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William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898 - January 19, 1980) was a United States Supreme Court Associate Justice. William O. Douglas, the longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, is best known as a leader of American legal realism and as an advocate for a broad interpretation of Constitutional rights.

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. After graduating he spent 1920 and 1921 teaching school. However, he tired of this and decided to pursue a legal career.

Douglas graduated from Columbia Law School in 1925. 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, and 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.

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. At 36 years, Douglas served on the Supreme Court bench longer than anyone else. On the bench, he became known as an advocate for liberal causes. With Justice Hugo Black, Douglas argued for a "literalist" interpretation of the First Amendment, writing an opinion in Termeniello v. City of Chicago (1949) overturning the conviction of a Catholic priest who allegedly caused a "breach of the peace" by making anti-Semetic comments during a raucous public speech. Douglas, joined by Black, also dissented from the Supreme Court's decision in Dennis v. United States (1952), convicting the leader of the U.S. Communist Party. Douglas wrote the lead opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, finding a "right to privacy" in the "penumbras" of the first ten amendments of the Bill of Rights. This went too far for Black, who dissented in Griswold.

During the 1960s, Douglas became a spokesman for liberal causes, writing a book published in 1969 entitled Points of Rebellion and controversially authoring a piece that appeared in Evergreen magazine, a "hippie" publication. Douglas also became a key supporter of the fledgling environmental movement, serving on the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club from 1960 to 1962 and writing prolifically on his love of the outdoors. He eloquently dissented from the Supreme Court's decision in Sierra Club v. Morton denying the environmental group standing to sue. For his liberal activities, House minority leader Gerald R. Ford launched a campaign to impeach Douglas in 1970; the attempt failed, but Douglas was the target of surveillance by the Nixon Administration.

Douglas suffered a debilitating stroke on December 31, 1974, while on vacation in the Bahamas. Severely disabled, Douglas nevertheless insisted on continuing to participate in Supreme Court affairs, despite his obvious incapacity. In one of the most wrenching episodes in Supreme Court history, seven of Douglas's fellow justices voted to put any argued case in which Douglas's vote might make a difference over to the next term. Douglas was finally convinced to retire on November 12, 1975.

Douglas married four times. 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. His first marriage produced two children, Mildred and William O. Douglas, Jr.

He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near the grave of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. The William O. Douglas Wilderness, which adjoins Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, is named in his honor.

Quotes

The privacy and dignity of our citizens 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 life.

• 1898 births
• 1980 deaths
• U.S. Supreme Court justices