When a SCOTUS justice was a hero

[Jim Warren]

My 15 year old son brought this book from the library, published in 1958 by William O. Douglas; THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE.
Boy it was nice as a kid to have a guy like this as a justice. He was a hero of mine back then. He was also a real conservationist and outdoors lover and I remember fondly of seeing photos of the guy in felt crusher hat and pack basket hiking into back country areas on holiday.

Also, doesn't the phrase "arbitrary power" in the sentence "They flourish where injustice, discrimination, ignorance, superstition, intolerance and arbitrary power exist." sum up the present administration perfectly?

The is from the forward:

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This is the time for us to become the champions of the virtues that have given the West great civilizations. These virtues are reflected in our attitudes and ways of thought, not in our standard of living. They are found in the ideas of justice, liberty and equality that are written into the American Constitution. They concern the rights of the people against the state. These rights include the right to speak and write as one chooses, the right to follow the dictates on one's conscience, the right to worship as one desires. They include the right to be left alone in a myriad of ways, including the right to defy the government at times and tell it not to intermeddle. These rights of the people also include the right to manage the affairs of the nation-civil and military-and to be free of military domination or direction.

These are the rights that distinguish us from totalitarian regimes. The real enemies of freedom are not confined to any nation or any country, they are everywhere. They flourish where injustice, discrimination, ignorance, superstition, intolerance and arbitrary power exist. We cannot afford to rail and inveigh against them abroad, unless we are alert to guard against them at home. Yet, as we have denounced the loss of liberty abroad we have witnessed its decline here as well. WE have, indeed, been retreating from our democratic ideals at home. We compromise them for security reasons.

It is time to put an end to the retreat. It is time we made the virtues truly positive influences in our policies. We have a moral obligation in our ideals of justice, liberty and equality that is indestructible. If we live by this we rejuvenate America. If we make this our offensive we quicken the hearts of men the world around.

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[Stargleamer]

1. Evidently these rights didn't apply to Japanese-Americans

Especially the right to be left alone. See Douglas's concurrences in the Japanese-American internment cases of the early 1940's.

[Peregrine]

2. Douglas is one of my heroes

even when I was much younger. But his position on the internment cases are a very dark spot on his record.

[Jim Warren]

3. Yes, but...........

The earliest case on affirmative action to reach the Supreme Court, DeFunis v. Odegaard, went unresolved because of mootness problems but mentioned Asian Americans by name. In a separate opinion, Justice William O. Douglas -- an iconoclastic liberal who had voted with the majority in the Japanese American internment case of Korematsu v. United States and defended his decision in a footnote in DeFunis -- argued that "there is no Western state which can claim that it has always treated Japanese and Chinese in a fair and even-handed manner."

[Art_from_Ark]

4. Justice Douglas never heard of the Netherlands?

It was precisely because the Dutch had treated the Japanese "in a fair and even-handed manner" that they, and they alone, were given trading privileges in Japan at a time when all other Western countries were barred from the country.

[Stargleamer]

5. Sounds like Douglas was trying to rationalize

and defend his unjustifiable concurrences in that footnote. It doesn't require much legal astuteness to realize that if someone else is treating others unjustly, that you have no grounds to treat them unfairly too. Every American learns the phrase, "and Liberty and Justice for all." Douglas could have at least dissented in Korematsu, and joined the Irish-American (Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!) Frank Murphy's dissenting opinion.

[struggle4progress]

6. Wilderness Bill of Rights ...

was a good read too.