While
you
spent
the
weekend
working
through
your
leftover
turkey,
the
conservative
legal
movement
embraced
a
new
passion
project:
digging
up
the
remains
of
a
long-dead
Supreme
Court
justice.
These
people
are
very,
very
normal!
Justice
William
O.
Douglas
—
still
the
longest-serving
justice
in
Supreme
Court
history,
though
Clarence
Thomas
appears
hellbent
on
breaking
this
record
in
2028
—
a
towering
figure
in
the
Court’s
civil
liberties
jurisprudence,
has
become
the
latest
bit
of
rage
bait
for
the
American
right-wing
despite
having
shuffled
off
this
mortal
coil
during
the
Carter
administration.
And
while
the
current
Supreme
Court
majority
continues
to
take
a
scorched
earth
approach
to
his
legacy,
that’s
apparently
insufficient
as
we
reach
the
“exhume
our
liberal
enemies
and
defile
their
corpses”
phase
of
American
conservatism.
The
people
who
cannot
shut
up
about
removing
Confederate
statues
as
an
affront
to
the
dead
are
more
than
ready
to
play
Weekend
at
Bernie’s
with
a
liberal
icon.
That’s
Blake
Neff,
a
producer
for
the
late
Charlie
Kirk’s
show,
kicking
off
what
would
be
the
#DigUpDouglas
hashtag
if
Twitter
still
used
hashtags.
Neff,
as
you
might
recall,
formerly
served
as
Tucker
Carlson’s
head
writer
before
resigning
from
Fox
News
when
it
came
out
that
he’d
been
posting
racist
content
under
a
pseudonym
that
Fox
News
executives
labeled
“abhorrent.”
Clearly,
a
trustworthy
arbiter
of
moral
character.
For
the
record,
Douglas
absolutely
served
in
the
Army
during
WWI.
Douglas
was
inducted
into
the
Students’
Army
Training
Corps
at
Whitman
College
in
1918,
received
a
federal
service
number,
and
was
honorably
discharged.
His
December
1918
discharge
papers
identify
him
as
“William
O.
Douglas,
Serial
No.
5200182,
Private
S.A.T.C.,
Whitman
College,
U.S.
Army.”
But
how
did
we
get
here…
now?
Well,
the
source
of
the
claim
that
Douglas
lied
about
his
service
gained
notoriety
from
Bruce
Allen
Murphy’s
2003
biography
of
Douglas,
“Wild
Bill.”
How
did
a
biography
from
22
years
ago
end
up
on
the
conservative
front-burner?
This
seems
to
be
the
fault
of
Professor
and
Volokh
Conspiracy
contributor
Orin
Kerr,
who
inadvertently
resurfaced
all
of
this
earlier
last
week
when
he
posted
about
a
book
review
written
by
Judge
Richard
Posner
and
published
in
The
New
Republic.
While
Kerr
never
intended
to
start
a
campaign
to
get
Douglas
exhumed,
conservative
social
media
is
a
giant
raccoon
rummaging
through
America’s
ideological
trash,
so
the
discourse
inevitably
devolved
from
here.
Managing
to
capture
the
quintessence
of
American
conservatism
in
one
sentence,
Professor
Yuan
Yi
Zhu
writes,
“3
days
from
Orin
Kerr
posting
that
Posner
review
for
lolz
to
the
producer
of
the
Charlie
Kirk
Show
calling
for
William
O
Douglas
to
be
dug
out
of
a
cemetery.”
Think
of
the
conservative
intellectual
funnel
like
a
twisted
Easter.
A
libertarian
academic
says
something
on
one
day,
and
on
the
third
day
proto-fascists
demand
to
raise
the
dead
from
his
tomb.
The
path
from
Kerr’s
post
to
Neff
suggesting
The
Great
Dissenter
should
become
The
Great
Disinterred,
ran
through
other
right-wing
accounts
jumping
on
Douglas’s
grave.
National
Review’s
Dan
McLaughlin
racked
up
nearly
300K
impressions
highlighting
a
passage
from
Posner’s
book
review
that
drips
with
the
sort
of
vitriol
McLaughlin
normally
reserves
for
expanding
the
designated
hitter
rule
or
women
believing
in
bodily
autonomy.
Leaving
for
summer
vacation
before
the
term
ended?
Unforgivable!
Unless
that
vacation
is
financed
by
parties
seeking
favor
from
the
Court…
then
it’s
just
good
business
sense!
Judge
Posner’s
review,
read
holistically,
isn’t
entirely
negative.
That
said,
Posner
also
took
a
detour
to
lambast
Douglas
for
an
opinion
in
a
1960s
case
about
building
dams
on
the
Snake
River
where
the
justice
wrote
that
the
dam
project
“would
harm
the
salmon.”
Fast
forward,
and
the
series
of
dams
at
issue
really
did
drive
multiple
salmon
species
to
the
brink
of
extinction.
Hindsight
is
20/20.
But
Posner
also
describes
Douglas
as
a
man
better
suited
for
the
presidency
that
the
justice
not-at-all-secretly
longed
for.
Douglas’s
skills
far
better
fit
the
political
arena,
which
—
Posner
suggests
—
contributed
to
Douglas’s
disdain
for
the
judicial
post
he
ended
up
stuck
with.
It’s
a
nuanced
argument
that
spins
out
of
Posner’s
stance
that
judges
aren’t
geniuses,
because
geniuses
are
incentivized
to
go
into
just
about
any
field
of
human
endeavor
other
than
the
law.
“With
his
intelligence,
his
toughness,
his
ambition,
his
leadership
skills,
his
wide
acquaintanceship
in
official
Washington,
his
combination
of
Western
homespun
(a
favorite
trick
was
lighting
a
cigarette
by
striking
a
match
on
the
seat
of
his
pants)
and
Eastern
sophistication,
and
his
charisma,”
Posner
writes,
“Douglas
might
have
been
a
fine
Cold
War
president.”
Such
a
complete
view
doesn’t
make
it
on
social
media,
however.
While
Posner
explicitly
noted
that
“One
can
be
a
bad
person
and
a
good
judge,
just
as
one
can
be
a
good
person
and
a
bad
judge,”
his
article
is
getting
chopped
up
to
give
conservatives
an
opportunity
to
denigrate
the
author
of
Griswold
because
he
was
a
womanizing
drunk.
This,
by
the
way,
is
an
actual
ad
hominem
attack.
Conservatives
whine
about
“ad
hominem”
whenever
someone
calls
them
knuckle-dragging
bigots
while
dismantling
their
latest
disinformation
post
about
immigrants
causing
all
murders,
but
that’s
just
colorful
commentary.
Ad
hominem
is
about
substituting
aspersions
about
the
speaker
for
argument…
like
suggesting
the
Constitution
shouldn’t
protect
the
right
to
contraception
because
William
O.
Douglas
hid
mistresses
in
his
chambers
closet.
The
right-wing
enthusiasm
for
Douglas
bashing
is
all
about
feeding
their
trained
audience
of
drooling
MAGA
hats
a
moral
villain
that
can
stand
in
for
the
very
idea
that
the
Warren
Court
is
inherently
suspect.
Which,
as
a
strategy,
would
be
only
slightly
less
objectionable
were
it
not
coming
from
people
whose
moral
compass
points
unerringly
toward
a
thrice-married,
porn-star-fornicating,
adjudicated
digital
rapist.
Say
what
you
will
about
William
O.
Douglas,
the
man
wouldn’t
be
sweating
about
the
Epstein
files.
And
at
least
he
didn’t
spend
WWI
complaining
about
bone
spurs.
It
also
helps
to
remember
why
Douglas
rests
eternally
in
both
Arlington
National
Cemetery
and
rent-free
in
conservative
minds.
In
the
Church
of
Eternal
Grievance
Farming,
Douglas
occupies
a
seat
of
honor.
Not
just
as
the
author
of
Griswold,
but
as
an
architect
that
brought
environmental
plaintiffs
into
court,
creating
no
end
of
inconvenience
for
the
donors
who
fund
right-wing
summer
camps
for
conservative
legal
luminaries
to
attend.
Douglas’s
free
speech
opinions
recognized
the
government
as
something
to
be
restrained,
not
an
authority
to
force
private
actors
to
protect
bigots
from
being
canceled.
And
he’s
the
securities
law
expert
who
is
spinning
in
that
grave
at
50
terahashes
per
second
that
we
have
a
fake
currency
economy
driven
by
a
president
with
a
meme
coin.
Of
course
they
hate
him.
Conservatives
aren’t
trying
to
exhume
Douglas
because
they
care
about
moral
uprightness.
They’re
relitigating
William
O.
Douglas
because
they
need
a
culture
war
villain
who
can
allow
them
to
cut
the
corner
on
making
a
coherent
argument
why
the
Constitution
should
allow
governments
to
police
your
bedrooms.
It’s
the
same
reason
why
people
who
point
out
that
Hugo
Black
once
belonged
to
the
Klan
(he
later
resigned
and
publicly
rejected
the
group),
are
the
same
people
currently
gleefully
retweeting
white
supremacist
accounts.
The
issue
doesn’t
matter,
poisoning
the
well
does.
Black
was
racist,
Douglas
was
a
scoundrel…
therefore
all
liberal
jurisprudence
is
permanently
compromised.
Q.E.Dumbassery.
Back
in
the
1970s,
rumors
of
cognitive
decline
forced
Douglas
from
the
bench.
In
2025,
Douglas’s
detractors
watch
Trump’s
daily
and
public
displays
of
dementia
and
demand
a
third
term.
And,
of
course,
there’s
a
non-zero
chance
that
the
nation’s
chief
executive
ran
across
this
while
scrolling
Twitter
and
is
already
sending
backhoes
to
Douglas’s
plot.
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law
and
co-host
of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
Feel
free
to email
any
tips,
questions,
or
comments.
Follow
him
on Twitter or
Bluesky
if
you’re
interested
in
law,
politics,
and
a
healthy
dose
of
college
sports
news.
Joe
also
serves
as
a
Managing
Director
at
RPN
Executive
Search.
Kathryn
