About William O. Douglas: William Orville Douglas is the longest term in the history of the Supreme Court.
The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought ag...
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." [ , Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (Decem...
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." [ , 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952) (dissenting)]
These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a who...
We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government." [ , 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966) (dissenting)]
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.
We do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.
