When you spent the weekend working by way of your leftover turkey, the conservative authorized motion embraced a brand new ardour undertaking: digging up the stays of a long-dead Supreme Court docket justice.
These persons are very, very regular!
Justice William O. Douglas — nonetheless the longest-serving justice in Supreme Court docket historical past, although Clarence Thomas seems hellbent on breaking this file in 2028 — a towering determine within the Court docket’s civil liberties jurisprudence, has change into the most recent little bit of rage bait for the American right-wing regardless of having shuffled off this mortal coil throughout the Carter administration. And whereas the present Supreme Court docket majority continues to take a scorched earth method to his legacy, that’s apparently inadequate as we attain the “exhume our liberal enemies and defile their corpses” part of American conservatism.
The individuals who can not shut up about eradicating Accomplice statues as an affront to the lifeless are greater than able to play Weekend at Bernie’s with a liberal icon.
That’s Blake Neff, a producer for the late Charlie Kirk’s present, kicking off what can be the #DigUpDouglas hashtag if Twitter nonetheless used hashtags. Neff, as you may recall, previously served as Tucker Carlson’s head author earlier than resigning from Fox Information when it got here out that he’d been posting racist content material underneath a pseudonym that Fox Information executives labeled “abhorrent.” Clearly, a reliable arbiter of ethical character.
For the file, Douglas completely served within the Military throughout WWI. Douglas was inducted into the College students’ Military Coaching Corps at Whitman Faculty in 1918, acquired a federal service quantity, and was honorably discharged. His December 1918 discharge papers determine him as “William O. Douglas, Serial No. 5200182, Non-public S.A.T.C., Whitman Faculty, U.S. Military.”
However how did we get right here… now? Properly, the supply of the declare that Douglas lied about his service gained notoriety from Bruce Allen Murphy’s 2003 biography of Douglas, “Wild Invoice.” How did a biography from 22 years in the past find yourself on the conservative front-burner? This appears to be the fault of Professor and Volokh Conspiracy contributor Orin Kerr, who inadvertently resurfaced all of this earlier final week when he posted about a e-book overview written by Choose Richard Posner and printed in The New Republic.
Whereas Kerr by no means supposed to start out a marketing campaign to get Douglas exhumed, conservative social media is a big raccoon rummaging by way of America’s ideological trash, so the discourse inevitably devolved from right here. Managing to seize the quintessence of American conservatism in a single sentence, Professor Yuan Yi Zhu writes, “3 days from Orin Kerr posting that Posner overview for lolz to the producer of the Charlie Kirk Present calling for William O Douglas to be dug out of a cemetery.” Consider the conservative mental funnel like a twisted Easter. A libertarian educational says one thing on sooner or later, and on the third day proto-fascists demand to boost the lifeless from his tomb.
The trail from Kerr’s submit to Neff suggesting The Nice Dissenter ought to change into The Nice Disinterred, ran by way of different right-wing accounts leaping on Douglas’s grave. Nationwide Evaluate’s Dan McLaughlin racked up practically 300K impressions highlighting a passage from Posner’s e-book overview that drips with the form of vitriol McLaughlin usually reserves for increasing the designated hitter rule or girls believing in bodily autonomy.
Leaving for summer season trip earlier than the time period ended? Unforgivable! Until that trip is financed by events searching for favor from the Court docket… then it’s simply good enterprise sense! Choose Posner’s overview, learn holistically, isn’t totally destructive. That stated, Posner additionally took a detour to lambast Douglas for an opinion in a Sixties case about constructing dams on the Snake River the place the justice wrote that the dam undertaking “would hurt the salmon.” Quick ahead, and the collection of dams at difficulty actually did drive a number of salmon species to the brink of extinction. Hindsight is 20/20.
However Posner additionally describes Douglas as a person higher fitted to the presidency that the justice not-at-all-secretly longed for. Douglas’s expertise much better match the political area, which — Posner suggests — contributed to Douglas’s disdain for the judicial submit he ended up caught with. It’s a nuanced argument that spins out of Posner’s stance that judges aren’t geniuses, as a result of geniuses are incentivized to enter nearly any subject of human endeavor apart from the regulation. “Together with his intelligence, his toughness, his ambition, his management expertise, his huge acquaintanceship in official Washington, his mixture of Western homespun (a favourite trick was lighting a cigarette by placing a match on the seat of his pants) and Jap sophistication, and his charisma,” Posner writes, “Douglas may need been a positive Chilly Conflict president.”
Such a whole view doesn’t make it on social media, nonetheless. Whereas Posner explicitly famous that “One is usually a unhealthy individual and an excellent choose, simply as one is usually a good individual and a foul choose,” his article is getting chopped as much as give conservatives a possibility to denigrate the creator of Griswold as a result of he was a womanizing drunk.
This, by the best way, is an precise advert hominem assault. Conservatives whine about “advert hominem” each time somebody calls them knuckle-dragging bigots whereas dismantling their newest disinformation submit about immigrants inflicting all murders, however that’s simply colourful commentary. Advert hominem is about substituting aspersions in regards to the speaker for argument… like suggesting the Structure shouldn’t shield the correct to contraception as a result of William O. Douglas hid mistresses in his chambers closet. The correct-wing enthusiasm for Douglas bashing is all about feeding their skilled viewers of drooling MAGA hats an ethical villain that may stand in for the very concept that the Warren Court docket is inherently suspect.
Which, as a method, can be solely barely much less objectionable had been it not coming from folks whose ethical compass factors unerringly towards a thrice-married, porn-star-fornicating, adjudicated digital rapist. Say what you’ll about William O. Douglas, the person wouldn’t be sweating in regards to the Epstein information. And no less than he didn’t spend WWI complaining about bone spurs.
It additionally helps to recollect why Douglas rests eternally in each Arlington Nationwide Cemetery and rent-free in conservative minds. Within the Church of Everlasting Grievance Farming, Douglas occupies a seat of honor. Not simply because the creator of Griswold, however as an architect that introduced environmental plaintiffs into court docket, creating no finish of inconvenience for the donors who fund right-wing summer season camps for conservative authorized luminaries to attend. Douglas’s free speech opinions acknowledged the federal government as one thing to be restrained, not an authority to drive personal actors to guard bigots from being canceled. And he’s the securities regulation knowledgeable who’s spinning in that grave at 50 terahashes per second that we’ve a faux forex economic system pushed by a president with a meme coin. In fact they hate him.
Conservatives aren’t attempting to exhume Douglas as a result of they care about ethical uprightness. They’re relitigating William O. Douglas as a result of they want a tradition battle villain who can permit them to chop the nook on making a coherent argument why the Structure ought to permit governments to police your bedrooms. It’s the identical motive why individuals who level out that Hugo Black as soon as belonged to the Klan (he later resigned and publicly rejected the group), are the identical folks at present gleefully retweeting white supremacist accounts. The problem doesn’t matter, poisoning the nicely does. Black was racist, Douglas was a scoundrel… due to this fact all liberal jurisprudence is completely compromised.
Q.E.Dumbassery.
Again within the Nineteen Seventies, rumors of cognitive decline compelled Douglas from the bench. In 2025, Douglas’s detractors watch Trump’s day by day and public shows of dementia and demand a 3rd time period. And, in fact, there’s a non-zero likelihood that the nation’s chief govt ran throughout this whereas scrolling Twitter and is already sending backhoes to Douglas’s plot.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Legislation and co-host of Considering Like A Lawyer. Be happy to electronic mail any suggestions, questions, or feedback. Comply with him on Twitter or Bluesky if you happen to’re keen on regulation, politics, and a wholesome dose of school sports activities information. Joe additionally serves as a Managing Director at RPN Govt Search.
