William O. Douglas

(b. Maine, Minn., 16 Oct. 1898; d. Washington, D.C., 19 Jan. 1980; interred Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.), associate justice, 1939–1975. Raised in straitened circumstances and afflicted by polio in youth, Douglas worked his way through college and law school, quickly became a distinguished legal scholar, was named third chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and then, as associate justice, served longer than any other member in the history of the Supreme Court. A rugged outdoorsman and individualist who delighted, especially in later years, in flouting convention, Douglas became a spokesman for personal freedom on and off the Court. Unlike Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, or William J. Brennan among his contemporaries, Douglas left little theoretical legacy after his retirement but is remembered, with both affection and anger, as a symbol of the constitutional values he came to espouse (see Judicial Activism).

Early Career

Douglas was born in Minnesota but spent most of his childhood in or near Yakima, Washington. His father, a Presbyterian home minister, died when Douglas was six and left his family virtually penniless. As therapy for polio, Douglas took to taking solitary hikes in the foothills of the Cascades, which he later reported to be the source of his lifelong love of the outdoors as well as of his devotion to solitude. He worked his way through Whitman College, where poverty forced him to live in a tent one term. After graduating from Whitman in 1920 and teaching school for two years, he “hopped a freight and rode east,” as he later recalled (with some embellishment), to attend Columbia Law School, from which he graduated near the top of his class after working almost full‐time tutoring and doing odd jobs.

He coveted a clerkship with Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, which customarily went to a top Columbia graduate, and when another graduate was selected, Douglas settled uneasily for a Wall Street law firm job that he later claimed to have hated. After two years at what is now Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Douglas left Wall Street to teach, first at Columbia Law School (1927–1929) and then, after a faculty rift over selection of Columbia's new dean, at Yale (1929–1934), where he became one of that law school's youngest chaired professors. His specialty was corporate law, including agency, bankruptcy, and reorganization. Although never closely identified with the American legal realist movement, which then flourished at both Columbia and Yale, Douglas was strongly influenced by its leading figures. He came to see legal doctrines not as autonomous but as devices that could be manipulated for social good or ill. Always restless, Douglas, like several prominent legal scholars, went to Washington to work in the New Deal, and he soon became a member (1936) and then chairman (1937) of the SEC, where he pressed for reform and battled the governors of the New York Stock Exchange over its operation. All the while, he developed close friendships—galvanized, he said, at poker games—within the Roosevelt administration and its inner circle, especially with Harold Ickes, the secretary of the interior.

Service on the Court

When Louis D. Brandeis retired as associate justice in February 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made clear that he wished to appoint a Westerner but that he viewed Douglas, who had been mentioned as a possible candidate, as an Easterner from Yale. While friends, especially Jerome Frank and Thomas Corcoran, lined up Western political support, Douglas privately curried favor with influential political insiders. Then, just as his chances rose, his loyalty to the New Deal became suspect, so he made a fiery speech condemning the financial community and confirming his reformist brand of New Dealism. Within a week, Roosevelt offered Brandeis's seat to Douglas, and he was confirmed 4 April 1939 by a 62 to 4 vote (with the four dissenters labeling him a reactionary tool of Wall Street). At forty‐one, Douglas was the second youngest Supreme Court appointee in history and the youngest in 128 years; only Joseph Story, at thirty‐two, was younger.

The Supreme Court that Douglas joined was in transition, both personally and philosophically. Black, Stanley Reed, and Frankfurter had all been appointed after 1937, so Douglas—with the holdover Stone—provided a solidly pro–New Deal outlook. Over the next two years, during which three more Roosevelt appointees were added, the Court consolidated the post–1937 judicial imprimatur on the remaining New Deal programs that were in litigation. Black and Douglas played central roles, providing arguments for sustaining or interpretatively expanding late New Deal legislation, especially in the areas of labor law and control of markets (see Property Rights).

Despite his later reputation as a civil libertarian, Douglas's most important and enduring work during World War II concerned the regulation of business. His greatest achievements, still essentially undisturbed, are FPC v. Hope Natural Gas (1944), which established standards for reviewing agency rate‐making, and United States v. Socony‐Vacuum Oil Co. (1940), which held that a combination to fix prices was illegal per se without further inquiry into the reasonableness of the activity. Although Douglas did not coin the “per se” test, he firmly established its authority and permanently changed antitrust analysis of price fixing. Perhaps his most pervasive influence was in the administration of bankruptcy law, where he wrote definitive opinions on most aspects of the field. Douglas explained his judicial philosophy in business cases as a function of his predecessor's views, and many of his opinions quote Brandeis's opinions and nonjudicial works. In later life he would also trace the origins of his views to Thorstein Veblen and even to an influential preparatory school teacher, but, fully formed, his theoretical outlook was entirely his own.

During World War II, liberal members of the Court, particularly Black and Douglas, were caught between clashing symbols: While seeking to protect civil liberties in increasingly dark times, they also wished to support the war effort of the president who appointed them. Both justices initially supported compulsory flag‐salute laws (Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 1940), quickly repented publicly (Jones v. Opelika, 1942), and enthusiastically joined reversal of the first decision in West Virginia v. Barnette (1943). Both dissented from a highly restrictive reading of treason law, and Douglas filed a jingoistic dissent (Cramer v. United States, 1945). Both supported the constitutionality of the exclusion of Japanese from the West Coast during wartime, with Black speaking for the Court and Douglas concurring—although there is evidence that Douglas's vote vacillated until almost the last minute (Korematsu v. United States, 1944).

After the war, Black and Douglas found their voice and began to write opinion after opinion upholding civil liberties claims, particularly of free speech. Douglas's most controversial opinion for the Court at the time was Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), in which a speaker's conviction for insulting a hostile mob was reversed. To hold otherwise, he wrote, “would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups” (p. 5). Black and Douglas filed spirited dissents in Dennis v. United States, the 1951 decision upholding convictions of American Communist party members for conspiracy to teach and advocate overthrow of the government.

In most cases, Douglas wrote or voted silently in support of theories developed and advanced by Black. Douglas's most famous civil liberties opinion for the Court was Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), in which he identified a constitutional right to privacy emanating from the “penumbras” of rights enshrined in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments. Although the theory, in fact, owed much to Justice Brennan, Douglas was identified with the approach, which, critics remarked unkindly, revealed that his constitutional views were more shadow than substance.

Black dissented in Griswold and again two years later in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, in which Douglas's opinion for the Court invalidated poll taxes. During much of Black's last decade on the Court, 1961–1971, the two former allies were in opposite camps as Black sought limiting principles for his theories and Douglas sought to extend his views to their logical conclusion. During the same period, Douglas's analytical habits came under sharper scholarly attack for their tendentiousness, especially in tax cases, or simply for sloppiness. Douglas, ever the rebel, seemed to relish the criticism and appeared to bait his antagonists—larding his opinions, for example, with quotations from Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay (Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 1972), or staking out the most extreme positions, such as claiming that trees have legal standing to bring lawsuits (Sierra Club v. Morton, 1972, dissent). Douglas's record, especially from the mid‐1960s onward, displays positions that often appear to be casual, even in areas that he obviously cared about. To take the most startling example, the author of Papachristou, which invalidated a vagrancy ordinance in lyrical terms, also wrote to uphold zoning ordinances preserving traditional lifestyles (Belle Terre v. Boraas, 1974). To the end of his career, many critics charged that Douglas too often took positions simply to be in the center of the action, with his last‐minute stay in 1953 of the Rosenbergs' execution representing the most distasteful incident of this kind.

Douglas's motivation in that case is not free from doubt, but it is clear that his personal style changed dramatically in the early 1950s, when he divorced his wife of twenty‐nine years and embarked on annual globe‐trotting expeditions that routinely led to popularly targeted books about his travels. He was remarried three times, the last time, when he was sixty‐six, to a woman of twenty‐two. The combination of his sensational private life, maverick views, and personalization of his ideology led in April 1970 to a call by then House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford for Douglas's impeachment. His puckishness temporarily suppressed, Douglas mounted a feverish defense, and the charges were rejected eight months later by a House judiciary subcommittee. Vindicated, Douglas reverted to form.

On 31 December 1974, Douglas suffered a debilitating stroke. He was partially paralyzed and never recovered his full capacities. He was absent for much of the rest of that Supreme Court term, and though he returned to the Court the following term, he was at far less than full strength. On 12 November 1975, he submitted a letter of retirement to President Ford after serving longer (by more than two years) than any other justice in history.

Legacy

Unlike Black and Frankfurter, who left competing theoretical legacies, or Brennan, who provided creative doctrinal dexterity, Douglas's intellectual legacy as a justice is slight. While he was sitting, Douglas's plain eloquence supported the causes of the day but now seems time‐bound, just as his voluminous occasional writing—more than thirty books and hundreds of articles—seems ephemeral.

Douglas's historical significance seems to rest on his symbolism as the personification of individualism and on his advocacy for the powerless. Yet the symbol is muddied by his own paradoxical complexity: His record is riddled with contradiction, both substantively and personally (the great humanitarian was notorious for abusing staff and for indulging his conceits). Part of the tension may have been due to his restiveness on the Court, which could not contain his vast energy and which provided less of a forum than he sometimes wished. He was a plausible vice presidential candidate in 1944 and flirted with a wildcat run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1948. After his national political aspirations were finally foreclosed in 1948, he devoted more of his time to nonjudicial pursuits, which were aimed at reaching a wide audience interested in both legal and nonlegal—especially environmental—issues.

Douglas allowed himself to become a hero to professionals and laypeople alike, and at times even appeared to cultivate the role. He wished to be remembered for his faith in the individual, in the Constitution, and in the sanctity of the environment. His lasting monument, which touched him deeply, was designation by Congress of the parkland along the C & O Canal, a favorite walking trail in Washington state, as the William O. Douglas National Park.

See also History of the Court: The Depression and the Rise of Legal Liberalism; History of the Court: Rights Consciousness in Contemporary Society.

Bibliography

• Vernon L. Countryman, The Judicial Record of Justice William O. Douglas (1974).
• William O. Douglas, Go East, Young Man (1974).
• William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939–1975 (1980).
• James F. Simon, Independent Journey (1980).
• Melvin I. Urofsky, ed., The Douglas Letters (1987).
• Bruce Allen Murphy, Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas (2003)

— Dennis J. Hutchinson

William Orville Douglas (1898-1980) was one of the most liberal and activist justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and a vigorous and controversial writer.

William Orville Douglas was born on October 16, 1898, in Maine, Minnesota, where his father, a Nova Scotian missionary, had moved as an itinerant preacher. At the age of 4 William was stricken with polio; to strengthen his spindly legs he began the hiking and later the mountain climbing that became one of his characteristic signatures. When he was 6 his father died, leaving his mother and the three children to make their way on very little, so they moved in with relatives in Yakima, Washington. There William and his two siblings worked their respective ways through school in odd chores and farming jobs. William got a scholarship to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and upon graduating spent 2 years teaching English and Latin in his hometown high school.

But Douglas's aim was the law. He arrived at Columbia University Law School in 1922 almost penniless, and had to once again work his way through school doing tutoring and research for a law textbook. He was befriended by Dean Harlan Stone and deeply influenced by Professor Underhill Moore, who had a new approach to the legal sociology of corporate business, which became Douglas' focus while at Columbia. This was also the period of the creative jurisprudence on the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, and this "People's Attorney" and iconoclastic judge became one of Douglas's heroes. After graduating second highest in his class and editor of Columbia's law journal, Douglas worked for Cravath, DeGersdorff, Swaine & Wood, a huge Wall Street law firm in 1925, and practiced for a year in Yakima. He was admitted to the bar in 1926. He joined the faculty at Columbia Law School in 1927 but resigned in protest against the appointment of a new dean without faculty consultation a year later. A chance meeting with Dean Robert M. Hutchins of the Yale Law School led to Douglas's appointment to a professorship there at the age of 32, and just over a year later he was made Sterling Professor of Law.

Douglas's life was transformed by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, with its sense of social urgency and unparalleled opportunity for reform. In 1934 the newly created Securities and Exchange Commission asked the young law professor for a memorandum on the abuses of corporate reorganization and how these could be remedied. Douglas's reply was an eight-volume report that led to his appointment in 1936 as a member of the Commission and in 1937 he became its chairman. He prodded the stock exchanges into reorganizing themselves and also developed the Commission's surveillance of the prospectuses for new security issues, which did much to stabilize the exchanges.

When Justice Brandeis retired from the Commission, President Franklin Roosevelt turned to Douglas, despite his youth. Justice Douglas took his seat on April 17, 1939. There was talk of Douglas's resigning for high political office on two occasions during the intervening years. One time was in 1944, when Roosevelt sent two names to the Democratic Convention managers as his preferences for vice-presidential running mate - Douglas and Harry Truman. The choice fell to Truman, partly because political moguls mistrusted Douglas just as business moguls did. The second occasion was in 1948, when President Truman, needing a strong, liberal running mate, offered the place to Douglas, who turned it down.

As a justice, Douglas was one of the hardcore liberal "activists," in the sense that he believed that judicial neutrality was a myth and that judges could not rely on constitutional precedent or hard-and-fast constitutional texts to give them the judicial answers. Douglas believed that judicial statesmanship must keep up with social change and that a judge has the duty actively to shape the law in the desired social direction. Placed for a time in a dissenting minority with Justice Hugo Black, he later found himself part of a liberal majority, as Roosevelt's appointees gradually took over the Court. He went on the defensive again in the conservative Frederick Vinson court of the cold war period but again was part of the liberal majority of the Earl Warren court.

Douglas took a strong role in desegregation cases, in the assurance of fair governmental procedures for the accused, in the freedom of religion cases, and in the cases concerning the right of access to birth-control information. In the obscenity cases he took a firm stand for the absolute freedoms guaranteed against censorship of any sort by the 1st Amendment, which to some made him a proponent of smut and "un-American" values.

Douglas's continuous record of militant judicial liberalism was bound to awaken hostility. There were rumblings about impeaching Douglas when he granted a brief stay of execution to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been convicted of spying on American atomic bomb technology. Anti-Douglas sentiments were fed by his three divorces and by his judicial opinions in religion-in-the-schools and obscenity cases. To a growing number of people he had offended God, the home, and the purity of the printed word. His book, Points of Revolution (1970), compared the current American Establishment with George III's, saying that unless it accepted the pressures for nonviolent revolutionary change, it would be overthrown by violence; this also stirred ire.

The impeachment movement this time gained considerable strength in the House of Representatives, fed mainly by tensions of the era and partisan politics, and a committee looking into his affairs was formed. Gerald Ford, while still in Congress, was the leading voice against Douglas. The impeachment-mongerers had their opening in Douglas's association with the Parvin fund, whose purposes were impeccable but whose money, it turned out, came from sources tainted with gambling. He collected a small fee that, despite being negligible, he still paid income taxes on, which his attackers claimed caused a conflict of interest, despite many of the other justices and government officials having received similar compensations. The impeachment attempts were all inconclusive, but persisted until Douglas retired from the Court in 1975.

An indomitable traveler, naturalist, mountain climber, lecturer, and writer, as well as teacher, administrator, and judge, Douglas reasserted the possibility of a many-faceted Renaissance existence as against a specialized, limited life. His career covered 4 decades of stormy American experience, from the early New Deal days to the tensions of the Vietnam War and the student confrontations of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He brought to these years of turmoil legal and financial skills, a passion for individual freedom, and a plain-spoken brusqueness. He will be remembered as one of the few public figures who dared challenge convention and the Establishment during the middle of the 20th century. He died on January 19, 1980.

Further Reading

William Douglas wrote multiple books, though they are more centered around either law, political philosophy, or nature than himself. However, he did write a few autobiographies, including Go East, Young Man: The Early Years (1974) and The Court Years (1980). A biographical sketch and a selection of Douglas's judicial opinions are in Vern Countryman, ed., Douglas of the Supreme Court: A Selection of His Opinions (1959). Douglas and the Supreme Court are also discussed in John Paul Frank, The Warren Court (1964); Leo Pfeffer, This Honorable Court: A History of the United States Supreme Court (1965); and Henry Julian Abraham, Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States (1967). See also the chapter "William O. Douglas: Diogenes on Wall Street" in Max Lerner, Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas (1939).

For more information on William Orville Douglas, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Oct. 16, 1898, Maine, Minn.
• Education: Whitman College, B.A., 1920; Columbia Law School, LL.B., 1925
• Previous government service: Securities and Exchange Commission, 1936–39; chairman, 1937–39
• Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt Mar. 20, 1939; replaced Louis D. Brandeis, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Apr. 4, 1939, by a 62–4 vote; retired Nov. 12, 1975
• Died: Jan. 19, 1980, Washington, D.C.

William O. Douglas served on the Supreme Court for 36 years, longer than any other justice. He wrote more opinions than any justice before or since. And he was honored, before his death, with a lasting monument: Congress designated a parkland in Washington as the William O. Douglas National Park to commemorate his concern for the environment.

Douglas overcame crushing poverty and a crippling illness in his childhood to earn the great achievements and honors of his adult life. His father died when Douglas was five years old, leaving his mother with three children and almost no money. Later, he struggled with polio, which seriously weakened his legs. He took long walks in the mountains near his home to build strength in his legs, and his contact with nature influenced him to become a lifelong advocate of environmental causes. His childhood experiences also led Douglas to have sympathy for the “underdog"—a person who copes with poverty, physical handicaps, or racial discrimination.

William Douglas was an outstanding student in school, which opened opportunities for him to become a teacher, lawyer, and government official. His achievements as a lawyer attracted the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed him to the Securities and Exchange Commission. He became a strong supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal economic recovery programs, and the President appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1939, to fill the seat of Louis Brandeis, who had retired.

Justice Douglas sought to defend the constitutional rights of individuals and professed that the Bill of Rights was meant “to keep government off the backs of people.” He joined Justice Hugo Black to extend the limits of free expression and to promote “incorporation” of the Bill of Rights into Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, so that these constitutional rights could be used to protect individuals against abuses by state and local governments. Further, Justice Douglas joined with the majority of the Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren to defend the rights of African Americans, as in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Cooper v. Aaron (1958).

Douglas's most notable opinion for the Court was Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), in which he argued for a constitutional right to privacy based on his interpretation of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments. Although this opinion has prevailed, it also has been controversial because a right to privacy is not written specifically into the Constitution.

Douglas was a frequent writer of dissenting opinions, usually in defense of the rights of unpopular persons. He dissented, for example, in Dennis v. United States (1951), to protest the Court's decision to uphold convictions of American Communist party members for stating and writing that the U.S. government should be overthrown and replaced by a communist form of government. Douglas believed that the 1st Amendment forbade all government limitations upon the content of speech, or what a person could say. According to Justice Douglas, the Constitution gives the government power only to regulate the conduct of the speaker, that is, actions that pose a serious threat to the safety or property of people.

Justice Douglas often spoke and wrote about his beliefs on many topics. Many of his public statements were controversial or in opposition to commonly held viewpoints. As a result, many people disliked Douglas. He faced three attempts to impeach him, the last and most serious occurring in 1970, five years before his retirement from the Court.

Justice Douglas suffered a stroke on Dec. 31, 1974, which partially paralyzed him. Nearly a year later, Douglas left the Court. He died some four years later, a hero to many for his unyielding advocacy of individual rights, especially the rights of persons disliked or neglected by a majority of the people.

See also Griswold v. Connecticut; Incorporation doctrine; Privacy, right to

Sources

• Howard Ball and Phillip J. Cooper, Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939–1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (New York Vintage, 1981).
• James F. Simon, Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
• Melvin I. Urofsky, “William O. Douglas, Common-Law Judge”, Constitution 4, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 48–58

(1898-1980), associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court. Douglas served longer on the Court (1939-1975) and wrote more opinions and more dissents than any justice before or since. He was an academic founder of the influential legal realist movement, probably the finest New Deal administrator as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and an internationalist. He aspired to the presidency, but turned down an offer of the vice-presidential nomination in 1948. He was an ecologist years before the term was generally known. In his later years, when American youth proclaimed you couldn't trust anyone over thirty, he was a political hero on college campuses. He had an extraordinary intelligence, an excessive work ethic, the ability to see larger issues when contemporaries could not, and the willingness, maybe even the need, to be different. Underlying his character were the experiences of his youth when he had lived in poverty and had battled the effects of polio.

Douglas had an integrated judicial philosophy based on the belief that the Bill of Rights existed "to keep government off the backs of the people"--even in times of severe crisis. Douglas and Hugo Black stood alone during the McCarthy era in dissenting from the Court's decisions sustaining the loyalty-security measures. Unlike Black, however, Douglas's view of appropriate dissent was not narrow, and he easily accommodated the novel tactics of civil rights and antiwar activists to his First Amendment positions. His reputation as an uncompromising defender of the individual rests on his First Amendment opinions, especially his classic dissents in the Smith Act convictions of the Communist party leaders (Dennis et al. v. United States, 1951) and a jailhouse sit-in case (Adderly v. Florida, 1966).

Douglas looked upon work as having a constitutional dimension, believing it was essential for a person's fulfillment. Like other New Dealers, he believed that governments had to exert control over the economy; yet he distrusted bureaucracies, whether corporate or governmental, saying they would create "a nation of clerks." For Douglas, all individuals, regardless of race, religion, or status, were entitled to all the rights that the privileged, by virtue of their money, traditionally enjoyed, a view that eventually paved the way for the Court's controversial 1973 abortion decision, Roe v. Wade.

Douglas was a complex, driven man who changed significantly over the years. Until he was fifty, he was so politically attuned that Franklin D. Roosevelt made him the youngest Supreme Court nominee in over a century and he was a serious candidate for the presidency. Yet by the time he was seventy, he had become known for his injudiciousness and disdain for convention. He was a man with few friends (he publicly called his generation "bankrupt") and four wives (the last two in their early twenties), who faced a serious, albeit unsuccessful, impeachment attempt by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Despite eventual acceptance of many of his constitutional positions, Douglas has a mixed reputation because of his extrajudicial activities and his seeming scorn for lawyerlike analysis. Most believe he could have been an all-time judicial great, but few hold that he achieved his potential. Whatever the evaluation, his personality and varied interests ensure that there will never be another like him.

Bibliography:

James Simon, Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas (1980).

Author:

L. A. Powe, Jr.

See also Securities and Exchange Commission; Supreme Court.

A justice of the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1975. Douglas was a committed liberal, who urged that the Court take bold steps in the application of the Constitution.

William Orville Douglas, a legal educator, New Deal reformer, environmental advocate, and prolific author, was an outspoken and controversial associate justice to the Supreme Court in the twentieth century. For thirty-six and one-half years, under six presidents and five chief justices, Douglas's opinions—including an unequaled 531 dissents—touched and shaped the momentous constitutional questions and crises of the Depression, World War II, the cold war, the Korean War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the rise of the welfare state, and the fall of Richard M. Nixon.

Asserting that the purpose of the Constitution was to "keep the government off the backs of the people," Douglas became a champion of civil liberties on the High Court in seminal cases interpreting freedom of speech, the right to privacy, pornography, treason, the rights of the accused, the limits of the military, the limits of Congress, and even the limits of the president of the United States. As an outspoken New Deal reformer and a popular libertarian, he was courted by the Democratic party for high political office, and likewise excoriated by leading Republicans who three times tried to impeach him. A man of enormous energy, he did not confine his public views to opinions from the Supreme Court alone, but wrote over thirty books on a variety of legal and social topics. As an engaging storyteller, vigorous outdoorsman, and blunt social critic, he was irresistible to the liberal press, under whose influence he was named Father of the Year in 1950. At his death in 1980, he was lionized as an outstanding protector of U.S. freedoms.

Since his death, however, historians have criticized both his public career and his private life. From his position on the Supreme Court, he twice flirted with a place on the presidential ticket—with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 and with Harry S. Truman in 1948—despite the clear opposition of his Court colleagues. He wrote his opinions faster, and with less scholarship or collegial cooperation, than any of his fellow justices. His lifelong stream of books, bearing the cover commendation Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, showed a similar haste to regard primarily his own views as he exhorted the nation impatiently on foreign policy, anthropology, religion, history, law, economics, and the environment. Unprecedented for a Supreme Court justice, he advocated public issues in extralegal activities around the world, creating difficulties for both the Court and the government. He claimed that J. Edgar Hoover had bugged the inner conference room of the Supreme Court Building and had had Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents plant marijuana on his mountain retreat property in Goose Prairie, Washington; when no evidence of these activities was ever found, he refused to recant. When a stroke at age seventy-five left him paralyzed in a wheelchair, wracked with pain, and periodically incoherent, he nonetheless refused to resign his seat in the High Court until forced to do so through the extraordinary efforts of his colleagues. And even then he insisted on lingering in his judicial office for months, demanding attention as though he were still on the Court.

This brilliant and complex man was born October 16, 1898, in Maine, Minnesota. He grew up in small towns of rural Minnesota, California, and Washington as his family moved in search of a climate that would preserve the frail health of his father, a hardworking Presbyterian minister of Scottish pioneer ancestry. Douglas's father died in Washington when the boy was five, leaving the family with only a meager inheritance, which a local attorney immediately squandered on a foolish investment. Douglas's widowed mother, Julia Bickford Fiske Douglas, had saved just enough to buy a house for the family in Yakima, across the street from the elementary school, where she raised Douglas and his two siblings on the virtues of hard work and high ambition as preparation for success in life. All three of the children achieved success in school and in professional life, but Douglas was brilliant: valedictorian of his high school class, Phi Beta Kappa at Whitman College, and second in his class and on law review at Columbia Law School.

Polio had stricken Douglas when he was an infant, and the local doctor had advised the family that he would never fully recover the use of his legs and would probably be dead by age forty. His mother, who favored her firstborn with the name Treasure, went to work massaging the muscles of his legs vigorously in two-hour shifts around the clock for months, telling him that he would recover to run again "like the wind," the way she had as a girl. He not only recovered the use of his legs but, as an adolescent, put himself on a merciless discipline of hiking miles a day in the mountains under full pack, to strengthen his legs to the point of outstanding endurance, determined that no one would ever call him puny.

In 1920 he graduated from Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Washington, and returned home for two years to teach English, Latin, and public speaking in Yakima High School. He pursued a Rhodes Scholarship unsuccessfully, and then decided to hitch by rail across the country to enter Columbia Law School, although he did not yet possess the money for tuition. While in law school, in 1924, he married Mildred Riddle, with whom he had his only two children, Millie Douglas and William O. Douglas, Jr. The marriage ended in divorce twenty-nine years later.

After graduating from Columbia Law in 1925, he practiced in a Wall Street firm for one year before joining the faculty at Columbia and a year later at Yale, where he specialized in corporate law and finance, writing respected casebooks and gaining recognition as an expert in the field. Desperate for a cure to continuous headaches and stomach pains that had plagued him since Wall Street, he briefly undertook psychoanalysis at Yale.

Following the stock market crash of 1929, he did original and painstaking work with the help of sociologist Dorothy S. Thomas, interviewing failed businesses in bankruptcy court to determine the causes of their loss. He was asked to head a study committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934. In 1936 he became a member of the SEC, and in 1937 he was appointed chairman with the mandate from Franklin D. Roosevelt to reform practices of the stock exchange that had led to the great crash.

In 1939 Roosevelt had Douglas, then chairman of the SEC, hailed off a golf course to meet immediately with him at the White House. "I have a new job for you," the president said in the Oval Office. "It's a job you'll detest." Pausing dramatically to light up a cigarette, the president continued, "I am sending your name to the Senate as Louis Brandeis' successor." Douglas was stunned. At forty, he was about to become the second-youngest Supreme Court justice in history.

Douglas was sworn in on April 17, 1939, and quickly helped constitute a new majority on the Court that supported Roosevelt's New Deal laws regulating the economy. Within two years he had opposed the Court's leading personality, Felix Frankfurter, and its reigning philosophy of defending civil liberties from the Bill of Rights in cases involving religious freedom and the rights of the accused. It was the beginning of a two-decade battle with Frankfurter and his philosophy of judicial restraint. This conflict did not end amicably, but it helped transform Douglas into a champion of civil liberties. After World War II, Douglas joined forces frequently with Justice Hugo L. Black and later Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in applying the Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties.

In 1951, when fears of Communism exacerbated by the public ravings of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy overtook the nation, Douglas's dissent in Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S. Ct. 857, 95 L. Ed. 1137 (1951), defended the First Amendment free speech rights of Eugene Dennis and ten other members of the American Communist party who admitted teaching the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Douglas argued that despite current fears of Communist influence in U.S. society, their speech alone presented no "clear and present danger" to the nation. Similarly, in dissent, he defended the First Amendment rights of several New York schoolteachers who challenged the state's Feinberg law (Educ. Law N.Y.S. 3022) giving authorities the right to compile a list of subversive organizations to which a teacher could not belong. Douglas wrote that teachers need the guarantee of free expression more than anyone and that the Feinberg Law "turn[ed] the school system into a spying project" (Alder v. Board of Education of City of New York, 342 U.S. 485, 72 S. Ct. 380, 96 L. Ed. 517 [1952]).

During this same period, he vigorously opposed the expanding use of government wire tapping enabled by the 1929 Olmstead decision, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S. Ct. 564, 72 L. Ed. 944 (1928). Writing for the public in his book Almanac of Freedom (1954), Douglas declared that "wire tapping, wherever used, has a black record. The invasion of privacy is ominous. It is dragnet in character, recording everything that is said, by the innocent as well as by the guilty. … wire tapping is a blight on the civil liberties of the citizen."

In 1953 Douglas single-handedly halted the execution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, the defendants in the most sensational spy trial of the cold war (Rosenberg v. United States, 346 U.S. 273, 73 S. Ct. 1173, 97 L. Ed. 1607 [1953]). After voting four times not to hear the case, he finally ordered a stay at the last possible minute, and then headed off on vacation. Unable to reach Douglas en route, the other justices called a special session to vacate the stay, and the Rosenbergs were executed. His colleagues accused him of grandstanding. His enemies in Congress accused him of treason, and he survived three impeachment attempts led by Gerald R. Ford. Ford, eager to be rid of Douglas, declared that "an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." But Douglas was not a traitor but an adamant civil libertarian, unwilling to let the heavy hand of the government crush any individual's rights.

During the tenure of Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953-69), Douglas found more frequent majorities for his activist philosophy. He took a leading role in reaching a majority for the 1954 Brown decision (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 [1954]) desegregating public schools, telling his colleagues simply that "a state can't classify by color in education." He argued in dissent in several cases that the Bill of Rights was applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, an argument the Court finally accepted in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081 (1961), which held the Fourth Amendment provision prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures applicable to the states. He supported each of the Warren Court's major decisions extending the rights of criminal suspects, including the right to counsel, in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 (1963), and the right to know your constitutional rights before being interrogated, in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966).

In 1965 Douglas wrote for the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, striking down a state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. In the opinion, he argued that, taken together, the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments created a constitutional right to privacy. This may have been Douglas's most influential single opinion on the Court. He argued that the government did not belong in the bedroom, which was one of the "zones of privacy" protected by "penumbras" emanating from the specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Criticism of the Griswold opinion was fierce. But based on this right to privacy, a majority of the Court, Douglas concurring, would vote for a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973).

Douglas made no secret of his long-standing dislike for Nixon and the Vietnam War. In the fall of 1967, he dissented from the Court's decision not to review several cases that might have raised the issue of the legality of the Vietnam War. On August 4, 1973, in a solitary performance reminiscent of the Rosenberg stay of execution, acting from the Yakima courthouse near his summer vacation home, Douglas reinstated a lower-court order to stop the Nixon administration's bombing of Cambodia and, in effect, bring the Vietnam War to a halt by judicial decision. Douglas wrote that only Congress could declare war, and Congress had not done so. Six hours later, eight members of the Court reversed him by the telephone polling of Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In his most personal relationships, Douglas was a tyrant. He sternly demanded the backbreaking sixteen-hour days and six-day weeks from his law clerks that he loved to put in himself (when a clerk asked for time off to get married, he granted him twenty-four hours), but never allowed them significant responsibilities for his opinions. One clerk said, "It was a master/slave relationship" (Simon 1980). He married four times while serving on the Supreme Court, to successively younger women: after Riddle, Mercedes Davidson (1953), whom he met in Washington, D.C.; Joan Martin (1962), a twenty-three-year-old college student who had written her senior thesis in praise of him; and Catherine Heffermin (1965), a twenty-one-year-old college student whom he met while she was working as a waitress. Most of his wives found him distant, demanding, and faithless. The 860 pages of his two-volume autobiography (The Court Years, 1980) are filled with revenge upon his personal and political enemies, but contain less than a page for his wife of twenty-nine years, Riddle. He was so inept and cold as a father that his two children fled him. As his son put it, "[F]ather was scary."

Felled by a stroke in 1974, he became confined to a wheelchair pushed by an aide, wracked by constant pain, glazed by medication, and increasingly incoherent. But he would not resign. He tried to return to the Court in 1975, refusing all advice to the contrary. His presence was embarrassing to the Court and impossible to sustain. He officially resigned on November 12, 1975, but tried to hang on to an unofficial role as the Court's tenth justice. When even his clerks would not support his fantasy, he prepared a statement of farewell to be read for him to the justices while he sat in his wheelchair. His farewell compared the relationship he had shared with his Court colleagues to the slow warm growth of friendships on a camping trip in the wilderness. His colleagues wept.

Douglas died on January 18, 1980, in Washington, D.C.

The view of the High Court as a somber gathering of old people in black robes pondering the weighty truths of the Constitution was shattered by Douglas. His irrepressible personality, extralegal activities, popular book writing, and serial marriages brought unprecedented color and controversy to the Court. A libertarian by disposition and principle, he would not easily allow the government to abridge the liberties of others, nor would he conform to the traditional role of Supreme Court justice.

Quotes:

"The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people."

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

"The search for static security -- in the law and elsewhere -- is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, adapting old ideas that have outlived their usefulness to current facts."

"Ive often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers."

"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs. If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential. Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young peoples unrestin other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing."

"Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response."

See more famous quotes by William O. Douglas

For other persons named William Douglas, see William Douglas (disambiguation).

William O. Douglas
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office April 17, 1939 – November 12, 1975
Nominated by	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	Louis D. Brandeis
Succeeded by	John Paul Stevens
3rd Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
In office 1937 – 1939
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	James M. Landis
Succeeded by	Jerome Frank
Born	October 16, 1898(1898-10-16) Maine Township, Minnesota
Died	January 19, 1980 (aged 81) Washington, D.C.
Religion	Presbyterian

William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898 – January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court. In 1975, a Time article called Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court."^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Yale and the SEC 3 On the Bench 3.1 Relationships with other justices 3.2 Judicial philosophy 3.3 The Rosenberg Case 3.4 Douglas and the environment 3.4.1 "Trees have standing" 3.4.2 Environmentalism 4 In presidential politics 5 Impeachment attempts 5.1 Fallout from the Rosenberg Case 5.2 The 1970 attempt 6 Records 7 Retirement 8 Nicknames 9 Personal life 10 Dedications 11 Primary sources 12 Secondary sources 13 See also 14 References 15 External links

Early life

Douglas was born in Maine Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, the son of an itinerant Scottish Presbyterian minister from Pictou County, Nova Scotia.^[2] His family moved to California, and then to Cleveland, Washington. His father died in Portland, Oregon in 1904, when Douglas was only six years old. After moving from town to town in the West, his mother, with three young children, settled the family in Yakima, Washington. William, like the rest of the Douglas family, worked at odd jobs to earn extra money, and a college education appeared to be unaffordable. Though not the valedictorian, Douglas did well enough in high school to win a scholarship to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.^[3]

While at Whitman, Douglas was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. He worked at various jobs while attending school, 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 a legal career. He once said of his early interest in the law:

"I worked among the very, very poor, the migrant laborers, the Chicanos and the I.W.W's who I saw being shot at by the police. I saw cruelty and hardness, and my impulse was to be a force in other developments in the law."^[4]

Douglas was elected Phi Beta Kappa^[5], participated on the debate team, and was student body president in his final year. After graduating in 1920 with a B.A. in English and economics, he taught English and Latin at Yakima High Schools 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".^[3] He travelled to New York (taking on a job tending sheep on a Chicago-bound train, in return for free passage), with hopes to attend the Columbia Law School.^[3] Douglas's Beta Theta Pi membership helped 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.^[6]

Six months later, Douglas's funds were running out. However, the appointments office at the law school let him know that a New York firm wanted a student to help prepare a correspondence course for law. Douglas earned $600 for his work, enabling him to stay in school. Moreover, he was called on for similar projects and had saved $1,000 by semester's end.^[6] He then went to La Grande, Oregon, to marry Mildred Riddle, whom he had known at Yakima. He graduated fifth in his class in 1925, although he would thereafter claim to have been second. He went to work at the prestigious New York firm of Cravath, DeGersdorff, Swaine and Wood (later Cravath, Swaine & Moore).

Yale and the SEC

Douglas quit the Cravath firm after four months. After one year, he moved back to Yakima, but soon regretted the move and never actually practiced law there. After a time of unemployment and another months-long stint at Cravath, he went to teach at Columbia Law School. He quickly jumped to join the faculty of Yale Law School.

At Yale, he became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy, and 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.

While teaching at Yale, he and fellow professor Thurman Arnold were riding the New Haven Railroad and were inspired to set the sign "Passengers will please refrain..." to one of Antonin Dvořák's Humoresques,^[7] which became a common theme on the train and later spread widely into popular culture as an often bawdy song.

In 1934, he left Yale to join the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), having been nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.^[8] He became an adviser and friend to the President and SEC chairman in 1937.

On the Bench

In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis resigned from the Supreme Court, and Roosevelt nominated Douglas as his replacement on March 20.^[8] Douglas later revealed that this had been a great surprise to him—Roosevelt had summoned him to an "important meeting," and Douglas feared that he was to 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 cast by four Republicans: Lynn J. Frazier, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Gerald P. Nye, and Clyde M. Reed. Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939.

Relationships with other justices

Douglas was often at odds with fellow Justice Felix Frankfurter, who believed in judicial restraint and thought the Court should stay out of politics.^[8] Douglas did not highly value judicial consistency or stare decisis when deciding cases.^[8]

Judicial philosophy

In general, legal scholars have noted that Douglas's judicial style was unusual in that he did not attempt elaborate justifications for his judicial positions on the basis of text, history, or precedent. Instead, Douglas was known for writing short, pithy opinions which relied on philosophical insights, observations about current politics, and literature, as much as more conventional "judicial" sources.

Ultimately, he himself believed that a judge's role was "not neutral." "The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people...." ^[9]

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) affirming the conviction of the leader of the U.S. Communist Party.

In 1944 Douglas voted with the majority to uphold Japanese wartime internment, in Korematsu v. United States, but over the course of his career he grew to become a leading advocate of individual rights. Suspicious of majority rule as it related to social and moral questions, he frequently expressed concern at forced conformity with "the Establishment" in his opinions. For example, Douglas wrote the lead opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, finding a "right to privacy" in the "penumbras" of the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights.^[8] This went too far for his old ally Black, who dissented in Griswold.

The Rosenberg Case

On June 16, 1953, Douglas granted a temporary stay of execution to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the two confirmed Soviet spies who had been convicted of selling the plans for the atomic bomb to the Russians. The basis for the stay was that the Rosenbergs had been sentenced to die by Judge Irving Kaufman without the consent of the jury. While this was permissible under the Espionage Act of 1917, which the Rosenbergs were tried under, a later law, the Atomic Secrets Act of 1946, held that only the jury could pronounce the death penalty. Since, at the time the stay was granted, the Supreme Court was out of session, this 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 took the unprecedented step of reconvening the Court before the appointed date and set aside Douglas's stay.^[10]

Due to opposition to his decision, Douglas briefly faced impeachment proceedings in Congress. But attempts to remove him from the Court went nowhere in Congress.^[11]

Douglas and the environment

Douglas was a self-professed outdoorsman, so much so that according to The Thru-Hiker's Companion, a guide published by the Appalachian Trail Club, Douglas hiked the entire 2,000-mile trail from Georgia to Maine. His love for the environment carried through to his judicial reasoning.

"Trees have standing"

In the landmark environmental law case, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), Justice Douglas famously, and most colorfully argued that "inanimate objects" should have standing to sue in court:

The critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.

He continued:

"Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole - a creature of ecclesiastical law - is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases.... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes - fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it."

Douglas's review contributed to the success of Silent Spring, an important turning point for the environmental movement.

In the early 1970s, Douglas and his young wife Cathleen were invited by the late Dr Neil Compton and the Ozark Society to visit and canoe down part of the free-flowing Buffalo River in Arkansas, putting in at the low water bridge at Boxley. This experience endeared him to the river and the young organization's idea of protecting it. As such Douglas was instrumental in having it preserved as a free-flowing river, left in its natural state. This decision was much to the chagrin of the area's Corps of Army Engineers, who were busily damming every river they could. 'Flood control' was usually their rallying cry. The act that soon followed designated the Buffalo river as America's first National River.^[12]

Environmentalism

Besides his famous dissent in Morton, he also served on the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club from 1960 to 1962 and wrote prolifically on his love of the outdoors. He is credited with saving the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and inspiring the effort to establish the area as a national park; going as far as to challenge the editorial board of The Washington Post to go with him for a walk on the canal after it had published opinions supporting Congress' plan to pave the canal into a road.^[13] His efforts convinced the editorial board to change its stance and helped save the park.^[13]

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 would sway the Court in the direction of preserving the Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky: a proposal to build a dam and flood the gorge reached the Supreme Court. Douglas visited the area himself (Saturday, November 18, 1967). The Red River Gorge's Douglas Trail is named in his honor.

In 1969 he wrote Points of Rebellion and authored a piece for Evergreen magazine.

In presidential politics

See also: The Democratic vice president nomination of 1944

When, in early 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided not to actively support the renomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace at the party's national convention, a shortlist 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 and 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, 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 releasing the letter to the convention on July 20, the nomination went without incident, and Truman was nominated on the second ballot.

After the convention, Douglas's supporters spread the rumor that the note sent to Hannegan had, in fact, read "Bill Douglas or Harry Truman,"^[14] not the other way around. These supporters claimed that Hannegan, a Truman supporter, feared that Douglas's nomination would drive southern white voters away from the ticket (Douglas had a very anti-segregation record on the Supreme Court) and had switched the names to give the impression that Truman was Roosevelt's real choice. Evidence uncovered recently by Douglas's biographers, however, has discredited this story and seems to prove that Truman's name had been first all along.^{[citation needed]} If nominated for vice president and elected under Roosevelt, Douglas would have become the 33rd President after Roosevelt's death.

By 1948, Douglas' presidential aspirations were rekindled by the extremely low popularity ratings of Truman, who had become president in 1945 on Roosevelt's death. Many Democrats, believing that Truman could not be reelected in November, began attempting to find a replacement candidate. Attempts were made to draft popular retired war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the nomination. A "Draft Douglas" campaign, complete with souvenir buttons and hats, sprang up in New Hampshire and several other primary states. Douglas himself even 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 was later heard to remark, "I have no wish to be the number two man to a number two man."^{[citation needed]} Truman instead selected Senator Alben W. Barkley and the two went on to win the election.

Impeachment attempts

There were two attempts to remove Douglas from office, both unsuccessful.

Fallout from the Rosenberg Case

On June 17, 1953, Representative William M. Wheeler, infuriated by Douglas's brief stay of execution in the Rosenberg case, introduced a resolution to impeach Justice Douglas. The resolution was referred to the Judiciary Committee to investigate the charges the next day. On July 7, the committee voted to end the investigation.

The 1970 attempt

Justice Douglas was fully committed to his causes. But because of difficult financial circumstances, he was also forced to maintain a busy speaking and publishing schedule to supplement his income. Never a wealthy man, Douglas became severely burdened financially due to a bitter divorce and settlement with his first wife. He only sank deeper into financial difficulties as settlements with his second and third wives essentially consumed his entire salary as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

Douglas's steps to supplement his income as a result of his financial situation also included the unusual move of becoming president of the Parvin Foundation. While his efforts on behalf of the Parvin Foundation were legitimate, his ties with the foundation (which was financed by the sale of the infamous Flamingo Hotel by casino financier and foundation founder Albert Parvin), became a prime target for then-House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford. Besides being personally disgusted by Douglas's allegedly illicit lifestyle, Representative Ford was also mindful that Douglas protégé Abe Fortas was forced to resign because of ties to a foundation similar to Parvin.^[15] Fortas would later say that he "resigned to save Douglas," thinking that the dual investigations into them would stop with his resignation.^[15]

Some scholars^[16][17] 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. Thus, in April 1970, Congressman Ford moved to impeach Douglas in an attempt to hit back at the Senate.

Despite careful maneuvering by House Judiciary Chairman Emanuel Celler, and an apparent lack of proof of any criminal conduct on the part of Douglas (efforts by Attorney General John N. Mitchell and the Nixon administration to gather evidence to the contrary not withstanding),^[18] Congressman Ford moved forward in the first major attempt to impeach a Supreme Court Justice in the modern era.

The hearings began in late April 1970. Congressman Ford was the main witness, and attacked Douglas's “liberal opinions,” his “defense of the 'filthy' film I Am Curious (Yellow), and his ties with the aforementioned Parvin. Additionally, Douglas was criticized for accepting $350 for an article he wrote on folk music in the magazine Avant Garde. The magazine’s publisher had served a prison sentence for the distribution of another magazine in 1966 that had been deemed pornographic. Describing Douglas’ 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 his article in Evergreen Magazine, which was infamous for its proclivity for pictures of naked women. The Republican congressmen, however, refused to give the majority Democrats copies of the magazines, 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?”^[19]

When it became clear that the impeachment proceedings would be unsuccessful, they were brought to a close, and no public vote on the matter was taken.^[20]

The effort to impeach Douglas and the struggles over the Fortas, Haynesworth, and Carswell nominations marked the beginning of a more partisan climate during the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominees.

Records

During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Douglas achieved a number of records, all of which continue to stand. In addition to serving on the Court for longer than any other Justice, he also managed to write more opinions and dissenting opinions, give more speeches, and author more books than any other Justice. Douglas also holds the record among Justices for having had the most wives (four) and the most divorces while on the bench (three). The two attempts to impeach Justice Douglas^{[citation needed]} were more than has been made on any other Justice.

Retirement

Since his 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."^[15]

On December 31, 1974, while on vacation in the Bahamas, Douglas suffered a debilitating stroke. Severely disabled, Douglas nevertheless insisted on continuing to participate in Supreme Court affairs, despite his obvious incapacity. Seven of Douglas's fellow justices voted to put off any argued case in which Douglas's vote might make a difference over to the next term.^[21] At the urging of Fortas, Douglas finally retired on November 12, 1975, after 36 years of service. Ironically, it was Douglas's old nemesis, now-President Gerald R. Ford, to whom he had to submit his resignation and who appointed his successor, John Paul Stevens.

Nicknames

During his time on the Supreme Court, Douglas picked up a number of nicknames, which were bestowed upon him by both his admirers and his detractors. The most common epithet was Wild Bill, which he received for his independent and unpredictable stances and cowboy-style mannerisms, although many of the latter were affectations for the consumption of the press.

Personal life

Douglas married four times. He was married to Mildred Riddle from 1923 to 1953, Mercedes Hester Davidson from 1954 to 1963, Joan Martin (a law student in her early twenties) from 1963 to 1965, and Cathleen Heffernan (another law student in her early twenties) from 1965 until his death, January 19, 1980.^[22] His first marriage produced two children, Mildred and William O. Douglas, Jr.. Douglas's marriages and his alleged womanizing was a matter of public dispute at the time; in 1966 Kansas Representative Robert Dole compared his "bad judgment from a matrimonial standpoint" to his court decisions, and four separate resolutions were introduced in the United States House of Representatives calling for investigation of his moral character^[23].

Douglas is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near the grave of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His qualifications for burial at Arlington—namely, whether or not he served in the military—have been the subject of controversy.^[24]

The William O. Douglas Wilderness, which adjoins Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, is named in his honor, as Douglas had both an intimate connection to that area and a deep commitment to environmental protection.[1] Douglas was a friend and frequent guest of Harry Randall Truman, owner of the Mount St. Helens Lodge at Spirit Lake in Washington. Douglas Falls in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina is also named after him. The William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom, located in Beverly Hills, California, is named after him as well.

Dedications

The William O. Douglas Committee, a select group of law students at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington has sponsored a series of lectures on the First Amendment since 1972, in Douglas's honor.^[25] Douglas was the first speaker for the annual series.^[25] The honors college at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington bears Douglas's name.

A statue of Douglas is in place in the courtyard of A.C. Davis High School, in Yakima, Washington. At Douglas's alma mater, Whitman College, William O. Douglas Hall is a much-sought-after dormitory among second-, third-, and fourth-year students. Douglas Hall, an apartment for continuing students at Earl Warren College, at the University of California, San Diego is named for him as well.

Primary sources

• Go East, Young Man: The Early Years; The Autobiography of William O. Douglas ISBN 0394711653
• The Court Years, 1939 to 1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas ISBN 0394492404
• Democracy and finance;: The addresses and public statements of William O. Douglas as member and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission ISBN 0804605564
• Nature's Justice: Writings of William O. Douglas ISBN 0870714821
• Strange Lands and Friendly People, by William O. Douglas ISBN 1406772046
• Points of Rebellion, by William O. Douglas ISBN 0394440684
• An Interview with William O. Douglas by William O. Douglas (sound recording) ASIN B000S592XI
• The Mike Wallace Interview, with Mike Wallace May 11, 1958 (video)
• The Mike Wallace Interview, May 11, 1958 (transcript)

Secondary sources

• Abraham, Henry J., Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
• Cushman, Clare, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789-1995 (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.
• 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) ISBN 0791013774, ISBN 978-0791013779.
• Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352.
• Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography, (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.
• Murphy, Bruce Allen (2003). Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-57628-4. ^[24]
• Pritchett, C. Herman , Civil Liberties and the Vinson Court. (The University of Chicago Press, 1969) ISBN 9780226684437; ISBN 0226684431.
• Adam M. Sowards in the Oregon Encyclopedia
• 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) ISBN 1570031207.
• Urofsky, Melvin I., The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.
• Woodward, Robert and Armstrong, Scott. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979). ISBN 9780380521838; ISBN 0380521830. ISBN 9780671241100; ISBN 0671241109; ISBN 0743274024; ISBN 9780743274029.

See also

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office List of United States Chief Justices by time in office Lucile Lomen

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

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Author: William O. Douglas

References

1. ^ Time Magazine, November 24, 1975
2. ^ . Ernest Kerr, Imprint of the Maritimes, 1959, Boston: Christopher Publishing, p. 83.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Current Biography 1941, pp233-35
4. ^ Whitman, Alden. (1980). "Vigorous Defender of Rights." The New York Times, Sunday, January 20, 1980, p. 28.
5. ^ Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
6. ^ ^{a b} Current Biography 1941, p234
7. ^ http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=55501 web site discussion of song references Douglas's Go East, Young Man
8. ^ ^{a b c d e} Christopher L. Tomlins (2005). The United States Supreme Court. Houghton Mifflin. pp. 475–476. http://books.google.com/books?id=Fy8DjOIxDm0C. Retrieved 2008-10-21. 
9. ^ Douglas, William O. (1980). The Court Years. Random House. pp. 8. 
10. ^ Douglas had departed for vacation, but on learning of the special session of the Court, he returned to Washington. Bruce Allen Murphy, Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas at pages 324-325 (New York: Random House 2003).
11. ^ "House Move to Impeach Douglas Bogs Down; Sponsor Is Told He Fails to Prove His Case." The New York Times, Wednesday, July 1, 1953, p. 18.
12. ^ The Ozarks Society newsletters and books by Kenneth L Smith
13. ^ ^{a b} Lynch, John A., "Justice Douglas, the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and Maryland Legal History", University of Baltimore Law Forum 35 (Spring 2005): 104–125 
14. ^ WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS "POLITICAL AMBITIONS" AND THE 1944 VICE-PRESIDENTIAL
15. ^ ^{a b c} Laura Kalman (1990). Abe Fortas. Yale University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=x-Fbl_xE1E0C. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 
16. ^ Gerhardt, Michael J. (2000). The Federal Impeachment Process. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226289567. ;
17. ^ Lohthan, William C. (1991). The United States Supreme Court: Lawmaking in the Third Branch of Government. Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780139336232. 
18. ^ Gerald Ford's Remarks on the Impeachment of Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, April 15, 1970
19. ^ (DV) Gerard: Conservatives, Judicial Impeachment, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
20. ^ Gerhardt, Michael J. The federal impeachment process.
21. ^ Appel, Jacob M. (2009-08-22). "Anticipating the Incapacitated Justice". Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/anticipating-the-incapaci_b_266179.html. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 
22. ^ Arlington National Cemetery, William O. Douglas.
23. ^ Time Magazine, July 29, 1966
24. ^ ^{a b} Arlington National Cemetery on William Douglas, including review of Wild Bill.
25. ^ ^{a b} William O. Douglas Committee :: Gonzaga School of Law

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William O. Douglas

• Grave of William O. Douglas at Find a Grave.
• Oyez project, U.S. Supreme Court media on William O. Douglas.
• Points of Rebellion, by William O. Douglas
• Supreme Court Historical Society, William O. Douglas.
• William O. Douglas at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

Government offices
Preceded by James M. Landis	Securities and Exchange Commission Chair 1937 – 1939	Succeeded by Jerome Frank
Legal offices
Preceded by Louis Brandeis	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States April 17, 1939 – November 12, 1975	Succeeded by John Paul Stevens

v • d • e Chairmen of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission Kennedy • Landis • Douglas • Frank • Eicher • Purcell • Caffrey • Hanrahan • McDonald • D Cook • Demmler • Armstrong • Gadsby Cary • Cohen • Budge • Casey • B Cook • Garrett • Hills • Williams • Shad • Ruder • Breeden • Levitt • Pitt • Donaldson • Cox • Schapiro

Supreme Court of the United States

The Hughes Court Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (1930–1941) 1939: J.C. McReynolds | P. Butler | H.F. Stone | O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas 1940–1941: J.C. McReynolds | H.F. Stone | O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy Feb-Jul 1941: H.F. Stone | O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | (vacancy) The Stone Court Chief Justice: Harlan Fiske Stone (1941–1946) 1941–1942: O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | J.F. Byrnes | R.H. Jackson 1943–1945: O.J. Roberts | H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge 1945–1946: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge | H.H. Burton The Vinson Court Chief Justice: Frederick Moore Vinson (1946–1953) 1946–1949: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | F. Murphy | R.H. Jackson | W.B. Rutledge | H.H. Burton 1949–1953: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | R.H. Jackson | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton The Warren Court Chief Justice: Earl Warren (1953–1969) 1953–1954: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | R.H. Jackson | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton 1955–1956: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | S. Minton | J.M. Harlan II 1956–1957: H. Black | S.F. Reed | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan 1957–1958: H. Black | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | H.H. Burton | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | C.E. Whittaker 1958–1962: H. Black | F. Frankfurter | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | C.E. Whittaker | P. Stewart 1962–1965: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A.J. Goldberg 1965–1967: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | T.C. Clark | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A. Fortas 1967–1969: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | A. Fortas | T. Marshall The Burger Court Chief Justice: Warren Earl Burger (1969–1986) 1969–1970: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall 1970–1971: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun 1972–1975: Wm. O. Douglas | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist

Persondata
NAME	Douglas, William Orville
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	United States federal judge
DATE OF BIRTH	October 16, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH	Maine, Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH	January 19, 1980
PLACE OF DEATH	Bethesda, Maryland

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)