled in all the history of the Court.
Ford hosted William and Cathleen Douglas as honored guests at a White
House state dinner later that month. Ford later said of the occasion,
"We had had differences in the past, but I wanted to stress that
bygones were bygones."
Douglas maintained that he could assume judicial senior status on the
Court and attempted to continue serving in that capacity, according to
authors Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong. He refused to accept his
retirement and tried to participate in the Court's cases well into
1976, after John Paul Stevens had taken his former seat. Douglas
reacted with outrage when, returning to his old chambers, he
discovered that his clerks had been reassigned to Stevens and when he
tried to file opinions for cases in which he had heard arguments
before his retirement, Chief Justice Warren Burger ordered all
justices, clerks, and other staff members to refuse help to Douglas in
those efforts. When Douglas tried in March 1976 to hear arguments in a
capital-punishment case, 'Gregg v. Georgia', the nine sitting justices
signed a formal letter informing him that his retirement had ended his
official duties on the Court. It was only then that Douglas withdrew
from Supreme Court business.
One commentator has attributed some of his behavior after his stroke
to anosognosia, which can lead an affected person to be unaware and
unable to acknowledge disease in himself, and often results in defects
in reasoning, decision-making, emotions, and feeling.
Personal life
======================================================================
Douglas's first wife was Mildred Riddle, a teacher at North Yakima
High School six years his senior, whom he married on August 16, 1923.
They had two children, Mildred and William Jr. William Douglas Jr.
became an actor, playing Gerald Zinser in 'PT 109'.
On October 2, 1949, Douglas had thirteen of his ribs broken after he
got thrown by a horse and he tumbled down a rocky hillside. As a
result of his injuries, Douglas did not return to the Court until
March 1950 and did not take part in many of that term's cases. Four
months after his return to the court, Douglas had to be hospitalized
again when he was kicked by a horse.
Douglas divorced Riddle in July 1953. Douglas's former friend Thomas
Gardiner Corcoran represented Riddle in the divorce, securing alimony
with an "escalator clause" that gave Douglas a financial motivation to
publish more books. Douglas was not informed about Riddle's 1969
death until several months had passed because his children had stopped
talking to him.
While still married to Riddle, Douglas began openly pursuing Mercedes
Hester Davidson in 1951. Other justices at the time kept mistresses
as secretaries or kept them away from the Court building according to
Douglas's messenger Harry Datcher, but Douglas "did what he did in the
open. He didn't give a damn what people thought of him." Douglas
married Davidson on December 14, 1954.
In 1961, Douglas pursued Joan "Joanie" Martin, an Allegheny College
student writing her thesis about him. In the summer of 1963, he
divorced Davidson; on August 5, 1963, at the age of 64, Douglas
married 23-year-old Joan C. Martin. Douglas and Martin divorced in
1966.
On July 15, 1966, Douglas married Cathleen Heffernan, then a
22-year-old student at Marylhurst College. They met when he was
vacationing at Mount St. Helens Lodge, a mountain wilderness lodge in
Washington state at Spirit Lake, where she was working for the summer
as a waitress. Though their age difference was a subject of national
controversy at the time of their marriage, they remained together
until his death in 1980.
For much of his life, Douglas was dogged by various rumors and
allegations about his private life, originating from political rivals
and other detractors of his liberal legal opinions on the Court--often
a matter of controversy. In one such instance in 1966, Republican
Representative Bob Dole of Kansas attributed his court decisions to
his "bad judgment from a matrimonial standpoint". Several other
Republican members of Congress introduced resolutions in the House of
Representatives, though none ever passed, that called for
investigation of Douglas's moral character.
Daniel Pierce Thompson was Douglas's great-granduncle.
Death
======================================================================
Four years after retiring from the Supreme Court, Douglas died on
January 19, 1980, at age 81, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C. He was survived by his fourth wife, Cathleen Douglas,
and two children, Mildred and William Jr., with his first wife.
Douglas is interred in Section 5 of Arlington National Cemetery near
the graves of eight other former Supreme Court justices: Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr., Warren E. Burger, William Rehnquist, Hugo Black,
Potter Stewart, William J. Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry
Blackmun. Throughout his life Douglas claimed he had been a U.S. Army
private during World War I, which was inscribed on his headstone. Some
historians, including biographer Bruce Murphy, asserted that this
claim was false, although Murphy later added, according to
'Washington Post' editorial writer Charles Lane, that Douglas's
"career on the court makes it 'appropriate'" that he be buried in
Arlington Cemetery.
Lane engaged in further research--consulting applicable provisions of
the relevant federal statutes, locating Douglas's honorable discharge
and speaking with Arlington Cemetery staff. Records in the Library of
Congress showed that from June to December 1918, Douglas served in the
SATC as (what the War Department's regulations termed) "a soldier in
the Army of the United States ... placed upon active-duty status
immediately." Tom Sherlock, Arlington's official historian, told Lane
that an "active-duty recruit whose service was limited to boot camp
would qualify" to be buried in Arlington. Lane therefore concluded,
"Legally, then, Douglas may have had a plausible claim to be a
'Private, U.S. Army,' as his headstone at Arlington reads."
Legacy and honors
======================================================================
* In 1962, Douglas was awarded the National Audubon Society's highest
honor, the Audubon Medal.
* The 1984 Washington Wilderness Act designated the Cougar Lake
Roadless area as the William O. Douglas Wilderness, which adjoins
Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State.
* Douglas Falls, in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, is
supposedly named for him.
* The William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom in Beverly Hills,
California, is named for him.
* Douglas was elected to the Ecology Hall of Fame for his dedication
to conservation.
* The William O. Douglas Honors College at Central Washington
University in Ellensburg, Washington, is named for him.
* The William O. Douglas Federal Building, a historic post office,
courthouse, and federal office building in Yakima, Washington, which
is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was renamed in
his honor in 1978.
* Since 1972, the William O. Douglas Committee, a select group of law
students at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington,
has sponsored a series of lectures on the First Amendment in Douglas's
honor. Douglas was the first speaker for the annual series.
* A statue of Douglas was installed at A.C. Davis High School, in
Yakima, Washington. It was dedicated in 1978 to Douglas when the new
school was opened.
* William O. Douglas Hall was named in his honor at his alma mater,
Whitman College.
* Douglas Hall, apartments for continuing students at Earl Warren
College, at the University of California, San Diego, is named for him
as well.
* In 1975, 'Time' called Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed
civil libertarian ever to sit on the court."
* In 1977, a bust of Douglas was erected along the towpath of the C
& O Canal in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and the C & O
Canal National Historical Park was officially dedicated to Douglas in
honor of his exhaustive efforts dating from the 1950s in support of
preserving the historic canal. In 1998, the Park commemorated the
100th Anniversary of Douglas's birth by unveiling a portrait of
Justice Douglas hiking along the towpath by artist Tom Kozar. The
portrait, commissioned by the C&O Canal Association, now hangs in
the Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center.
* Douglas Trail, which leads to the Appalachian Trail and Sunfish Pond
in New Jersey, is named after him.
*'Mountain - The Journey of Justice Douglas' is a play written by
Douglas Scott which explores the life of William O. Douglas. Produced
in 1990 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York, NY.
In popular culture
======================================================================
* The 1960s television sitcom 'Green Acres' starred Eddie Albert as a
character named Oliver Wendell Douglas, a Manhattan white-shoe lawyer
who gives up the law to become a farmer. His name is a combination of
two Supreme Court Justices, Douglas and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Bibliography
======================================================================
The papers of William O. Douglas from his career as professor of law,
Securities and Exchange commissioner, and associate justice of the
United States Supreme Court were bequeathed by him to the Library of
Congress.
* 'Go East, Young Man: The Early Years; The Autobiography of William
O. Douglas'
* 'The Court Years, 1939 to 1975: The Autobiography of William O.
Douglas'
* "Mr. Lincoln & the Negroes: The Long Road to Equality", 1963,
Atheneum Press, New York.
* 'Democracy and finance: The addresses and public statements of
William O. Douglas as member and chairman of the Securities and
Exchange Commission'
* 'Nature's Justice: Writings of William O. Douglas'
* 'Strange Lands and Friendly People', by William O. Douglas
* 'West of the Indus', by William O. Douglas, 1958,
* 'Beyond the High Himalayas', by William O. Douglas, 1952
* 'North From Malaya', by William O. Douglas
* 'Points of Rebellion', by William O. Douglas
* 'An Interview with William O. Douglas by William O. Douglas' (sound
recording)
* [
http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=1281 'An
Interview with William O. Douglas'] , Folkway Records FW 07350
*
[
https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll90/id/60/rec/67
'The Mike Wallace Interview'], with Mike Wallace May 11, 1958 (video
and transcript)
Douglas was also a contributor to 'Playboy' magazine:
* "The Attack on [the right to] Privacy" (December 1967)
* "[An Inquest] On Our Lakes and Rivers" (June 1968)
* "Civil liberties: The Crucial Issue" (January 1969)
* "The Public be Damned" (July 1969)
* "Points of Rebellion" (October 1970)
See also
======================================================================
* List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
* List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat
4)
* List of United States Supreme Court justices by time in office
* List of United States federal judges by longevity of service
* United States Supreme Court cases during the Burger Court
* United States Supreme Court cases during the Hughes Court
* United States Supreme Court cases during the Stone Court
* United States Supreme Court cases during the Vinson Court
* United States Supreme Court cases during the Warren Court
* William O. Douglas Prize
Further reading
======================================================================
* Abraham, Henry J., 'Justices and Presidents: A Political History of
Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed.' (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992). .
* Ball, Howard, and Phillip J. Cooper. 'Of Power and Right: Hugo
Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution'
(Oxford University Press, 1992).
* Cushman, Clare, 'The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated
Biographies,1789-1995' (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society),
(Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) .
* Duram, James C. 'Justice William O. Douglas' (Twayne Publishers,
1981), Literary study of Douglas as a writer.
* Frank, John P., 'The Justices of the United States Supreme Court:
Their Lives and Major Opinions' (Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel,
editors) (Chelsea House Publishers: 1995) .
* Hutchinson, Dennis J. "William O. Douglas". In 'The Oxford Companion
to the Supreme Court of the United States,' ed. Kermit L. Hall,
(Oxford University Press, 1992) pp. 233-235.
* Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., 'The U.S. Supreme Court:
A Bibliography', (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). .
* Murphy, Bruce Allen. ', Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O.
Douglas' (Random House, 2003)
*
* Pritchett, C. Herman, 'Civil Liberties and the Vinson Court'. (The
University of Chicago Press, 1969) .
* Schwarz, Jordan A. 'The New Dealers: Power politics in the age of
Roosevelt' (Vintage, 2011) pp 157-176.
[
https://archive.org/details/newdealerspowerp0000schw online]
* Simon, James F. 'Independent Journey: The Life of William O.
Douglas' (Harper & Row, 1980)
* Urofsky, Melvin I., 'Conflict Among the Brethren: Felix Frankfurter,
William O. Douglas and the Clash of Personalities and Philosophies on
the United States Supreme Court', Duke Law Journal (1988): 71-113.
* Urofsky, Melvin I., 'Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under
Stone and Vinson, 1941-1953' (University of South Carolina Press,
1997) .
* Urofsky, Melvin I., 'The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical
Dictionary' (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. .
* Wasby, Stephen L. ed. ' "He Shall Not Pass This Way Again": The
Legacy of Justice William O. Douglas,' (University of Pittsburgh Press
for the William O. Douglas Institute, 1990), major collection of
essays by experts on his achievements.
External links
======================================================================
* [
https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv55181 William O.
Douglas Collection at the Whitman College and Northwest Archives,
Whitman College.]
* [
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/p2676v57d William O. Douglas
Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University]
* [
https://www.oyez.org/justices/william_o_douglas/ Oyez project, U.S.
Supreme Court media on William O. Douglas.]
* [
http://www.constitution.org/wod/wod_por.htm Points of Rebellion, by
William O. Douglas]
*
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20080922171930/http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_timeline/images_associates/067.html
Supreme Court Historical Society, William O. Douglas.]
*
*
|-
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