Last updated: June 9, 2022
Person
Justice William O. Douglas
Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress
Quick Facts
Significance:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Place of Birth:
Maine, Minnesota
Date of Birth:
October 16, 1898
Place of Death:
Bethesda, Maryland
Date of Death:
January 19, 1980
"Those who oppose wilderness values today may have sons and daughters who will honor wilderness values tomorrow. Our responsibility as life tenants is to make certain that there are wilderness values to honor after we have gone.”
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
William Douglas was born in 1898 in Maine Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, the son of William Douglas, an itinerant Scottish Presbyterian minister from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and his wife, Julia Bickford Fisk. His family moved to California, and then to Washington State.
His father died in Portland, Oregon, in 1904, when Douglas was six years old. After moving the family from town to town in the West, his mother, with three young children, settled in Yakima, Washington. He was the valedictorian at Yakima High School and did well enough in school to earn a full academic scholarship to attend Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.
In the summer of 1918, Douglas took part in a U.S. Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps training encampment at the Presidio of San Francisco. That fall, he joined the Student Army Training Corps at Whitman as a private. He was honorably discharged because the Armistice ended the war and the army's requirement for more soldiers and officers.
He traveled to New York taking a job tending sheep on a Chicago-bound train, in return for free passage, with hopes to attend the Columbia Law School. Douglas graduated second in his class at Columbia in 1925.
He later joined the faculty of Yale Law School, where he became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy law.
In 1934, Douglas left Yale after President Franklin Roosevelt nominated him to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the United States Supreme Court, and Roosevelt nominated Douglas as his replacement on March 20. Douglas was Brandeis's personal choice as a successor. Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939.
Douglas became known for his interest in and advocacy for environmentalism. In his dissenting opinion in the landmark environmental law case Sierra Club v. Morton (1972), Douglas argued that "inanimate objects" should have standing to sue in court:
Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole—a creature of ecclesiastical law—is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases ... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes—fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.
Justice Douglas also played notable roles in conserving and promoting several locations that became units of the National Park System.
C& O Canal
In the 1950s, proposals were made to create a parkway along the path of the C&O Canal, which ran on the Maryland bank parallel to the Potomac River. The Washington Post editorial page supported the action. However, Douglas, who frequently hiked on the Canal towpath, opposed the plan and challenged reporters to hike the 185-mile length of the Canal with him. After the hike, the Post changed its stance and advocated preservation of the Canal in its historic state. Douglas is widely credited with saving the Canal and with its eventual designation as a National Historical Park.
Buffalo National River
Douglas was an outspoken defender of the Buffalo River in the Ozarks of norther Arkansas, and he fought to preserve it as a unit of the national park system.
With plans underway to construct two hydroelectric dams on the Buffalo, the fate of the river and its surrounding communities was put on a national pedestal in the 1960s. Proponents of the dams argued for economic growth, flood control, power generation, and tourism to the local area. Many outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists fought to preserve the scenic, recreational, and scientific values of one of the few remaining free-flowing rivers in the lower 48 states through a proposal to add the Buffalo to the national park system.
Justice William O. Douglas became invested in the preservation of the Buffalo River when, in 1962, Dr. Neil Compton of The Ozark Society invited him on a multi-day canoe trip down the Buffalo. Nicknamed "Wild Bill," Justice Douglas was an avid outdoorsman and an advocate for the environmental movement, so he had been identified by members of The Ozark Society as a key national leader to win over for their cause.
On March 1, 1972, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Compton, The Ozark Society, and the many stakeholders they had reached in their campaign to "Save the Buffalo River," President Richard Nixon and the United States Congress established Buffalo National River, the first unit of its kind within the national park system.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
In far West Texas, the Guadalupe Mountains had first been discussed as a potential park as early as 1924. By the early 1960s the process was speeding up due to local landowner support, but the Guadalupes remained poorly known outside of the region. In December 1964 Justice Douglas visited the Guadalupe Mountains, traveling with Noel Kincaid and other park boosters. His visit further confirmed that the mountains should be open to all Americans. Greatly helping to raise the profile of the proposed park, the Guadalupe Mountains were featured in two chapters of his 1967 book Farewell To Texas, writing that “Texas has no more important shrine than the towering Guadalupes.”
Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area
In 1967, on a hike to save Sunfish Pond on the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey, Douglas was accompanied by more than a thousand people. He said: "It's a vital element in the need to save some of our wilderness from the encroachment of civilization." The Delaware Water Gap's Douglas Trail is named in his honor.