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Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was both the most accomplished and the most controversial justice ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court. He emerged from isolated Yakima, Washington, to be dubbed, by the age of thirty, “the most outstanding law professor in the nation”; at age thirty-eight, he was the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, cleaning up a corrupt Wall Street during the Great Depression; by the age of forty, he was the second youngest Supreme Court justice in American history, going on to serve longer—and to write more opinions and dissents—than any other justice.
In evolving from a pro-government advocate in the 1940s to an icon of liberalism in the 1960s, Douglas became a champion for the rights of privacy, free speech, and the environment. While doing so, “Wild Bill” lived up to his nickname by racking up more marriages, more divorces, and more impeachment attempts aimed against him than any other member of the Court. But it was what Douglas did not accomplish that haunted him: He never fulfilled his mother’s ambition for him to become president of the United States.
Douglas’s life was the stuff of novels, but with his eye on his public image and his potential electability to the White House, the truth was not good enough for him. Using what he called “literary license,” he wrote three memoirs in which the American public was led to believe that he had suffered from polio as an infant and was raised by an impoverished, widowed mother whose life savings were stolen by the family attorney. He further chronicled his time as a poverty-stricken student sleeping in a tent while attending Whitman College, serving
as a private in the army during World War I, and “riding the rods” like a hobo to attend Columbia Law School.
Relying on fifteen years of exhaustive research in eighty-six manuscript collections, revealing long-hidden documents, and interviews conducted with more than one hundred people, many sharing their recollections for the first time, Bruce Allen Murphy reveals the truth behind Douglas’s carefully constructed image. While William O. Douglas wrote fiction in the form of memoir, Murphy presents the truth with a narrative flair that reads like a novel.
In evolving from a pro-government advocate in the 1940s to an icon of liberalism in the 1960s, Douglas became a champion for the rights of privacy, free speech, and the environment. While doing so, “Wild Bill” lived up to his nickname by racking up more marriages, more divorces, and more impeachment attempts aimed against him than any other member of the Court. But it was what Douglas did not accomplish that haunted him: He never fulfilled his mother’s ambition for him to become president of the United States.
Douglas’s life was the stuff of novels, but with his eye on his public image and his potential electability to the White House, the truth was not good enough for him. Using what he called “literary license,” he wrote three memoirs in which the American public was led to believe that he had suffered from polio as an infant and was raised by an impoverished, widowed mother whose life savings were stolen by the family attorney. He further chronicled his time as a poverty-stricken student sleeping in a tent while attending Whitman College, serving
as a private in the army during World War I, and “riding the rods” like a hobo to attend Columbia Law School.
Relying on fifteen years of exhaustive research in eighty-six manuscript collections, revealing long-hidden documents, and interviews conducted with more than one hundred people, many sharing their recollections for the first time, Bruce Allen Murphy reveals the truth behind Douglas’s carefully constructed image. While William O. Douglas wrote fiction in the form of memoir, Murphy presents the truth with a narrative flair that reads like a novel.
736 pages, Hardcover
First published March 4, 2003
13 people are currently reading
240 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Allen Murphy
17 books2 followersBruce Allen Murphy graduated summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1973 and received his Ph.D. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1978. He taught Political Science and American History and Politics at Pennsylvania State University, and has been the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania since 1998.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 6, 2019
A finely crafted, exceptionally well-written biography and devastating rebuttal to Douglas' own, mostly fabricated, autobiography,
Go East, Young Man: The Early Years: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas
. Indeed, I don't think a biography has ever disillusioned me about a political hero as much as this one. As one of his staff members observed, "He may have been a great public servant but he wasn't a great man" (p. 425).
Former SEC Chair and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, was a liar, "whorer" (p. 270), serial sexual harasser (p. 288), serial adulterer, wife beater (p. 376), hypocrite (p. 421), draft dodger (p. 478), tyrannical boss (p. 414), inside trader (p. 257), and spendthrift and moocher. His 13 year old stepson described him simply as a "bastard" (p. 296). When informed that their negligent father was named "Father of the Year" in 1950, his own children howled with laughter (p. 287). When their mother died, the children didn't even bother to tell their father about her passing. How could anybody admire such a shithead?
My admiration stemmed from his rulings and political activism. He was the last New Deal liberal on the Supreme Court. He became a civil libertarian later in his Supreme Court career, although he didn't start off as one. Douglas voted to uphold the Korematsu ruling (1944), apparently to appease FDR, who put him on the bench. Indeed, this book and others firmly put to rest the naïve notion that the federal judiciary is above politics. The courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, are suffused in politics, and not just the partisan kind, but also the petty clashes of personalities on the Court itself. Rather than establish Constitutional law, at least some decisions are nothing more than acts of revenge by one justice against the real or imagined slights of other justices.
Still, on balance, I admire Douglas' public career. "Among the many things that [Douglas] wanted the Brethren to rule on," writes Murphy, "was the constitutionality of the Vietnam War, protect the poor, end racial discrimination, solidify the protection of privacy, and raise the public's consciousness of the environment" (p. 445). Indeed, one of Douglas' most lasting Constitutional legacies was the enshrinement of privacy as a fundamental right protected by the Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment, a doctrine that was almost as consequential as the desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The right to privacy is certain to be an ongoing issue in our cyber-wrought world.
Sometimes our gods have feet of clay. Douglas, for me, is such a god.
Former SEC Chair and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, was a liar, "whorer" (p. 270), serial sexual harasser (p. 288), serial adulterer, wife beater (p. 376), hypocrite (p. 421), draft dodger (p. 478), tyrannical boss (p. 414), inside trader (p. 257), and spendthrift and moocher. His 13 year old stepson described him simply as a "bastard" (p. 296). When informed that their negligent father was named "Father of the Year" in 1950, his own children howled with laughter (p. 287). When their mother died, the children didn't even bother to tell their father about her passing. How could anybody admire such a shithead?
My admiration stemmed from his rulings and political activism. He was the last New Deal liberal on the Supreme Court. He became a civil libertarian later in his Supreme Court career, although he didn't start off as one. Douglas voted to uphold the Korematsu ruling (1944), apparently to appease FDR, who put him on the bench. Indeed, this book and others firmly put to rest the naïve notion that the federal judiciary is above politics. The courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, are suffused in politics, and not just the partisan kind, but also the petty clashes of personalities on the Court itself. Rather than establish Constitutional law, at least some decisions are nothing more than acts of revenge by one justice against the real or imagined slights of other justices.
Still, on balance, I admire Douglas' public career. "Among the many things that [Douglas] wanted the Brethren to rule on," writes Murphy, "was the constitutionality of the Vietnam War, protect the poor, end racial discrimination, solidify the protection of privacy, and raise the public's consciousness of the environment" (p. 445). Indeed, one of Douglas' most lasting Constitutional legacies was the enshrinement of privacy as a fundamental right protected by the Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment, a doctrine that was almost as consequential as the desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The right to privacy is certain to be an ongoing issue in our cyber-wrought world.
Sometimes our gods have feet of clay. Douglas, for me, is such a god.
January 24, 2017
Excellent and very comprehensive book about U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who served on the Court from 1939 to 1975. He grew up in Yakima, WA., just about two hours away from where I live, so I had always been curious to learn more about him. I was first introduced to his irascible personality in the fascinating book "The Brethren" which discusses the court during the years of Chief Justice Warren Burger, from 1969 through the early 1980s.
Douglas was an avid New Dealer and (mostly) reliable liberal vote on the court throughout the decades in which he served. Although in his job he was always for the downtrodden people, he did not fare well in his personal relationships, both at home and at work. He was married four times, becoming not only the first Justice in the history of the Supreme Court to become divorced, but to become divorced three times. He was infamous for the way he treated his law clerks and secretaries, expecting them to work virtually seven days a week and to never make even the slightest error.
A longtime lover of nature, he spent nearly every summer when the Court was not in session at his cabin in Goose Prairie, WA., where he had no telephone and had to go 17 miles to use a phone booth when it was necessary to consult him on a court ruling. For years he wished he could become President of the United States, but would not actually run for office or make the necessary connections, instead thinking people would just hand the nomination to him without his having to show any interest--- a most unrealistic view. The book also debunked many of Douglas' own myths about his earlier years which had appeared in his memoirs, such as his World War I service, which actually was nonexistent. The book was fascinating and I certainly recommend it.
**#4 of 120 books pledged to read/review in 2017**
Douglas was an avid New Dealer and (mostly) reliable liberal vote on the court throughout the decades in which he served. Although in his job he was always for the downtrodden people, he did not fare well in his personal relationships, both at home and at work. He was married four times, becoming not only the first Justice in the history of the Supreme Court to become divorced, but to become divorced three times. He was infamous for the way he treated his law clerks and secretaries, expecting them to work virtually seven days a week and to never make even the slightest error.
A longtime lover of nature, he spent nearly every summer when the Court was not in session at his cabin in Goose Prairie, WA., where he had no telephone and had to go 17 miles to use a phone booth when it was necessary to consult him on a court ruling. For years he wished he could become President of the United States, but would not actually run for office or make the necessary connections, instead thinking people would just hand the nomination to him without his having to show any interest--- a most unrealistic view. The book also debunked many of Douglas' own myths about his earlier years which had appeared in his memoirs, such as his World War I service, which actually was nonexistent. The book was fascinating and I certainly recommend it.
**#4 of 120 books pledged to read/review in 2017**
December 2, 2022
An excellent biography on nearly every level, everyone should read WILD BILL. Conservatives probably would find it a waste of their time, but that is their loss. Anyone who paid attention in law school should know about Justice Douglas, but few tend to dig deeper. Not only would this book be useful for law students, it is useful for any person with any sort of political ambition, particularly if they style themselves as something of a radical liberal. It seems clear that no one else in the history of the Court could be defined by that term, though several others certainly come close (i.e. Brennan, Ginsburg, etc.). The man was ahead of his time. He was also a drunkard and a womanizer. He was also nearly President of the United States. He also nearly died in a horseback riding accident in his early 50's. He loved the outdoors and became an ardent environmentalist. He wrote like a demon possessed, with sometimes questionable legal acumen, and produced some of the most powerful prose issued by the Court in the 20th century. People may be forgetting about him (I certainly didn't know anything about him until studying Constitutional Law) and it is more important than ever that he be remembered.
They haven't done an episode of "The Dollop" on him yet, and they really, really should. Because he was a great man, an inimitable figure in our history, and hilarious, for sometimes the wrong reasons--and if that does not sum up a true American hero, then I do not know what does.
http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2013...
They haven't done an episode of "The Dollop" on him yet, and they really, really should. Because he was a great man, an inimitable figure in our history, and hilarious, for sometimes the wrong reasons--and if that does not sum up a true American hero, then I do not know what does.
http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2013...
February 26, 2008
I cannot criticize a book about the greatest Supreme Court Justice of all time. Any book about William O. Douglas is a good book (unless the book is critical of him).
William O. Douglas may not have been a saint. But he was a legal visionary, environmental activist, prolific writer and all around troublemaker. What's not to like?
If you want to learn about what a REAL Supreme Court Justice should be like, read this book. Douglas was a HEAVY WEIGHT. But I'll warn you now: after you read this you'll realize that NONE of the current members of the United States Supreme Court can hold a match to William O. Douglas. They're not anywhere near his league. And by comparison they are all LIGHT WEIGHTS.
William O. Douglas may not have been a saint. But he was a legal visionary, environmental activist, prolific writer and all around troublemaker. What's not to like?
If you want to learn about what a REAL Supreme Court Justice should be like, read this book. Douglas was a HEAVY WEIGHT. But I'll warn you now: after you read this you'll realize that NONE of the current members of the United States Supreme Court can hold a match to William O. Douglas. They're not anywhere near his league. And by comparison they are all LIGHT WEIGHTS.
August 3, 2010
Douglas set many records as US Supreme Court justice, the youngest ever to serve, the longest-serving justice, as well as the first justice to be divorced.A very complex,interesting person,he never achieved his greatest ambition,to be elected US President.He loved the outdoors, esp the Pacific NW and ruled pro-environmental on many issues over the course of his long career.
March 12, 2020
This life of Justice William O. Douglas is what Oliver Cromwell instructed for his biographers to be
portrayed warts and all. In the case of Douglas there were a lot of warts.
Douglas (1898-1980) was born to an itinerant preacher and his wife and when he was only 2 they
settled in the Pacific northwest country in Yakima, Washington. One of the things Douglas was known for was his love of the rugged country, environmentalists could always count on his support
in the Supreme Court. He had a serious horseback riding accident in 1950 which nearly put an end to
his career and to him.
Douglas put himself through Whitman College in Washington state and then Columbia Law School.
Not liking private practice he got a position at Yale Law School. 1933 and the New Deal eventually
brought him to Washington where he became the third chair of the Securities Exchange Commission.
In 1939 FDR appointed him to the Supreme Court to succeed Louis D. Brandeis. Until 1948 Douglas
was mentioned as in the running for vice president in 1944 and then in 1948 to replace Harry Truman. Of course he put a lot of that out himself on the Q.T.
His service on the court was brilliant if you happen to be on the left end of the political spectrum.
His best moments were in my opinion his attempt to save the life of Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 and
his opinion in Griswold vs. Connecticut establishing a right to privacy that led to a host of other
opinions on civil liberties.
He was married for times, a compulsive womanizer and completely estranged from his kids from
the first marriage. By all accounts a terrible husband and father. Douglas was also a terrible
person to work for as a couple generations of secretaries, law clerks, and others almost unanimously could attest.
You're not going to like William O. Douglas after you finish reading this book, but will be impressed
by the legal history he wrote and made.
portrayed warts and all. In the case of Douglas there were a lot of warts.
Douglas (1898-1980) was born to an itinerant preacher and his wife and when he was only 2 they
settled in the Pacific northwest country in Yakima, Washington. One of the things Douglas was known for was his love of the rugged country, environmentalists could always count on his support
in the Supreme Court. He had a serious horseback riding accident in 1950 which nearly put an end to
his career and to him.
Douglas put himself through Whitman College in Washington state and then Columbia Law School.
Not liking private practice he got a position at Yale Law School. 1933 and the New Deal eventually
brought him to Washington where he became the third chair of the Securities Exchange Commission.
In 1939 FDR appointed him to the Supreme Court to succeed Louis D. Brandeis. Until 1948 Douglas
was mentioned as in the running for vice president in 1944 and then in 1948 to replace Harry Truman. Of course he put a lot of that out himself on the Q.T.
His service on the court was brilliant if you happen to be on the left end of the political spectrum.
His best moments were in my opinion his attempt to save the life of Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 and
his opinion in Griswold vs. Connecticut establishing a right to privacy that led to a host of other
opinions on civil liberties.
He was married for times, a compulsive womanizer and completely estranged from his kids from
the first marriage. By all accounts a terrible husband and father. Douglas was also a terrible
person to work for as a couple generations of secretaries, law clerks, and others almost unanimously could attest.
You're not going to like William O. Douglas after you finish reading this book, but will be impressed
by the legal history he wrote and made.
January 16, 2024
A solid biography, yet one that still left me thinking a better, more engaging biography could have been crafted from the rather remarkable life of Justice Douglas. Great biographies require great subjects, and Douglas was all that: a fascinating, brilliant, maddening and controversial character. The author obviously invested a great amount of work over many years to give us an accurate portrait, but not a really compelling narrative. But required reading for anyone interested in 20th century legal history.
November 27, 2022
Excellent biography of Justice William O. Douglas. Complements, supplements, and corrects Douglas's two-volume autobiography. This book describes the real Douglas, a brilliant but deeply flawed man. The book is very well written. The chapters dealing with Douglas's retirement from the court and his life thereafter are very poignant.
August 1, 2023
Douglas was known for his departures from the truth--just what you would want to hear about a Supreme Court justice--so the author unwinds a lot of myth surrounding him. I found the stories of Douglas' personal struggles and flaws to be the most fascinating, but the details about Douglas' position on particular cases was arduous to read at times. The author could've done a better job explaining the context for Douglas' rapid ascendance from law school to Supreme Court justice; I just couldn't grasp how his seemingly minor accomplishments shot him to the top at such a young age. The author also seemed to gloss over the multiple attempts to impeach Douglas, which I believe should have received more attention. Despite its few shortcomings, this is an well-researched biography of the justice that gives insight into his professional and personal life.
December 15, 2023
Excellent summary of the life of a great American judge.
February 6, 2024
I was excited to learn about the life of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who I’d thought was an exciting figure: repeated almost-presidential candidate; holder of the record for most divorces, and most impeachment attempts, of anyone ever on the Court; author of Roe v. Wade and the only Justice to attempt to fight against the Vietnam War from the bench. But it turns out he was just another supposedly “great man” who treated his wives, children, and employees like shit, obsessed over slights and spent his whole life stewing over the few heights he didn’t achieve, and died miserable and alone. The three-sentence summary of his life is exciting, but the details are actually pretty boring.
The book is fine, I guess.
The book is fine, I guess.
November 26, 2012
Ultimately, as a constitutional law nerd, I really liked this book. It can sometimes get too deep into the legalese, but overall this book was an interesting read, but also a very long read. It has some great anecdotes, my favorite being when Douglas took a horse on a very difficult trail, insisting he was a much better rider than he actually was. The horse slipped off the edge of this mountain trail and crushed Douglas as the fell down. The horse came out with nary a scratch, but Douglas only just survived. He was just as resilient on the bench and remains, even after reading an in-depth review like this, my favorite Supreme Court justice.
September 25, 2015
I would like to give this book 3.5 stars. About halfway through the book, I concluded that the author did not like Justice Douglas, which seemed odd because it is an awfully long book. That's a lot of time for an author to spend with a subject he does not like. By the end of the book, though, I changed my mind. I think Murphy was just incredibly frustrated with Douglas and his trail of phony breadcrumbs, but he had a grudging respect for the man.
All in all, Murphy inserted his feelings into the book more than I wanted but the subject was fascinating. I was really disappointed, however, by the book's complete silence on the Furman cases.
All in all, Murphy inserted his feelings into the book more than I wanted but the subject was fascinating. I was really disappointed, however, by the book's complete silence on the Furman cases.
October 20, 2007
This book is incredibly long, but it's neither boring or slow-paced. William O. Douglas may have been a lawyer and Supreme Court Justice, but he was quite an interesting (and not really personally likable) character. This book flows along like a good, captivating story.
November 23, 2008
Interesting to learn about this liberal icon of the Court, but the author seems just as liberal and not want to criticize the Justice where it is due. Skip the first half and read about his time on the Court.
January 5, 2016
Fascinating look into the life of our longest serving Supreme Court justice. The book is well-written and gives us a glimpse into just how close Douglas came to being president (as FDR's VP in 1944).
April 8, 2008
Tommy Corcoran ruined Bill Douglas' life by representing his wife in their divorce, and taking him for everything he was worth. That's all I learned from this book.
October 30, 2009
Fascinating account of one of the great liberal justices including the film-worthy story of how he saved the C&O Canal from being paved over and turned into a highway.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews