William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898January 19, 1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 to 1975. Douglas was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views and is often cited as the most liberal justice in the U.S. Supreme Court’s history. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40, becoming one of the youngest justices appointed to the court. He is the longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court justice in history, having served for 36 years and 209 days.

After an itinerant childhood, Douglas attended Whitman College on a scholarship. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1925 and joined the Yale Law School faculty. After serving as the third chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Douglas was successfully nominated to the Supreme Court in 1939, succeeding Justice Louis Brandeis. He was among those seriously considered for the 1944 Democratic vice presidential nomination and was subject to an unsuccessful draft movement prior to the 1948 U.S. presidential election. Douglas served on the Court until his retirement in 1975 and was succeeded by John Paul Stevens. Douglas holds a number of records as a Supreme Court justice, including the most opinions.

One of Douglas's most notable opinions was Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which established the constitutional right to privacy and was foundational to later cases such as Eisenstadt v. Baird, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges. His other notable opinions included Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942), United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948), Terminiello v. City of Chicago (1949), Brady v. Maryland (1963), and Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966). Douglas joined the unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in American public schools. He wrote notable concurring or dissenting opinions in Dennis v. United States (1951), United States v. O’Brien (1968), Terry v. Ohio (1968), and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). He was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War and an ardent advocate of environmentalism.

Early life and education

Douglas was born in 1898 in Maine Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, to William Douglas and Julia Bickford Fisk. Douglas's father was a Scottish itinerant Presbyterian minister from Pictou County, Nova Scotia. The family first moved to California and then to Cleveland, Washington. Douglas said he suffered from an illness at age two that he described as polio, although a biographer reveals that it was intestinal colic. His mother attributed his recovery to a miracle, telling Douglas that one day he would be President of the United States.

His father died in Portland, Oregon in 1904, when Douglas was six years old. Douglas later claimed his mother had been left destitute.

At Whitman, Douglas became a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He worked at various jobs while attending school, including 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 pursue a legal career. He once said of his early interest in the law:

Douglas was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, participated on the debate team, and was elected as student body president in his final year. After graduating in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and economics, he taught English and Latin at his old high school 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." That fall, he joined the Student Army Training Corps at Whitman as a private. He served from October to December, and was honorably discharged because the Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended the war and the army's requirements for more soldiers and officers. Six months later, Douglas's funds were running out. The appointments office at the law school told him that a New York firm wanted a student to help prepare a correspondence course in law. Douglas earned $600 for his work, enabling him to stay in school. Hired for similar projects, he saved $1,000 by semester's end.

Yale Law School

Douglas quit Cravath after four months. After one year, he moved back to Yakima but soon regretted the move and never practiced law in Washington. After a period of unemployment and another months-long stint at Cravath, he started teaching at Columbia Law School. In 1928, he joined the faculty of Yale Law School, where he became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy law. He 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. Teaching at Yale, he and his fellow professor Thurman Arnold were riding the New Haven Railroad and were inspired to set the sign Passengers will please refrain... to Antonín Dvořák's Humoresque #7. Robert Maynard Hutchins described Douglas as "the most outstanding law professor in the nation." When Hutchins became president of the University of Chicago, Douglas accepted an offer to move there, but he changed his mind after he was made a Sterling Professor at Yale. By 1937, he had become an adviser and friend to the President and the chairman. That same year, Roosevelt promoted him to Chairman of the SEC, replacing James M. Landis. He also became friends with a group of young New Dealers, including Tommy "The Cork" Corcoran and Abraham Fortas. He was also close, both socially and in thinking to the Progressives of the era, such as Philip and Robert La Follette Jr. That social/political group befriended Lyndon Johnson, a freshman representative from the 10th District of Texas. In his 1982 book The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, Robert Caro wrote that in 1937, Douglas had helped to persuade Roosevelt to authorize the Marshall Ford Dam, a controversial project whose approval enabled Johnson to consolidate his power as a representative.

center|thumb|294x294px|Douglas in 1937, as SEC Chairman

Supreme Court

thumb|Douglas's Supreme Court nomination

thumb|right|upright|Justice William O. Douglas

In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the Court, and on March 20 Roosevelt nominated Douglas as his replacement.