Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas stands out as a most remarkable person. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he grew up in tragic circumstances, contracting polio as a child and losing his father at the age of six. Yet with the support of his mother - who maintained strict standards for young William and his siblings - Douglas excelled academically. After working his way through Whitman College, Douglas traveled east to attend Columbia Law School. From there his rise was meteoric - partner at a prestigious Wall Street law firm, then a leading law-school professor before joining the Securities and Exchange Commission during the New Deal. Douglas's ascent in government was no less meteoric, from becoming head of the SEC at the age of 37 to his appointment to the Supreme Court three years later, where he subsequently became the longest-serving justice in the nation's history.Yet Douglas remains a puzzle. Though Douglas wrote three volumes of autobiography, he made considerable use of "writer's license" in exaggerating many of the details of his life. The challenge that James Simon faced as the justice's biographer was to sift the myth from the reality and discover the "real" Douglas, a task hampered by the fact that he wrote the book before the Douglas papers in the Library of Congress were opened to researchers. In spite of this, Simon does a good job of culling many of the facts of Douglas's life from the legends he constructed. His effort to use these facts to understand the man behind them, though, is less successful. All too often his subject remains inscrutably Sphinx-like, and while Simon's explanations of the justice's activities (most notably his extraordinary handling of the Rosenberg spy case) are plausible, they remain little more than viable theories with little way of proving them.This is especially apparent in Simon's analysis of Douglas' jurisprudence. During Douglas' extensive tenure on the Court he emerged as a staunch libertarian and one of the most liberal justices ever to occupy the bench. Yet he failed to articulate a coherent judicial philosophy in his opinions, which were often criticized for failing to marshal the legal details to support his arguments. Simon's attempts to systematize Douglas' opinions into a coherent philosophy are admirable and his analysis is interesting, but the effort primarily succeeds in underlining the challenges in assessing Douglas' legacy in American law.In spite of these difficulties, Simon has written a good, readable biography of Douglas. His research - which included interviews with Douglas, his family, his clerks, and others - is first-rate, and he assembles an interesting portrait that gives the reader a real sense of who Douglas was as a person. While his coverage of Douglas' work on the Court is somewhat episodic, his focus on Douglas's broader life brings into sharper focus one of the more important figures in twentieth century American history and helps us to understand better the legac

This book is trying to get the big picture, and William O. Douglas climbing mountains is one of its dramatic themes. The most interesting part of the book for me was how much trouble Justice Douglas could create for the rest of the U. S. Supreme Court and those who believe that law ought to conform to their ideal of an orderly administration of justice. In the middle of June, 1953, Justice Douglas issued a stay of execution for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, thinking, "The Rosenbergs' indictment, trial and sentence had been under the wrong law, the Espionage Act of 1917. ... And under the Atomic Energy Act, a judge could impose the death penalty only on the recommendation of the jury and only with a showing that the offense had been committed with intent to injure the United States." (p. 306). Then "Justice Douglas left Washington and headed west by car, thinking that his stay would remain in effect until the full Court could hear arguments during the fall term." (p. 307). Justice Robert Jackson "suggested that his stay was an attempt to play to his liberal constituency with a popular solo performance." (p. 299). Justice Jackson's law clerk, William H. Rehnquist had written a three-page memorandum in which the political context was considered:... the public opinion which has voiced itself in favor of the Rosenbergs is not even properly called `left-wing' in the sense that the respectable liberal group in this country is behind it. It is a tiny minority of lunatic fringers and erratic scientist-sentimentalists. (p. 303).Justice Jackson was willing to hear the Rosenberg case so "the Court would save itself embarrassment and put to rest any doubts about the fairness of the Rosenberg trial" (p. 303) when Douglas had threatened to issue a memorandum "agreeing with the Court of Appeals that some of the conduct on the United States Attorney was `wholly reprehensible'," (p. 302) but Douglas wasn't willing to act in the case until he found some reason to believe that the Rosenbergs might be able to win. On June 19, "When it was clear that a Court majority would not uphold the stay under any conditions, Justice Burton cast his vote with the majority, making the vote six to three." (p. 310). The Court's decision was, "The Atomic Energy Act did not repeal or limit the provisions of the Espionage Act. Accordingly, we vacate the stay entered by Mr. Justice Douglas on June 17, 1953." June 19 must have been a Friday, because "Out of respect for the Jewish Sabbath, the scheduled execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on the evening of June 19 was moved up from the original 11:00 p.m. time" so it was all over by 8:16 p.m. (p. 311). Justices Black, Frankfurter and Douglas wrote dissenting opinions which "made a shambles of the majority's easy conclusions." (p. 311). That should be pretty easy to do, for anyone who was born with a brain and isn't afraid to be considered one of the lunatic fringers.