Today in Supreme Court History: October 16, 1898

10/16/1898: Justice William O. Douglas's birthday.

Justice William O. Douglas

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O/T

GOP Official for Kamala Predicts ‘Silent Majority’ Will Win

More than 100 Republican officials who support Kamala Harris for president plan to join the vice president in Pennsylvania on Wednesday for a stunning public rebuke of Donald Trump, their own party’s presidential candidate.

More than 100 Republican officials who support Kamala Harris for president plan to join the vice president in Pennsylvania on Wednesday for a stunning public rebuke of Donald Trump, their own party’s presidential candidate.

“He just cannot be in the Oval Office again,” former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) told the Daily Beast Tuesday night during her drive up to the Keystone State for the event. And she predicted: Harris will prevail.

“[Vladimir] Putin is the one person Trump never criticizes,” Comstock said. “He will attack every man, woman and child in the Republican Party but he won’t attack Putin.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-official-for-kamala-predicts-silent-majority-will-win/ar-AA1smbYq?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=df37bfb8af864f3c84b84b765e2e0bae&ei=12

I'm beginning to wonder who exactly are the RINOs; the people like Comstock or the MAGAronis.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Justice William O. Douglas gets a lot of ridicule, some earned, but still had an impressive career as teacher, regulator, judge, environmentalist, and writer. His opinion style could be lazy but he had moments of greatness.

His fourth wife (who he married in his late 60s while she was in her twenties) is still alive. She became a lawyer and later remarried. Cathy Douglas Stone sometimes goes to Supreme Court events.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/12/09/cathy-douglas-the-woman-beside-the-man/cec27266-7c93-4c24-8f00-e29029607c83/

[Dan Schiavetta]

Check out the last scene of "Rear Window" (1954).

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"if you are watching the Hitchcock movie Rear Window, and you see Grace Kelly reading a book, it’s actually a Douglas book called In the High Himalayas"

https://judicialstudies.duke.edu/2023/01/mckeown-on-the-environmental-legacy-of-william-o-douglas/

Judge McKeown's book on his environmental activism was interesting and suggests he skated ethical lines.

And, yes, he was often an asshole, including to his family.

[Olney]

William O. Douglas sexually assaulted countless women, even groping judges' wives in front of their husbands at judicial conferences, as the late Lawrence T. Lydick, a federal judge in California, recounted. At the following link is a retired lawyer's description of some of the misbehavior of Justice Douglas, which was legendary: https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/09/30/liberal-senators-got-away-with-sexual-assault/

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Two quick movie reviews in honor of the upcoming holiday.

I watched Poltergeist recently. I’m not sure if I saw it before. Very good film. Fans of Picket Fences will recognize the exorcist. No! The house is NOT clean!

JoBeth Williams, as the mother, is excellent. She runs the gamut from lighthearted (smoking marijuana with her husband), amused by the spirits, then distraught when her daughter is taken, and finally a tough momma bear.

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is the sequel to one of Jamie Lee Curtis’ less well-known horror films. It is not a direct sequel or involving Curtis. The film is enjoyably weird.

A 1950s bitchy prom queen dies. She comes back as an evil spirit to possess a goody-toe shoes 1980s high school student. Fans of one of the Anne of Green Gables telefilms will see one of the actresses in a somewhat different form.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Charlotte Harbor & N. Ry. Co. v. Welles, 260 U.S. 8 (decided October 16, 1922): Florida Legislature can ratify county’s ultra vires creation of new bridge district which overlapped existing district (the effect of which was to add a toll to an existing bridge)

Bitter v. United States, 389 U.S. 15 (decided October 16, 1967): Mail fraud defendant, who had been on time at every appearance, was 37 minutes late in returning from a recess. So the judge stuck him in a jail 40 miles away for the rest of the trial, denying repeated requests from counsel for release. Trial resulted in a conviction, which the Court overturns because of violation of right to counsel.

Coleman v. Alabama, 389 U.S. 22 (decided October 16, 1967): fact that no black had ever served on a grand jury (and few on petit juries) was prima facie case of violation of Equal Protection which State failed to rebut (conviction of John “Big Time” Coleman was for murder of a white man, John D. “Screwdriver” Johnson; so Coleman’s motion for a new trial was granted; no word on what happened on retrial) (every man in Alabama had a nickname in those days)

[Olney]

William O. Douglas committed sexual assault on an industrial scale, as older lawyers like Scott Greenfield & Jerome Woehrle have pointed out.

As Mr. Woehrle observed:

"Douglas was 'a compulsive sexual harasser, who repeatedly assaulted women, as any number of court employees attested. … Justice Douglas would show up to judicial conferences and grope even the wives of federal judges, triggering fistfights with men whose wives he sexually assaulted.' As Richard Posner, former Chief Judge of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, has observed: 'Apart from being a flagrant liar, Douglas was a compulsive womanizer, a heavy drinker, a terrible husband to each of his four wives, a terrible father to his two children, and a bored, distracted, uncollegial, irresponsible, and at times unethical Supreme Court justice.'"

As Scott Greenfield observed (at https://blog.simplejustice.us/2018/10/27/law-without-douglas/):

"He propositioned the wives of law clerks, groped unsuspecting female visitors to the court, and one occasion hid a wife-to-be in his office closet to prevent her from being discovered by a current spouse....As Michael Medved and Jerome Woehrle have noted, Justice Douglas apparently engaged in acts that today would be considered textbook examples of sexual harassment."

[markm23]

It was a different era. Not that such behavior was acceptable, but it wasn't cause for legal action, nor generally for firing unless the predator picked the wrong woman. A gentleman seeing such behavior did not call the police, and certainly not Personnel (as HR was called before companies became hypocritical as well as mistreating employees). Probably, he _punched_ the guy. And unless the guy had extraordinary legal protection, he didn't complain about that - after the predator's behavior was exposed in open court, a jury would find that punch was justified.

Unfortunately, some jobs come with extraordinary legal protection...