William O. Douglas

William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898 - January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. He was a champion of individual rights. Some call him a strict constructionist, viewing the Constitution as a document that conveyed limited rights to the government. This view, however, is difficult to reconcile with his re-introduction of the doctrine of substantive due process in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), a doctrine that the Supreme Court had soundly discredited during the New Deal era.

Douglas was born in Maine, Minnesota. His family moved to California, and then Cleveland, Washington. His father died there in 1904, when he was only six years old. His mother moved the family to Yakima, Washington.

He attended Whitman College because his mother, though left with adequate means following her husband's death, refused to pay for him to attend Washington State University. Douglas claims he earned money during the summers working in the fields alongside migrant farmworkers. After graduating he spent 1920 and 1921 teaching school. However, he tired of this and decided to pursue a legal career.

He gained admission to Columbia Law School. Douglas told the tale of his arduous trek from Yakima to New York City. The story goes that he worked as a freight hand handling a herd of sheep that took him to Chicago, and traveled from Chicago to New York as a hobo, hopping trains. This is untrue, and Douglas was by this time married to a schoolteacher who supported him.

Douglas did well at Columbia, and while he did not graduate second in his class in 1925, as he claimed, he was on the law review. He first took a job with a top Wall Street law firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, but quit after four months. After one year, he moved back to Yakima, but he 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. He quickly jumped to join the faculty of Yale Law School. At Yale, he became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy.

In 1934, he left Yale to join the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here he met Franklin D. Roosevelt and became an adviser and friend to the President. In 1936, he was named chairman of the SEC.

In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis resigned from the court, and Roosevelt nominated Douglas as his replacement. Douglas admitted this to have been a great surprise - Roosevelt had summoned him to an "important meeting", and Douglas had expected to be named the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 62 to 4.

Douglas almost left the bench in 1944, when President Roosevelt informed the Democratic Convention that there were two acceptable people to run as his vice-president: Harry Truman and William Douglas.

Appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was sworn into office on April 17, 1939. He retired on November 12, 1975. By the time of his retirement, he had written more Supreme Court opinions than any one else, before or since. At 36 years, Douglas served on the Supreme Court bench longer than anyone else.

He was frequently married and divorced. He was married to Mildred Riddle from 1923 to 1953, Mercedes Hester Davidson from 1954 to 1963, Joan Martin from 1963 to 1965, and Cathleen Hefferman from 1965 until his death.

He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near the grave of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr..

Quotes

The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person's] life.

Preceded by: Louis Brandeis

Associate Justice

Succeeded by: John Paul Stevens