Vol. 13 No. 6 (June 2003)

 

WILD BILL:  THE LEGEND AND LIFE OF WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS by Bruce Allen Murphy.  New York:  Random House, 2003. 716 p.  Cloth $35.00.  ISBN:  0-394-57628-4.

 

Reviewed by David O. Friedrichs, Department of Sociology/Criminal Justice, University of Scranton.  Email:  friedrichsd1@scranton.edu

 

By any measure, William O. Douglas was one of the more memorable figures in 20th century American law.  To date, Douglas still holds the record for the longest term of service on the U.S. Supreme Court—from 1939 to 1975, more than 36 years.  During this long tenure, Douglas was a participant in many major cases, perhaps most notably, as a key member of the Warren Court majority that handed down a series of historical due process decisions.  Douglas was known throughout much of his tenure as a stalwart of the liberal coalition on the Court, and he became a major icon of the liberal left.  Altogether, he produced 1,164 full opinions, including 486 full dissents (p.495).  But Douglas also led an extraordinarily rich and productive life beyond the confines of his service on the court.  He published 32 books and numerous articles – many appearing in popular periodicals, not just law journals – gave hundreds of speeches, and traveled all over the world.  He spent much time in the great outdoors he loved, hiking, horseback riding, and fishing.  And Douglas is the only Supreme Court justice to have been married four times; indeed, his three divorces while sitting on the Court are apparently the only divorces of sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices on record.  Douglas vigorously defended his active life away from the bench, contending that judges who cut themselves off from the mainstream of life became “dried husks.” 

 

A line on the cover of this new biography of Douglas describes him as “America’s most controversial Supreme Court justice.”  In fact, he also holds the record for being a target of several impeachment efforts.  His divorces and marriages to two women many decades younger than himself, his writing for PLAYBOY, his alleged “radical” sentiments in some of his books, his involvement with a foundation established by a somewhat shady Las Vegas entrepreneur—all this outraged many people, especially conservative Republicans, and provided his enemies with ammunition for their ultimately unsuccessful impeachment endeavors.  Of course, these enemies hoped to see Douglas replaced on the Court with a conservative justice.

 

The author of this book, Bruce Allen Murphy, is Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College (PA).  He is also the author of two previous, well-received books, THE BRANDEIS/FRANKFURTER CONNECTION:  THE SECRET POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF TWO SUPREME COURT JUSTICES (1982) and FORTAS: THE RISE AND RUIN OF A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE (1988).  The present work reflects a prodigious amount of research, including access to Douglas’s papers and countless interviews. The author apparently devoted some fifteen years to this project, and the book itself was derived from a much longer manuscript.  This book is hardly the first to provide an account of Douglas’s life.  Douglas himself produced autobiographical accounts –  especially, OF MEN AND MOUNTAINS (1950) and GO EAST, YOUNG MAN (1974) – and James F. Simon produced a fine biography, INDEPENDENT JOURNEY (1980).  But Murphy claims to have produced the first fundamentally true account of Douglas’s life.  In one reading he has produced a “pathography” (to use Joyce Carol Oates term), significantly focused on the less public, more discreditable aspects of Douglas’s life and character—his dishonesty and mistreatment of family and employees, his womanizing, drinking, hypochondria, and his paranoia.  The negative dimension of this portrayal is captured by some titles of reviews of this book that have now been published:  “Dirty Rotten Hero,” “The Antihero,” “The Tragedy of William O. Douglas.” Although Murphy has brought out some more details of the less admirable side of Douglas, readers of the Simon biography, the collected letters of Douglas, and some other sources, have long been aware that Douglas was a deeply flawed character.

 

The subtitle of this thoroughly researched new biography of Douglas is THE LEGEND AND LIFE OF WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, signaling one of the central themes of the biography:  that Douglas throughout his life misrepresented or told outright lies about various circumstances in his life.  More specifically, Murphy argues that Douglas falsely claimed to have had polio as a child, that Douglas’s widowed mother was not impoverished, that Douglas misrepresented his World War I military service (which was merely a brief stint with a campus-based unit), was not in fact second in his class at Columbia Law, and did not work his way through law school but was supported by his schoolteacher wife.  And so on. A core thesis of the work of sociologist Erving Goffman – that we attempt to manage the public impression others have of us – comes to mind in reading Murphy’s book.  In his autobiographical writings, in interviews, and in speeches, Douglas attempted to project an image of himself as a strong-willed individual who overcame many early disadvantages to become a crusader for individual liberties and independence from excessive government interference in our lives.  His two children bitterly resented that Douglas trotted them out for cozy family photographs, for the benefit of visiting press photographers, and even received a “Father of the Year” award, but was in fact a cold, harsh and uninvolved parent.  But other of Douglas’s actions, especially later in his life, seemed almost designed to provoke outrage—e.g., his fourth marriage at age 67 to a 22-year old former cocktail waitress. 

 

Douglas was a complex personality, a mass of extraordinary contradictions.  Douglas had a vast circle of friends, or acquaintances, but he was also in certain respects a loner, and shy in social circumstances.  He was widely regarded as blessed with a sharp and even brilliant legal mind, but often put his basic legal views in simple terms, utterly lacking in pedantry—e.g., the purpose of the Constitution is to “keep the government off the backs of people.” Throughout his career, Douglas represented himself as an advocate for the disadvantaged and beleaguered members of society.  But according to this biography and other sources, he often treated subordinates (e.g. law clerks and clerical staff) miserably.  Douglas was fiercely ambitious and apparently was bitterly disappointed that he didn’t have an opportunity to become president.  But Douglas was also uncompromising in his devotion to recreational pursuits in a natural environment, and he engaged in various activities bound to subvert his ambitions. Douglas was extraordinarily productive, with a prodigious appetite for work.  But he is also described as a lifelong hypochondriac, plagued through much of life by various health problems.  According to this biography, Douglas was restless on the U. S. Supreme Court virtually from the outset, and talked about giving up his seat early on.  Following his devastating stroke in December, 1994, however, Douglas vigorously resisted efforts to persuade him to resign, despite his obvious inability to function as a fully participating member of the Court.

 

By any ordinary criteria, William O. Douglas enjoyed phenomenal success during his lifetime, and led an extraordinarily rich and interesting life. He was clearly capable of enjoying many of his experiences, whether it was playing poker with FDR, climbing yet another mountain, or exploring some remote country.  Yet it seems he was a fundamentally unhappy person, embittered by what he perceived as unfair circumstances that denied him the presidency, and later in life, virtually paranoid about enemies on all sides.  In certain respects Douglas reminds one of the most famous associate justices of them all, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  Although Holmes came from quite different circumstances than Douglas, and had a rather different value system, he was also driven by a fierce ambition, was somewhat self-glorifying, a prodigious worker, and a crafter of apt legal phrases.  Holmes had many social contacts and correspondents but was ultimately a somewhat cold and aloof person, and in some respects embittered as well.  Both Douglas and Holmes seem to have felt at certain stages of their lives that they were not sufficiently appreciated.

 

WILD BILL moves back and forth between Douglas’s personal life and accounts of important legal decisions in which he participated.  It is not the place to look, however, for a detailed account of these decisions, or Douglas’s role in them.  But even here the contradictory aspects of Douglas’s character are quite evident.  On the one hand, especially in his early years on the Court, he participated in some significant Court opinions designed to protect his political viability for the presidency.  For instance, he was part of the majority in the controversial KOREMATSU case, upholding the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.  But Douglas also took courageous and independent stands in many cases involving privacy rights and human liberties.  And Douglas took the lead in trying to persuade the Court to hear cases challenging the legality of the American military involvement in Vietnam.  Douglas ultimately was a disappointment to many liberal legal scholars.  They believe that he could have provided real leadership in key cases where he produced instead hastily drafted opinions.  Douglas seems to have lacked the temperament to devote himself wholeheartedly to the work of the Court.  Nevertheless, he was clearly an inspiration to many, and articulated in clear language some influential views.  He was quite uncompromising in his defense of fundamental privacy rights, individual liberties, and the need to protect the natural environment.

 

This well-written and richly documented book can be read with pleasure and interest simply in terms of the fascinating personality of William O. Douglas.  But it also has much to offer students of law and politics, and sociolegal phenomena.  As a student at Columbia Law School, Douglas was influenced by the views of Professor Underhill Moore, and accordingly was an early adherent of legal realism.  Moore was among the pioneering law professors undertaking the application of empirical research to the understanding of legal issues.  If Douglas had become Dean of the Yale Law School instead of an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, he might well have played an important role in fostering more support for an emerging Law & Society Movement. As the third SEC Commissioner – following Joseph P. Kennedy and James Landis – Douglas initiated a forceful attack on disreputable Wall Street practices, many of which have once again been in the news.  The political challenges involved in this key regulatory agency’s pursuit of Wall Street are brought out well here. Altogether, Douglas was a participant in many extraordinary historical dramas, stretching over much of the twentieth century, ranging from FDR’s court-packing plan to the controversial involvement of the Supreme Court in the abortion issue.  And this book surely provides the most comprehensive account to date of the complex political drama, associated with Douglas’ ambition for the presidency and stretching over a period of more than two decades.

 

I am among the many who have regarded William O. Douglas as a generally inspirational figure in American legal history.  I met Douglas and had a chance to speak with him when he gave a speech at the college where I was then teaching, in October, 1973.  I have read his autobiographical accounts, as well as some of the books and articles about him.  I show the 1972 interview of Douglas, by Eric Sevareid, to my Law & Society classes, in the context of understanding better one of the justices whose dissent in WYANDOTTE CHEMICAL CORP., we brief.  With all due appreciation for Douglas’s failings as a human being, and his failure to fully realize his potential as a great justice, one can still admire his many contributions, his occasional courage, and his uncompromising articulation of core American values.

 

REFERENCES:

Douglas, William O. 1950.  OF MEN AND MOUNTAINS.  New York: Harper & Row.

 

Douglas, William O.  1974.  GO EAST, YOUNG MAN.  New York: Random House.

 

Goffman, Erving.  1959. THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

 

Murphy, Bruce Allen.  1982.  THE BRANDEIS/FRANKFURTER CONNECTION: THE SECRET POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF TWO SUPREME COURT JUSTICES.  New York:  Oxford University Press.

 

Murphy, Bruce Allen.  1988.  FORTAS:  THE RISE AND RUIN OF A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.  New York:  William Morrow.

 

Simon, James.  1980.  INDEPENDENT JOURNEY:  THE LIFE OF WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS.  New York:  Harper & Row.

 

CASE REFERENCES:

KOREMATSU v. U.S., 323 US 214 (1944).

 

OHIO v. WYANDOTTE CHEMICAL CORP., 401 US 493 (1971).

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Copyright 2003 by the author, David O. Friedrichs.