Autobiography and Opinion: The Romantic Jurisprudence of Justice William O. Douglas
38 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2011 Last revised: 14 Mar 2012
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: Suggested Citation