Books : Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas

Rating: - Incomplete portrait of a fascinating man
This book will probably stand as the definitive examination of William O. Douglas the man. Having undertaken over a decade of research, Murphy has produced an exhaustive (though not exhausting) account of Douglas' personal life, from his boyhood in eastern Washington through his early years as a lawyer, law school professor, and New Deal administrator, to his years on the Court. While the basic details have been known for nearly a quarter century, thanks to James Simon's earlier biography of the justice, Murphy provides many new details gleaned from his research in the Douglas papers (which were closed when Simon wrote his book) and his extensive interviews with people who knew the justice offer several illustrative anecdotes. The result is an important corrective to the idealized image Douglas constructed of himself in his many autobiographical accounts, recounting his womanizing, his politicking, and his terrible treatment of his staff with considerable thoroughness. Murphy's descriptions of Douglas's failed campaigns to become the Democratic nominee for president are particularly fascinating, and alone justify the price of the book.

In his effort to debunk the Douglas myths, though, the author adopts an excessively negative interpretation of the facts. Murphy claims, for example, that contrary to Douglas's assertions he did not suffer polio as a child, yet without definitive medical evidence to the contrary, such a topic can only remain an open question at best. Murphy's charge that Douglas unjustifiably inflated his time in an officer's training unit in college into army service further demonstrates Murphy's assumption of the worst from Douglas and was subsequently refuted by other scholars, who argued that Douglas' interpretation of his service was a plausible one. Such matters call Murphy's overall judgment of the justice into question, as do the open questions that his book fails to address. If Douglas was such a jerk to his secretaries and his clerks, why did they continue to work for him? What was it about Douglas that led friends to continue to support him both personally and financially? Reading this book doesn't answer these questions, nor does it reveal (as a reviewer elsewhere has pointed out) that some of his clerks became and remained his friends - gaps which mar further Murphy's presentation of Douglas' personal life.

The major problem with the book, however, lies in Murphy's episodic and superficial examination of Douglas' jurisprudence. Murphy's intriguing argument is that Douglas' initial opinions were written with an eye towards positioning the justice for a run for the presidency, yet he bases this contention on a selective examination of only a few decisions. Moreover, he offers no new philosophy behind Douglas' decisions once his hopes for the White House disappeared after the 1960 election, nor does he show the extent to which his jurisprudence - self interested or otherwise - played a role in shaping constitutional law. Many significant cases from his lengthy tenure on the Court are either barely referenced or even go completely unmentioned. Such flaws are glaring considering that it is Douglas' tenure on the Supreme Court which makes him historically significant to begin with, and ultimately diminish the contribution this book makes to the historiography of the Court.

While these criticisms should not discourage people interested in Douglas from reading this enjoyable book, they should be taken into account in their assessment of Murphy's overall view of his subject. Though "Wild Bill" offers much new insight into the life of this fascinating man, this biography is not the last word on the justice or his impact in American constitutional history.