Notable Quotable: William O. Douglas On Justice

One of the youngest justices appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court was William O. Douglas who served from 1939 to 1975. As the longest-serving Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history, Douglas also holds the distinction of having written the most opinions among all other justices.

From the bench, Douglas witnessed the erosion of our rights and feared they'd continue to slip away if nothing was done. So, in 1958, he published The Right of the People, a heartfelt call to action to bring leaders and citizens back to the virtues this nation had long embraced.

Douglas, who was praised by Time Magazine as "the most committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court," would not recognize the nation we've become. He would wonder instead what turned today’s majority sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court against our nation’s values.

He would scorn the blatant undermining of democracy: the open-faced collusion between the executive and judicial branches, the blatant breaches of judicial ethics, the normalizing of dirty money in politics, the heretical abuses of power at the highest levels of government, the feebleness of our legislative bodies, and the sanctioned corruption that's become part and parcel to our broken political system.

As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, our constitution lies on its deathbed, forcefully and deliberately mangled by a long streak of majority opinions—each bent on serving a cabal of moneyed interests determined to pave the way to authoritarian rule.

As those interests celebrate their victories and proceed unabated, genuine democracy is forced to recoil from the political process, allowing dark money, power elites, and corruption to prevail.

Below, is William O. Douglas’ notable foreword to "The Right of the People."

"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 once chooses, the right to follow the dictates one's conscience, the right to worship as one desires. They include the right to be let alone in a myriad of ways, including the right to defy 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 be free of military domination or direction.

"These are the rights that distinguish us from all 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 inveigh against them abroad, unless we are alert to guard against them at home. Yet in recent years as we have denounced the loss of liberty abroad we have witnessed its decline here. We have, indeed, been retreating from our democratic ideals at home. We have compromised them for security reasons.

“It is time to put an end to the retreat. It is time we made these virtues truly positive influences in our policies. We have a moral authority in our ideals of justice, liberty, and equality that is indestructible. If we live by those virtues, we will rejuvenate America. If we make them our offensive at home and abroad, we will quicken the hearts of men the world around. The contest is on for the uncommitted people for the earth. These ideals express the one true advantage we have over communism in that contest.”