Autobiography and Opinion: The Romantic Jurisprudence of Justice William O. Douglas

38 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2011 Last revised: 14 Mar 2012

See all articles by Laura Ray

Laura Ray

Widener University - Delaware Law School

Date Written: 1999

Abstract

William O. Douglas was the most prolific of Supreme Court autobiographers, producing three books about his life. The first, Of Men and Mountains, describes his solitary experiences in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest as the formative source of his adult identity. The second and more conventional volume that followed, Go East Young Man, translates this Wordsworthian account of his rapport with the natural world into a more conventional account of his move eastward and professional success as a member of the Yale law School faculty, early legal realist, and New Deal administrator. The Court Years, his final volume published posthumously, is the most conventional, a largely anecdotal account of his judicial career. Read together, these three autobiographies illuminate the sources of Douglas's controversial jurisprudence, which rejected the traditional reliance on text, doctrine, and reasoned analysis in favor of a Romantic methodology of intuitive enlightenment. For Douglas, his early experiences of solitude in the natural world provide the foundation for his jurisprudence of individual liberty and his rejection of conventional legal and social constraints.

Keywords: Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, judges, justices, autobiography, jurisprudence

JEL Classification: K1

Suggested Citation

Ray, Laura, Autobiography and Opinion: The Romantic Jurisprudence of Justice William O. Douglas (1999). University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Vol. 60, p. 707, 1999, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1967689

Laura Ray (Contact Author)

Widener University - Delaware Law School ( email )

4601 Concord Pike
Wilmington, DE 19803-0406
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
142
Abstract Views
1,116
Rank
368,861
PlumX Metrics