title: CRISPR gene editing

text: CRISPR can be utilized to create human cellular models of disease. For instance, when applied to human pluripotent stem cells, CRISPR has been used to introduce targeted mutations in genes relevant to polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS). These CRISPR-modified pluripotent stem cells were subsequently grown into human kidney organoids that exhibited disease-specific phenotypes. Kidney organoids from stem cells with PKD mutations formed large, translucent cyst structures from kidney tubules. The cysts were capable of reaching macroscopic dimensions, up to one centimeter in diameter. Kidney organoids with mutations in a gene linked to FSGS developed junctional defects between podocytes, the filtering cells affected in that disease. This was traced to the inability of podocytes to form microvilli between adjacent cells. Importantly, these disease phenotypes were absent in control organoids of identical genetic background, but lacking the CRISPR modifications.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: A similar approach was taken to model long QT syndrome in cardiomyocytes derived from pluripotent stem cells. These CRISPR-generated cellular models, with isogenic controls, provide a new way to study human disease and test drugs.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: CRISPR-Cas technology has been proposed as a treatment for multiple human diseases, especially those with a genetic cause. Its ability to modify specific DNA sequences makes it a tool with potential to fix disease-causing mutations. Early research in animal models suggest that therapies based on CRISPR technology have potential to treat a wide range of diseases, including cancer, progeria, beta-thalassemia, sickle cell disease, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, Huntington's disease, transthyretin amyloidosis and heart disease. CRISPR has also been used to cure malaria in mosquitos, which could eliminate the vector and the disease in humans. CRISPR may also have applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, such as by creating human blood vessels that lack expression of MHC class II proteins, which often cause transplant rejection.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In addition, clinical trials to cure beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease in human patients using CRISPR-Cas9 technology have shown promising results.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: The CRISPR treatment for LCA10 (the most common variant of Leber Congenital Amaurosis which is the leading cause of inherited childhood blindness) modifies the patient's defective photoreceptor gene.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In March 2020, the first patient volunteer in this US-based study, sponsored by Editas Medicine, was given a low-dose of the treatment to test for safety.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In June 2021, enrollment began for a high-dose adult and pediatric cohort of 4 patient volunteers each. Dosing of the new cohorts is expected to be completed by July 2022.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: CRISPR has also found many applications in developing cell-based immunotherapies. The first clinical trial involving CRISPR started in 2016. It involved taking immune cells from people with lung cancer, using CRISPR to edit out the gene expressed PD-1, then administrating the altered cells back to the same person. 20 other trials were under way or nearly ready, mostly in China, .


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In 2016, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a clinical trial in which CRISPR would be used to alter T cells extracted from people with different kinds of cancer and then administer those engineered T cells back to the same people.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In November 2020, in mouse animal models, CRISPR was used effectively to treat glioblastoma (fast-growing brain tumor) and metastatic ovarian cancer, as those are two cancers with some of the worst best-case prognosis and are typically diagnosed during their later stages. The treatments have resulted in inhibited tumor growth, and increased survival by 80% for metastatic ovarian cancer and tumor cell apoptosis, inhibited tumor growth by 50%, and improved survival by 30% for glioblastoma.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In October 2021, CRISPR Therapeutics announced results from their ongoing US-based Phase 1 trial for an allogeneic T cell therapy. These cells are sourced from healthy donors and are edited to attack cancer cells and avoid being seen as a threat by the recipient's immune system, and then multiplied into huge batches which can be given to large numbers of recipients.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In December 2022, a 13-year British girl that had been diagnosed with incurable T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia was cured by doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in the first documented use of therapeutic gene editing for this purpose, after undergoing six months of an experimental treatment, where previous attempts of other treatments failed. The procedure included reprogramming a healthy T-Cell to destroy the cancerous T-Cells to first rid her of Luekaemia, and then rebuilding her immune system from scratch using healthy immune cells. The team used BASE editing and had previously treated a case of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2015 using TALENs.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Type 1 Diabetes is an endocrine disorder which results from a lack of pancreatic beta cells to produce insulin, a vital compound in transporting blood sugar to cells for producing energy. Researchers have been trying to transplant healthy beta cells. CRISPR is used to edit the cells in order to reduce the chance the patient's body will reject the transplant.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, is a virus that attacks the body's immune system. While effective treatments exist which can allow patients to live healthy lives, HIV is retroactive meaning that it embeds an inactive version of itself in the human genome. CRISPR can be used to selectively remove the virus from the genome by designing guide RNA to target the retroactive HIV genome. One issue with this approach is that it requires the removal of the HIV genome from almost all cells, which can be difficult to realistically achieve.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: CRISPR-Cas-based "RNA-guided nucleases" can be used to target virulence factors, genes encoding antibiotic resistance, and other medically relevant sequences of interest. This technology thus represents a novel form of antimicrobial therapy and a strategy by which to manipulate bacterial populations. Recent studies suggest a correlation between the interfering of the CRISPR-Cas locus and acquisition of antibiotic resistance. This system provides protection of bacteria against invading foreign DNA, such as transposons, bacteriophages, and plasmids. This system was shown to be a strong selective pressure for the acquisition of antibiotic resistance and virulence factor in bacterial pathogens.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Therapies based on CRISPR–Cas3 gene editing technology delivered by engineered bacteriophages could be used to destroy targeted DNA in pathogens. Cas3 is more destructive than the better known Cas9.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Research suggests that CRISPR is an effective way to limit replication of multiple herpesviruses. It was able to eradicate viral DNA in the case of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV). Anti-herpesvirus CRISPRs have promising applications such as removing cancer-causing EBV from tumor cells, helping rid donated organs for immunocompromised patients of viral invaders, or preventing cold sore outbreaks and recurrent eye infections by blocking HSV-1 reactivation. , these were awaiting testing.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Initial results in the treatment and cure of HIV have been rather successful, in 2021 9 out of 23 humanized mice treated with a combination of anti-retrovirals and CRISPR/Cas-9 which lead to the virus becoming undetectable, even after the usual rebound period. None of the two treatments alone had such an effect. Clinical trials in humans are to start in 2022.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: CRISPR may revive the concept of transplanting animal organs into people. Retroviruses present in animal genomes could harm transplant recipients. In 2015, a team eliminated 62 copies of a particular retroviral DNA sequence from the pig genome in a kidney epithelial cell. Researchers recently demonstrated the ability to birth live pig specimens after removing these retroviruses from their genome using CRISPR for the first time.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Using "dead" versions of Cas9 (dCas9) eliminates CRISPR's DNA-cutting ability, while preserving its ability to target desirable sequences. Multiple groups added various regulatory factors to dCas9s, enabling them to turn almost any gene on or off or adjust its level of activity. Like RNAi, CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) turns off genes in a reversible fashion by targeting, but not cutting a site. The targeted site is methylated, epigenetically modifying the gene. This modification inhibits transcription. These precisely placed modifications may then be used to regulate the effects on gene expressions and DNA dynamics after the inhibition of certain genome sequences within DNA. Within the past few years, epigenetic marks in different human cells have been closely researched and certain patterns within the marks have been found to correlate with everything ranging from tumor growth to brain activity. Conversely, CRISPR-mediated activation (CRISPRa) promotes gene transcription. Cas9 is an effective way of targeting and silencing specific genes at the DNA level. In bacteria, the presence of Cas9 alone is enough to block transcription. For mammalian applications, a section of protein is added. Its guide RNA targets regulatory DNA sequences called promoters that immediately precede the target gene.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Cas9 was used to carry synthetic transcription factors that activated specific human genes. The technique achieved a strong effect by targeting multiple CRISPR constructs to slightly different locations on the gene's promoter.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In 2016, researchers demonstrated that CRISPR from an ordinary mouth bacterium could be used to edit RNA. The researchers searched databases containing hundreds of millions of genetic sequences for those that resembled CRISPR genes. They considered the fusobacterium "Leptotrichia shahii". It had a group of genes that resembled CRISPR genes, but with important differences. When the researchers equipped other bacteria with these genes, which they called C2c2, they found that the organisms gained a novel defense. C2c2 has later been renamed to Cas13a to fit the standard nomenclature for Cas genes.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Many viruses encode their genetic information in RNA rather than DNA that they repurpose to make new viruses. HIV and poliovirus are such viruses. Bacteria with Cas13 make molecules that can dismember RNA, destroying the virus. Tailoring these genes opened any RNA molecule to editing.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: CRISPR-Cas systems can also be employed for editing of micro-RNA and long-noncoding RNA genes in plants.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Gene drives may provide a powerful tool to restore balance of ecosystems by eliminating invasive species. Concerns regarding efficacy, unintended consequences in the target species as well as non-target species have been raised particularly in the potential for accidental release from laboratories into the wild. Scientists have proposed several safeguards for ensuring the containment of experimental gene drives including molecular, reproductive, and ecological. Many recommend that immunization and reversal drives be developed in tandem with gene drives in order to overwrite their effects if necessary. There remains consensus that long-term effects must be studied more thoroughly particularly in the potential for ecological disruption that cannot be corrected with reversal drives.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Unenriched sequencing libraries often have abundant undesired sequences. Cas9 can specifically deplete the undesired sequences with double strand breakage with up to 99% efficiency and without significant off-target effects as seen with restriction enzymes. Treatment with Cas9 can deplete abundant rRNA while increasing pathogen sensitivity in RNA-seq libraries.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Prime editing (or base editing) is a CRISPR refinement to accurately insert or delete sections of DNA. The CRISPR edits are not always perfect and the cuts can end up in the wrong place. Both issues are a problem for using the technology in medicine. Prime editing does not cut the double-stranded DNA but instead uses the CRISPR targeting apparatus to shuttle an additional enzyme to a desired sequence, where it converts a single nucleotide into another. The new guide, called a pegRNA, contains an RNA template for a new DNA sequence to be added to the genome at the target location. That requires a second protein, attached to Cas9: a reverse transcriptase enzyme, which can make a new DNA strand from the RNA template and insert it at the nicked site. Those three independent pairing events each provide an opportunity to prevent off-target sequences, which significantly increases targeting flexibility and editing precision. Prime editing was developed by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Massachusetts. More work is needed to optimize the methods.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: As of March 2015, multiple groups had announced ongoing research with the intention of laying the foundations for applying CRISPR to human embryos for human germline engineering, including labs in the US, China, and the UK, as well as US biotechnology company OvaScience. Scientists, including a CRISPR co-discoverer, urged a worldwide moratorium on applying CRISPR to the human germline, especially for clinical use. They said "scientists should avoid even attempting, in lax jurisdictions, germline genome modification for clinical application in humans" until the full implications "are discussed among scientific and governmental organizations". These scientists support further low-level research on CRISPR and do not see CRISPR as developed enough for any clinical use in making heritable changes to humans.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In April 2015, Chinese scientists reported results of an attempt to alter the DNA of non-viable human embryos using CRISPR to correct a mutation that causes beta thalassemia, a lethal heritable disorder. The study had previously been rejected by both "Nature" and "Science" in part because of ethical concerns. The experiments resulted in successfully changing only some of the intended genes, and had off-target effects on other genes. The researchers stated that CRISPR is not ready for clinical application in reproductive medicine. In April 2016, Chinese scientists were reported to have made a second unsuccessful attempt to alter the DNA of non-viable human embryos using CRISPR – this time to alter the CCR5 gene to make the embryo resistant to HIV infection.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In December 2015, an International Summit on Human Gene Editing took place in Washington under the guidance of David Baltimore. Members of national scientific academies of the US, UK, and China discussed the ethics of germline modification. They agreed to support basic and clinical research under certain legal and ethical guidelines. A specific distinction was made between somatic cells, where the effects of edits are limited to a single individual, and germline cells, where genome changes can be inherited by descendants. Heritable modifications could have unintended and far-reaching consequences for human evolution, genetically (e.g. gene–environment interactions) and culturally (e.g. social Darwinism). Altering of gametocytes and embryos to generate heritable changes in humans was defined to be irresponsible. The group agreed to initiate an international forum to address such concerns and harmonize regulations across countries.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In February 2017, the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee on Human Gene Editing published a report reviewing ethical, legal, and scientific concerns of genomic engineering technology. The conclusion of the report stated that heritable genome editing is impermissible now but could be justified for certain medical conditions; however, they did not justify the usage of CRISPR for enhancement.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In November 2018, Jiankui He announced that he had edited two human embryos to attempt to disable the gene for CCR5, which codes for a receptor that HIV uses to enter cells. He said that twin girls, Lulu and Nana, had been born a few weeks earlier. He said that the girls still carried functional copies of CCR5 along with disabled CCR5 (mosaicism) and were still vulnerable to HIV. The work was widely condemned as unethical, dangerous, and premature. An international group of scientists called for a global moratorium on genetically editing human embryos.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: Policy regulations for the CRISPR-Cas9 system vary around the globe. In February 2016, British scientists were given permission by regulators to genetically modify human embryos by using CRISPR-Cas9 and related techniques. However, researchers were forbidden from implanting the embryos and the embryos were to be destroyed after seven days.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: The US has an elaborate, interdepartmental regulatory system to evaluate new genetically modified foods and crops. For example, the Agriculture Risk Protection Act of 2000 gives the United States Department of Agriculture the authority to oversee the detection, control, eradication, suppression, prevention, or retardation of the spread of plant pests or noxious weeds to protect the agriculture, environment, and economy of the US. The act regulates any genetically modified organism that utilizes the genome of a predefined "plant pest" or any plant not previously categorized. In 2015, Yinong Yang successfully deactivated 16 specific genes in the white button mushroom to make them non-browning. Since he had not added any foreign-species (transgenic) DNA to his organism, the mushroom could not be regulated by the USDA under Section 340.2. Yang's white button mushroom was the first organism genetically modified with the CRISPR-Cas9 protein system to pass US regulation.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In 2016, the USDA sponsored a committee to consider future regulatory policy for upcoming genetic modification techniques. With the help of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, special interests groups met on April 15 to contemplate the possible advancements in genetic engineering within the next five years and any new regulations that might be needed as a result. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a rule that would classify genetic engineering modifications to animals as "animal drugs", subjecting them to strict regulation if offered for sale and reducing the ability for individuals and small businesses to make them profitable.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In China, where social conditions sharply contrast with those of the West, genetic diseases carry a heavy stigma. This leaves China with fewer policy barriers to the use of this technology.


title: CRISPR gene editing

text: In 2012 and 2013, CRISPR was a runner-up in "Science Magazine"'s Breakthrough of the Year award. In 2015, it was the winner of that award. CRISPR was named as one of "MIT Technology Review"s 10 breakthrough technologies in 2014 and 2016. In 2016, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, along with Rudolph Barrangou, Philippe Horvath, and Feng Zhang won the Gairdner International award. In 2017, Doudna and Charpentier were awarded the Japan Prize in Tokyo, Japan for their revolutionary invention of CRISPR-Cas9. In 2016, Charpentier, Doudna, and Zhang won the Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science. In 2020, Charpentier and Doudna were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the first such prize for an all-female team, "for the development of a method for genome editing."


title: Outbreak (film)

text: Outbreak is a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and based on Richard Preston's 1994 nonfiction book "The Hot Zone". The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland, and co-stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: The film focuses on an outbreak of a fictional "ebolavirus" and "orthomyxoviridae"-like Motaba virus, in Zaire and later in a small town in California. It is primarily set in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the fictional town of Cedar Creek, California. "Outbreak" plot speculates how far military and civilian agencies might go to contain the spread of a deadly, contagious disease.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: The film, released on March 10, 1995, was a box-office success, and Spacey won two awards for his performance. A real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus was occurring in Zaire when the film was released.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: In 1967, during the Stanleyville mutinies, a virus called Motaba, which causes a deadly fever, is discovered in the African jungle. To keep the virus a secret, U.S. Army officers Donald McClintock and William Ford destroy the camp where soldiers were infected.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: Twenty-eight years later, Colonel Sam Daniels, a USAMRIID virologist, is sent to investigate an outbreak in Zaire. He and his crew—Lieutenant Colonel Casey Schuler and new recruit Major Salt—gather information and return to the United States. Ford, now a brigadier general and Daniels' superior officer, dismisses the latter's fears that the virus will spread.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: A white-headed capuchin monkey that is host to the virus is smuggled into the country. James "Jimbo" Scott, a worker at an animal testing laboratory, is infected when he steals the monkey to sell on the black market. Jimbo fails to sell the monkey to Rudy Alvarez (who also becomes infected), a pet-store owner in the coastal-California village of Cedar Creek. After releasing the monkey into the woods outside of the nearby community of Palisades, he develops symptoms on a flight to Boston and infects his girlfriend, Alice. Their illness is investigated by Dr. Roberta Keough, a CDC scientist and Daniels' ex-wife. Jimbo, Alice, and Rudy die, but Keough determines that no one else in Boston was infected.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: A hospital technician in Cedar Creek is infected when he accidentally breaks the vial of Rudy's blood. The virus quickly mutates into a strain capable of spreading like influenza, becoming airborne and causing a number of people to be infected in a movie theater. Daniels flies to Cedar Creek against Ford's orders, joining Keough's team with Schuler and Salt. As they begin a search for the monkey, the Army quarantines the town and imposes martial law. Schuler is infected when his suit tears and Keough accidentally sticks herself with a contaminated needle while treating him.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: When Ford provides an experimental serum which cures the original strain, Daniels realizes that his superiors were aware of the virus before the outbreak. Daniels learns about Operation Clean Sweep, a plan for the military to contain the virus by bombing Cedar Creek, incinerating the town and its residents, ostensibly to prevent Motaba's expansion to pandemic proportions. However, McClintock, now a major general, plans to use the operation to conceal the mutated virus' existence so the original strain can be preserved for use as a biological weapon.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: To prevent Daniels from finding a cure, McClintock orders him arrested for carrying the virus. Daniels escapes before he and Salt fly a helicopter to the ship at sea which carried the monkey. Daniels obtains a picture of the monkey and releases it to the media; a Palisades resident, Mrs. Jeffries, realizes that her daughter Kate has been playing with the monkey (which she named Betsy) and calls the CDC. Daniels and Salt arrive at the Jeffries' house where Salt tranquilizes Betsy after Kate coaxes her out of hiding in the woods nearby. When he learns from Daniels about Betsy's capture, Ford delays the bombing.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: On their return flight, Daniels and Salt are chased by McClintock in another helicopter. Salt fires two rockets into the trees to deceive him into thinking that they crashed. Once back in Cedar Creek, Salt mixes Betsy's antibodies with Ford's serum to create an antiserum; although Schuler has died, they save Keough. McClintock returns to base and resumes Operation Clean Sweep, refusing to listen to Ford. Daniels and Salt fly their helicopter directly into the path of the bomber's approach to its target.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: With Ford's help, Daniels persuades the bomber's flight crew to detonate the bomb over water and spare the town. Before McClintock can order another bombing, Ford relieves him of command and orders his arrest. Daniels and Keough reconcile as Cedar Creek's residents are cured.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: Scenes in "Cedar Creek" were filmed in Ferndale, California, where tanks and helicopters were a common feature of daily life during nearly two months of filming. Other locations used were Dugway Proving Ground and Kauai.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: Harrison Ford was offered the role of Sam Daniels but turned it down. Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson were also offered the role but turned it down.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: Producer Lynda Obst has stated that it was due to the production of "Outbreak" that her film adaptation of "The Hot Zone" was dropped by 20th Century Fox despite having, in her words, "the better package and ... the better script". She also claimed that director Wolfgang Petersen tried to entice Robert Redford, who was already cast for her film, to be a part of "Outbreak", based on Redford's call to her. Obst would eventually have her adaptation of the book, but greenlit as a miniseries by "National Geographic", which premiered in May 2019.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: "Outbreak" was a commercial success. It topped the U.S. box-office list its opening weekend with a gross of $13.4 million, and spent three weeks at number one before "Tommy Boy"s release. It was number one in Japan for six weeks. The film grossed $67.7 million in the United States and Canada and $122.2 million internationally for a worldwide total of $189.9 million.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: "Outbreak" received mixed reviews from critics. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 60% of 65 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.8 out of 10. The consensus states: "A frustratingly uneven all-star disaster drama, "Outbreak" ultimately proves only mildly contagious and leaves few lasting side effects." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 20 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars, calling "Outbreak" premise "one of the great scare stories of our time, the notion that deep in the uncharted rain forests, deadly diseases are lurking, and if they ever escape their jungle homes and enter the human bloodstream, there will be a new plague the likes of which we have never seen." Rita Kempley of "The Washington Post" also enjoyed the film's plot: ""Outbreak" is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen's rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability."


title: Outbreak (film)

text: David Denby wrote for "New York" magazine that although the opening scenes were well-done, "somewhere in the middle ... "Outbreak" falls off a cliff" and becomes "lamely conventional." Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" also found the film's subject compelling but its treatment ineffective: "The film's shallowness also contributes to the impression that no problem is too thorny to be solved by movie heroics."


title: Outbreak (film)

text: The film's scientific liberties have been criticized, especially compared to the realism of the 2011 film "Contagion". Implausibilities include the virus taking only an hour, rather than days, to reproduce itself; the synthesis of the cure taking less than a minute, rather than many months; and the injection of the cure producing immediate improvement.


title: Outbreak (film)

text: The film's popularity resurged during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranking as the fourth most streamed film on Netflix in the United States on March 13, 2020.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Pierre Morad Omidyar (born Parviz Morad Omidyar, June 21, 1967) is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire. A technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist, he is the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004. "Forbes" ranked Omidyar as the 24th-richest person in the world in 2021, with an estimated net worth of $21.8 billion.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Since 2010, Omidyar has been involved in online journalism as the head of investigative reporting and public affairs news service "Honolulu Civil Beat". In 2013, he announced that he would create and finance First Look Media, a journalism venture to include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar was born in Paris, the son of Iranian parents who had immigrated to France for higher education. He was named Parviz. His mother, Elahé Mir-Djalali Omidyar, who earned her doctorate in linguistics at the Sorbonne, is an academic. His father, Cyrus Omidyar (born ), completed medical education and training in France and is a surgeon.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: After immigrating with his family to the United States when Omidyar was a child, the father worked as a urologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He now practices in Aliso Viejo, California.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar attended Punahou School in Honolulu for a couple of years. (He now serves on its Board of Trustees). His interest in computers began while he was a ninth-grade student at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia. He graduated in 1984 from St. Andrew's Episcopal School, Potomac, Maryland.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: He studied at Tufts University, graduating with a B.S. in computer science in 1988, and the University of California, Berkeley.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Shortly after studying at Berkeley, Omidyar started working for Claris, an Apple Computer subsidiary. He worked with the team that upgraded MacDraw to MacDraw II. In 1991, he co-founded Ink Development, a pen-based computing startup that later was rebranded as an e-commerce company and renamed eShop Inc.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Microsoft acquired eShop on June 11, 1996, for less than $50 million, and Omidyar earned $1 million from the deal.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 1995, at the age of 28, Omidyar began to write the original computer code for an online venue to enable the listing of a direct person-to-person auction for collectible items. He created a simple prototype on his web page. On Labor Day, Monday, September 4, 1995, he launched an online service called Auction Web, which would eventually be developed as the auction site eBay.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: The service was originally one of several items on Omidyar's website eBay.com. His website also had a section devoted to the Ebola virus, among other topics.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: The first item sold on the eBay site was a broken laser pointer. Omidyar was astonished that anyone would pay for a broken device, but the buyer assured him that he was deliberately collecting broken laser pointers. Similar surprises followed. The business exploded as correspondents began to register trade goods of an unimaginable variety.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar incorporated the enterprise; the small fee he collected on each sale financed the expansion of the site. The revenue soon outstripped his salary at General Magic and nine months later, Omidyar decided to dedicate his full attention to his new enterprise.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: By 1996, when Omidyar signed a licensing deal to offer airline tickets online, the site had hosted 250,000 auctions. In the first month of 1997, it hosted two million. By the middle of that year, eBay was hosting nearly 800,000 auctions a day.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 1997, Omidyar changed the company's name from AuctionWeb to eBay, and began to advertise the service aggressively. The name "eBay" was his second choice. His first choice was already registered to a Canadian mining company, Echo Bay Mines. He originally wanted Echo Bay, the name of a recreational area near Lake Mead, Nevada, because it "sounded cool". When he learned that echobay.com was taken, he dropped the "cho", and ebay.com was born. The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book, and confirmed by eBay.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Jeffrey Skoll joined the company in 1996. In March 1998, Meg Whitman was brought in as president and CEO. She ran the company until January 2008, when she announced her retirement. In September 1998, eBay launched a successful public offering, making both Omidyar and Skoll billionaires.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 2002, eBay bought PayPal, an online payment company. Later, in 2015, they spun PayPal off. Omidyar still owns 6% of its worth .


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: , Omidyar's 178 million eBay shares were worth around $4.45 billion. Omidyar is an investor in Montage Resort and Spa in Laguna Beach, California.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 2020, Omidyar stepped down from the board of eBay as part of a broader overhaul of the company. He has, however, stayed active in the company, retaining the title of director emeritus.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 2010, Omidyar launched an online investigative reporting news service, "Honolulu Civil Beat", covering civic affairs in Hawaii. The site was named Best News Website in Hawaii for 2010, 2011, and 2012. On September 4, 2013, "Honolulu Civil Beat" started a partnership with "HuffPost", launching "HuffPost Hawaii".


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 2013, prompted by the Edward Snowden leaks, Omidyar announced the creation of the journalism venture First Look Media, which on February 10, 2014, launched "The Intercept," drawing from journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Dan Froomkin, John Temple, and Jay Rosen.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. It was established in 2004 by Omidyar and his wife, Pam. The organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic, social, and political change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $992 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including Property Rights, Governance & Citizen Engagement, Education, Financial Inclusion and Consumer & Internet Mobile. In 2010, he and his wife established, along with Richard Branson and the Nduna Foundation (founded by Amy Robbins), Enterprise Zimbabwe.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: In 2018 Omidyar established the global philanthropic organisation named Luminate Group. He separated the organization into a separate unit from his ten-year Governance & Engagement initiative.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar and his wife Pamela own properties in Henderson, Nevada, and Honolulu, Hawaii. According to "Forbes", his net worth was US$13.1 billion as of January 2019. He is a major donor to Democratic Party candidates and organizations.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar, a Buddhist follower of the Dalai Lama who in 2010 joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as a signatory of The Giving Pledge, has declared his intention to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime. In 2019, he donated approximately $500 million to charitable causes.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: He has bankrolled groups like the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute and the digital rights group Public Knowledge Project, in the fight against the big tech companies, which he criticizes as overly powerful and destructive to democracy.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: His advocacy and philanthropic investment firm the Omidyar Network distributed widely read papers laying out the antitrust cases against Facebook and Google. In February 2021, his network hosted a series on whistleblowing, and is now providing financial support to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.


title: Pierre Omidyar

text: Omidyar has given funding to the Center for Humane Technology, whose head of public affairs is Haugen's top PR representative in the US.


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: Thomas Everett Scott (born September 7, 1970) is an American actor. His film work includes a starring role as drummer Guy Patterson in the film "That Thing You Do!", the protagonist in "An American Werewolf in Paris", and notable roles in "Boiler Room", "One True Thing", "Dead Man on Campus", "The Love Letter", "Because I Said So", "Danger One", "La La Land", and "Clouds".


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: In television, he played the roles of Detective Russell Clarke in the series "Southland", Charles Garnett in "Z Nation", and played the recurring roles of Eric Wyczenski in "ER", Sam Landon in "Beauty & the Beast", Kevin Duval in the series "Scream", William in "Reign", and Mr. Down in "13 Reasons Why". He also co-starred in the truTV sitcom "I'm Sorry".


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: Scott was born in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, the son of Cynthia "Cindy" (née Pierce), an insurance sales representative, and William Joseph "Bill" Scott (died 2007), a civil engineer. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1992, where he started out as a communications major, but eventually majored in drama.


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: After appearing in an episode of "Law & Order" and a commercial for Crest toothpaste in 1993, Scott's first notable role was as Matthew for several seasons on the television situation comedy "Grace Under Fire". He played the title character's illegitimate son, whom she had placed for adoption. In 1996, Scott landed the role of Guy Patterson in the film "That Thing You Do!" He was almost passed over because of his resemblance to the film's director, actor Tom Hanks, but Hanks's wife, Rita Wilson, encouraged Hanks to cast Scott in the role.


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: Scott has had several other roles; he was the lead in the films "An American Werewolf in Paris" and "Dead Man on Campus", and co-starred with Kate Capshaw and Tom Selleck in "The Love Letter". He starred in the cult film "Boiler Room" and made an uncredited cameo in "Van Wilder". He has had recurring roles on the television series "ER" in 2002 and 2003 and has played numerous minor parts in other films and television shows such as "Will & Grace" and "Sons of Anarchy". He co-starred in the series "Philly" as a lawyer, partnering with Kim Delaney. The show was a critical success but suffered poor ratings and was cancelled after one season. He also starred in "Saved", a medical drama series on TNT. He starred in the TV movie "Surrender Dorothy". He appeared as one of Mandy Moore's character's boyfriends in the comedy "Because I Said So", and starred in a Broadway theatre comedy, "The Little Dog Laughed", as closeted film star Mitchell Green, written by Douglas Carter Beane. He starred as Jack Cutting on the ABC's brief comedy drama series "Cashmere Mafia" (2008). In 2009, he appeared in four episodes of "Law & Order" playing the fictional Governor of New York, Don Shalvoy. He also played Detective Russell Clarke in the seven episodes of the first season of "Southland", which was dropped by NBC and subsequently picked up by TNT. At the start of second season, he became a recurring character appearing in three of six episodes. In the third and fifth seasons, he continued to appear in selected episodes.


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: Scott had supporting roles in other films such as "Race to Witch Mountain", "Tanner Hall", "Mars Needs Moms", "Parental Guidance", "Enemies Closer", "Sister Cities", and portrayed an affable but amoral paramedic in "Danger One". His former television roles include Sam Landon in "Beauty and the Beast", Kevin Duval in "Scream", Charles Garnett in "Z Nation", and William in "Reign". In 2016, he appeared in the film "La La Land". In 2017, he co-starred in the film "", and was a series regular on the TruTV sitcom "I'm Sorry", starring alongside Andrea Savage for two seasons.


title: Tom Everett Scott

text: Scott married Jenni Gallagher, whom he met at Syracuse University, on December 13, 1997. They have two children.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: The Enola Holmes Mysteries is a young adult fiction series of detective novels by American author Nancy Springer, starring Enola Holmes as the 14-year-old sister of an already famous Sherlock Holmes, twenty years her senior. There are seven books in the series, and one short story all written from 2006–2021.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: When their mother disappears, Enola's much-older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, decide to send her to a finishing school against her will. Instead, with the aid of her mother, who had provided hidden funds and an elaborate cipher for her daughter to communicate with her, Enola runs away to London, where she establishes a clandestine private detective career specializing in missing persons investigations. Furthermore, Enola must keep ahead of her brothers who are determined to capture and force her to conform to their expectations.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: This pastiche series borrows characters and settings from the established canon of Sherlock Holmes, but the Enola character is Springer's creation and specific to this series. The first book, "The Case of the Missing Marquess", and the fifth, "The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline", were nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery in 2007 and 2010, respectively.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: In 2020, the literary series was adapted into a film with Millie Bobby Brown in the title role and Henry Cavill playing Sherlock Holmes, and in 2022 the duo reprised their roles for a sequel.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Before writing "The Enola Holmes Mysteries", Nancy Springer had already published books that reimagined Mordred and Robin Hood. Springer developed the idea for Enola Holmes alongside her editor, Michael Green. Green initially asked her to explore "deepest, darkest London at the time of Jack the Ripper." After some research, she realized that Sherlock Holmes was based in the same time period as Jack the Ripper. Springer rejected the idea of giving Holmes a daughter but thought the idea of a younger sister could work.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: To write the series, Springer researched about Victorian era England, both from historical research and through coloring books, which, according to her, it helps "visualize the details" when writing. She referred to "The Annotated Sherlock Holmes" by William Baring-Gould. She did not have too much difficulty in using the language of the time period since she was well versed with Victorian literature.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: When creating the character of Enola, Springer decided to have her as Holmes' sister, as she did not see it fitting for Holmes to be her father. The age discrepancy between Enola and Sherlock is explained as Enola being a "mistake child". For the main character's name, she researched romantic names of the era, and set on the one of a town near where she resided at the time.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Sherlock's status as a bachelor and being "clueless about women" also played a role on the creation of Enola Holmes, as it allowed Springer to write a character that "could blindside him time after time."


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Springer has also stated that Enola is partially based on her own life. She herself is much younger than her two older brothers, who left for college before she reached puberty. Springer, too, had an artist for a mother, who was talented with painting watercolor flowers. Due to cancer, menopause and an early-onset form of dementia, Springer's mother spent less time with her after she turned 14 years old. Further, like Enola, Springer "was a scrawny, bony, gawky tree-climbing tomboy with hair that needed to be washed" and was "solitary and bookish."


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: In the film Enola explains that her name spelled backwards is "alone", which describes her solitary nature.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: On Enola's fourteenth birthday, her mother disappears, and Sherlock and Mycroft, Enola's brothers, conclude that her mother voluntarily left. Enola is devastated but eventually discovers elaborate ciphers her mother wrote, which lead her to conclude that she left to live with the Romani people and escape the confines of Victorian society. Enola finds that her mother left money to fund her escape. When Mycroft, the eldest sibling, insists that Enola attend boarding school and learn to be a proper lady, she runs away to London instead. Throughout the series, Enola solves numerous missing persons cases, including a rescue of Dr. John Watson, while eluding her brothers' efforts to recapture her.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: When Enola's mother disappears, Enola calls on her older brothers Sherlock and Mycroft, who dismiss her as unimportant. Horrified by her brothers' plans to send her to a boarding school and the prospect of wearing a corset, she escapes. Dressed as a widow, she runs across Inspector Lestrade, who is working on a case with Sherlock about the disappearance of a young Viscount, Lord Tewkesbury. Nearly blowing her cover, she finds a secret hiding place that seems to be the young Viscount's hideaway. Concluding that he ran away, she sets off to look for him. Upon arriving in London, Enola discovers the city is not the magical place of her imagination. The same people who have kidnapped the Viscount, who has no street smarts, kidnap Enola. After escaping with the Viscount, she bribes a woman to buy them clothing. Hiding in a police station right under Sherlock's nose, Enola runs away, leaving only a sketch of the suspect on the bench.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Enola tries to find Lady Cecily Alistair, who disappeared from her bedroom. Enola, after disguising herself, talks to Lady Cecily's family, who think she has run off with the son of a tradesman. Enola finds some strange paintings that make her doubt that notion, and goes to find their daughter.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Sherlock's companion, Dr. John Watson, has gone missing. Enola discovers a bouquet of flowers intended for Watson. Using the language of the flowers, she detects a threat and sets out to find the missing doctor and his kidnapper. She finds him in an insane asylum. Two policemen had been told he was an insane man, and his claims to being Watson only exacerbated their belief. But is he insane or are they lying?


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Enola helps an old acquaintance, Lady Cecily, escape a forced marriage to the young Lady's cousin (such things were common then, to keep property within the family). While escaping an evil man and his mastiff, Enola runs right into trouble. Meanwhile, little does she know, Sherlock is only a few steps behind her.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Enola returns to her lodgings to find that somebody has kidnapped her landlady, Mrs. Tupper. After investigating the ransacked lodgings, she abduces that the kidnappers were after a secret message hidden in Mrs. Tupper's old crinoline dress. Enola traces the dress to Florence Nightingale, who met Mrs. Tupper in the Crimean War. After several visits to Nightingale, Enola discovers that Nightingale conducted espionage during the war. As such, Nightingale asked Mrs. Tupper to smuggle a note in her crinoline back to England but did not know that the war widow was deaf and did not understand her. Enola also realizes that Nightingale pretends to be an invalid to avoid attending social functions expected of a wealthy woman. She realizes that the functions would take time away from writing letters to achieve social reform for the needy. During her visits to Nightingale, Enola suspects someone is following her. As the person could be related to the case and a danger to Mrs. Tupper's and her own safety, she relocates to the Professional Women's Club.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: After solving the case, she takes Mrs. Tupper and herself back to her home. Enola packs her things as she gets ready to leave. After figuring this out, Mrs. Tupper does the same. Mrs. Tupper ends up going with Enola. She escapes upon seeing Sherlock approach. Sherlock converses with Nightingale, and she reveals the reason behind Enola's escape from her brothers by describing the horrors of boarding schools and corsets.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Finally, in Enola's sixth case, Sherlock concludes that Enola has matured rapidly into a capable young woman and helps his sister not only to find her quarry but also to finally convince their older brother Mycroft of her skill.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: In the end, the Holmes siblings fully reconcile with the help of a final coded message from their mother, a Spartan skytale decoded using bicycle handlebars. With that resolution, Mycroft, further impressed with Enola's sophisticated business arrangements and satisfied with her residence at the Professional Women's Club, grants Enola her liberty and agrees to fund her education. Enola in turn forgives Mycroft, accepts his offer while announcing she is likely continuing her career as a private investigator. For his part, Sherlock accepts Enola as a colleague in his profession and notes that he eagerly awaits her future accomplishments.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Enola works with Sherlock to uncover the truth behind the death of Flossie Rudcliff, Countess of Dunhench ("née" Glover).


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, owns a building in the heart of 19th century London, a place she uses under pseudonyms to front for her investigative work. Employed there is a porter - Joddy, a young boy in a uniform festooned with buttons - whose even younger brother substitutes for him when he's sick. But Paddy disappears after one day at the job and Enola Holmes is alerted to this by the still ill Joddy.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: Determined to find the missing porter, Enola travels to the rough part of London where the boys live and starts searching Aldgate Pump area for the missing boy. When she finds the missing buttons - but not the boy - she decides that drastic action is essential if she's to save the missing boy.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: "The Enola Holmes Mysteries" has been classified as an example of neo-Victorian literature for young adults, in part due to the author's use of Victorian woman's clothes as a method to show female empowerment through the main character. According to Amy Montz, Nancy Springer rewrites the "social and personal expectations for fashion". For Montz, the corset is one of the main pieces of clothing for Victorian era stories, as "it is both public and private, masculine and feminine, utilitarian and ornamental, necessary and reviled." In the Enola Holmes series, the corset is a piece of "protection, [...] masquerade [...] and storage space," and is highlighted throughout the various books.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: In a paper about Libba Bray's "Gemma Doyle Trilogy" and Springer's "Enola Holmes Mysteries", Sonya Fritz also classifies these series as part of the neo-Victorian movement, and talks about how those stories explore the concept of girl power. For Fritz, in Springer's books the characters conform to the social norms in public, but "[b]eneath this veneer of respectability and conformity [...] is a completely different life, one filled with courage, autonomy, and action." According to Fritz, Enola is described to the reader as having an "unconventional independence" since the start of the story, where she is described as wearing her brother's old clothes, marking her as a tomboy. She also notes how, when faced with the prospect of being sent to a finishing school, Enola chooses to run away, which frames her as "a specimen of one of the feminine ideals that can be found in girl power".


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: The various disguises used by Enola throughout the series demonstrates the character's understanding of femininity as something "performative rather than essential," specially through her usage of the corset as a place to stash her money, or as a piece of armor. For Fritz, this subversion of female fashion as disguises or as secret communication offers "simultaneously a representation of the Victorian period and a contemporary model of girl power".


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: The first book, "The Case of the Missing Marquess", and the fifth, "The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline", were nominated for the Edgar Awards for Best Juvenile Mystery in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Karen MacPherson in the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" called Enola a "highly appealing heroine". In a review for the first book, "Children's Book and Play Review" echoed the statement, calling Enola "a bright and endearing character". The review also praised the novel for being "fast-paced and suspenseful" as well as its integration of Victorian culture but noted that it "wrap[ped] up a bit briskly". Carthage College's Center for Children's Literature described the second book as a "solid historical mystery" with a "satisfying and surprising ending" despite being "a bit slow at the beginning".


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: The series has been adapted in France as graphic novels by writer and artist Séréna Blasco and published by Jungle! in their collection "Miss Jungle". The first three graphic novels have been published in the United States by IDW.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: On January 9, 2018, it was announced that Millie Bobby Brown would produce and star as the title character in a film series based on the Enola Holmes books. On February 8, 2019, media reported Harry Bradbeer would direct the film project, and Jack Thorne would adapt the script. Helena Bonham Carter plays Enola's mother, and Henry Cavill plays Sherlock Holmes. On April 21, 2020, Netflix bought the distribution rights to the film, as opposed to a theatrical release due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was released on September 23, 2020.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: That month, Brown and Bradbeer acknowledged their intentions to develop a sequel, which was announced on May 13, 2021. The story is an original story based on the 1888 matchgirls' strike and the life of labour activist Sarah Chapman. Bradbeer thought it was an inspiring feminist tale that showed the power of working together — "Enola, to advance, has to work with others and not just be reliant on herself. It's a story that goes from 'I' to 'we,' and that is a story of sisterhood."


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: In November 2022, the sequel, "Enola Holmes 2" was released on Netflix. Brown and Cavill reprised their roles as Enola and Sherlock. Brown was reportedly paid $10 million for her role, making it the highest upfront salary for an actor under the age of twenty as of the release of the film.


title: The Enola Holmes Mysteries

text: On June 23, 2020, the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought a lawsuit in New Mexico against, among others, Nancy Springer, Legendary Pictures, PCMA Productions, and Netflix, citing both copyright and trademark infringement. This is in regard to the final ten stories produced by Doyle, which had not yet entered the public domain, although at the time of filing four actually had. The lawsuit specifically references Holmes' becoming more emotional in the final ten works, presenting a more "human" side to Sherlock, something that he was not known to present in the original works prior to the character's resurrection after "The Final Problem". According to the suit, "The Enola Holmes Mysteries" and adaptations violate the trademark and copyright on this particular depiction of Holmes, as the stories are still in a time of transition between copyright and the public domain.


title: William O. Douglas

text: William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898January 19, 1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was known for his strong progressive and civil libertarian views, and is often cited as the U.S. Supreme Court's most liberal justice ever. In 1975, "Time" called Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court." He is the longest-serving justice in history, with his term lasting 36 years and 211 days (1939–1975).


title: William O. Douglas

text: Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40, becoming one of the youngest justices appointed to the court. After an itinerant childhood, Douglas attended Whitman College on a scholarship. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1925 and joined the Yale Law School faculty. After serving as the third chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Douglas was successfully nominated to the Supreme Court in 1939, succeeding Justice Louis Brandeis. He was among those seriously considered for the 1944 Democratic vice presidential nomination and was subject to an unsuccessful draft movement prior to the 1948 U.S. presidential election. Douglas served on the Court until his retirement in 1975, and was succeeded by John Paul Stevens. Douglas holds a number of records as a Supreme Court justice, including the most opinions.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas’s most notable majority opinion was "Griswold v. Connecticut" which established the constitutional right to privacy, and was foundational to later cases such as "Eisenstadt v. Baird", "Roe v. Wade", "Lawrence v. Texas" and "Obergefell v. Hodges". He also wrote the Court's majority opinion in other major cases such as "Skinner v. Oklahoma" (1942), "United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc." (1948), "Terminiello v. City of Chicago" (1949), "Brady v. Maryland" (1963), and "Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections" (1966). He wrote notable concurring or dissenting opinions in cases such as "Dennis v. United States" (1951), "United States v. O’Brien" (1968), "Terry v. Ohio" (1968), and "Brandenburg v. Ohio" (1969). He was also known as a strong opponent of the Vietnam War and an ardent advocate of environmentalism.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas was born in 1898 in Maine Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, the son of William Douglas, an itinerant Scottish Presbyterian minister from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and his wife, Julia Bickford Fisk. His family moved to California, and then to Cleveland, Washington. Douglas said he suffered from an illness at age two he described as polio, although a biographer reveals that it was intestinal colic. His mother attributed his recovery to a miracle, telling Douglas that one day he would be President of the United States.


title: William O. Douglas

text: His father died in Portland, Oregon in 1904, when Douglas was six years old. Douglas later claimed his mother had been left destitute. After moving the family from town to town in the West, his mother, with three young children, settled in Yakima, Washington. William, like the rest of the Douglas family, worked at odd jobs to earn extra money, and a college education appeared to be unaffordable. He was the valedictorian at Yakima High School and did well enough in school to earn a full academic scholarship to attend Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. At Whitman, Douglas became a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He worked at various jobs while attending school, including as a waiter and janitor during the school year, and at a cherry orchard in the summer. Picking cherries, Douglas would say later, inspired him to a legal career. He once said of his early interest in the law:


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, participated on the debate team, and was elected as student body president in his final year. After graduating in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and economics, he taught English and Latin at his old high school for the next two years, hoping to earn enough to attend law school. "Finally," he said, "I decided it was impossible to save enough money by teaching and I said to hell with it."


title: William O. Douglas

text: In the summer of 1918, Douglas took part in a U.S. Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps training encampment at the Presidio of San Francisco. That fall, he joined the Student Army Training Corps at Whitman as a private. He served from October to December, and was honorably discharged because the Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended the war and the army's requirement for more soldiers and officers.


title: William O. Douglas

text: He traveled to New York taking a job tending sheep on a Chicago-bound train, in return for free passage, with hopes to attend the Columbia Law School. Douglas drew on his Beta Theta Pi membership to help him survive in New York, as he stayed at one of its houses and was able to borrow $75 from a fraternity brother from Washington, enough to enroll at Columbia.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Six months later, Douglas's funds were running out. The appointments office at the law school told him that a New York firm wanted a student to help prepare a correspondence course for law. Douglas earned $600 for his work, enabling him to stay in school. Hired for similar projects, he saved $1,000 by semester's end. In August 1923, Douglas traveled to La Grande, Oregon, to marry Mildred Riddle, whom he had known in Yakima. Douglas graduated second in his class at Columbia in 1925.


title: William O. Douglas

text: During the summer of 1925, Douglas started work at the firm of Cravath, DeGersdorff, Swaine and Wood (later Cravath, Swaine & Moore) after failing to obtain a Supreme Court clerkship with Harlan F. Stone. Douglas was hired at Cravath by attorney John J. McCloy, who would later become the chairman of the Board of Chase Manhattan Bank.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas quit the Cravath firm after four months. After one year, he moved back to Yakima, but soon regretted the move and never practiced law in the state. After a time of unemployment and another months-long stint at Cravath, he started teaching at Columbia Law School. He joined the faculty of Yale Law School, where he became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy law. He was identified with the legal realist movement, which pushed for an understanding of law based less on formalistic legal doctrines and more on the real-world effects of the law. Teaching at Yale, he and the fellow professor Thurman Arnold were riding the New Haven Railroad and were inspired to set the sign Passengers will please refrain... to Antonín Dvořák's "Humoresque #7." Robert Maynard Hutchins described Douglas as "the most outstanding law professor in the nation." When Hutchins became president of the University of Chicago, Douglas accepted an offer to move there, but he changed his mind once he had been made a Sterling Professor at Yale.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In 1934, Douglas left Yale after President Franklin Roosevelt nominated him to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). By 1937, he had become an adviser and friend to the President and the Chairman. He also became friends with a group of young New Dealers, including Tommy "The Cork" Corcoran and Abe Fortas. He was also close, both socially and in thinking to the Progressives of the era, such as Philip and Robert La Follette, Jr. and later with President Kennedy. That social/political group befriended Lyndon Johnson, a freshman representative from the 10th District of Texas. In his book "", Robert Caro wrote that in 1937, Douglas had helped to persuade Roosevelt to authorize the Marshall Ford Dam, a controversial project whose approval enabled Johnson to consolidate his power as a representative.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In 1939, Justice Louis D. Brandeis retired from the Court, and Roosevelt nominated Douglas as his replacement on March 20. Douglas was Brandeis's personal choice as a successor. Douglas later revealed that his appointment had been a great surprise to him (Roosevelt had summoned him to an "important meeting"), and Douglas feared that he would be named as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 4 by a vote of 62 to 4. The four negative votes were all cast by Republicans: Lynn J. Frazier, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Gerald P. Nye, and Clyde M. Reed. Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939. At the age of forty, Douglas was the fifth-youngest justice to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas was often at odds with fellow justice Felix Frankfurter, who believed in judicial restraint and thought the court should stay out of politics. Douglas did not highly value judicial consistency or "stare decisis" when deciding cases. "But the origin of Douglas and Frankfurter's deep-seated animosity went beyond important jurisprudential differences. Temperamentally, they were opposites. From the beginning of their close associations as justices, the two men simply grated on each other's nerves. . . . Although in 1974 Douglas claimed that there had been no 'war' between him and Frankfurter, the evidence to the contrary was overwhelming. Frankfurter and Douglas, two important American jurists whose decades-long bitter debates (indeed, whose 'wars') contributed a great deal to our understanding of constitutionalism in a modern society, could not tolerate each other. Intentionally and unintentionally, they went out of their way to harass each other for over two decades."


title: William O. Douglas

text: Judge Richard A. Posner, who was a law clerk for justice William J. Brennan Jr. during the latter part of Douglas's tenure, characterized Douglas as "a bored, distracted, uncollegial, irresponsible" Supreme Court justice, as well as "rude, ice-cold, hot-tempered, ungrateful, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed" and so abusive in "treatment of his staff to the point where his law clerks—whom he described as 'the lowest form of human life'—took to calling him "shithead" behind his back." Posner asserts also that "Douglas's judicial oeuvre is slipshod and slapdash," but Douglas's "intelligence, his energy, his academic and government experience, his flair for writing, the leadership skills that he had displayed at the SEC, and his ability to charm when he bothered to try" could have let him "become the greatest justice in history." Brennan once stated that Douglas was one of only "two geniuses" he had met in his life (the other being Posner).


title: William O. Douglas

text: In general, legal scholars have noted that Douglas's judicial style was unusual in that he did not attempt to elaborate justifications for his judicial positions on the basis of text, history, or precedent. Douglas was known for writing short, pithy opinions which relied on philosophical insights, observations about current politics, and literature, as much as more conventional judicial sources. Douglas wrote many of his opinions in twenty minutes, often publishing the first draft. Douglas was also known for his fearsome work ethic, by publishing over thirty books and once telling an exhausted secretary, Fay Aull, "If you hadn't stopped working, you wouldn't be tired."


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas frequently disagreed with the other justices, dissenting in almost 40% of cases, more than half of the time writing only for himself. Ronald Dworkin would conclude that because Douglas believed his convictions were merely "a matter of his own emotional biases," Douglas would fail to meet "minimal intellectual responsibilities." Ultimately, Douglas believed that a judge's role was "not neutral" as "The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people."


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas has been widely characterized as a civil libertarian. On the bench, Douglas became known as a strong advocate of First Amendment rights. With fellow justice Hugo Black, Douglas argued for a "literalist" interpretation of the First Amendment, insisting that the First Amendment's command that "no law" shall restrict freedom of speech should be interpreted literally. He wrote the opinion in "Terminiello v. City of Chicago" (1949), overturning the conviction of a Catholic priest who allegedly caused a "breach of the peace" by making anti-Semitic comments during a raucous public speech. Douglas, joined by Black, furthered his advocacy of a broad reading of First Amendment rights by dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision in "Dennis v. United States" (1952), which affirmed the conviction of the leader of the U.S. Communist Party. Douglas was publicly critical of censorship, saying "The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth."


title: William O. Douglas

text: In 1944, Douglas voted with the majority to uphold the wartime internment of Japanese Americans in "Korematsu v. United States" after having initially planned to dissent, a vote he later regretted, but, over the course of his career, he grew to become a leading advocate of individual rights. He was suspicious of majority rule as it related to social and moral questions, and frequently expressed concern about forced conformity with "the Establishment". For example, Douglas wrote the decision in "Griswold v. Connecticut" (1965) in stating that a constitutional right to privacy forbids state contraception bans because "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance." That went too far for Hugo Black, who dissented in "Griswold" despite having been allies with Douglas. Justice Clarence Thomas would years later hang a sign in his chambers reading, "Please don't emanate in the penumbras." Conservative Judge Robert Bork had no objection to the concept of penumbras, writing, "There is nothing exceptional about [Douglas's] thought, other than the language of penumbras and emanations. Courts often give protection to a constitutional freedom by creating a buffer zone, by prohibiting a government from doing something not in itself forbidden but likely to lead to an invasion of a right specified in the Constitution." Prof. David P. Currie of the University of Chicago Law School called Douglas's "Griswold" opinion "one of the most hypocritical opinions in the history of the Court."


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas and Black also disagreed in "Fortson v. Morris" (1967), which cleared the path for the Georgia State Legislature to choose the governor in the deadlocked 1966 race between Democrat Lester Maddox and Republican Howard Callaway. Whereas Black voted with the majority under strict construction to uphold the state constitutional provision, Douglas and Abe Fortas dissented. According to Douglas, Georgia tradition would guarantee a Maddox victory but he had trailed Callaway by some 3,000 votes in the general election returns. Douglas also saw the issue as a continuation of the earlier decision "Gray v. Sanders", which had struck down Georgia's County Unit System, a kind of electoral college formerly used to choose the governor. According to political scientists Andrew D. Martin and Kevin M. Quinn, he was by far the most liberal justice in the history of the Supreme Court with a Martin-Quinn score of -8 at his most liberal. He voted to strike down the death penalty in "Furman v. Georgia", believed bans on the sale of hard-core pornography and advocacy of violent revolution to be unconstitutional, argued that the environment should be granted legal personhood, tried to declare the Vietnam War unconstitutional because Congress had never declared war, and generally showed an uncompromising defense of individual rights from which even stalwart liberals Brennan and Marshall shied away.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas was notable as a public pre-Stonewall supporter of gay rights. Douglas dissented in Boutilier v. INS in which the Court ruled that gays and lesbians were included in the list of “psychopathic personalities” that Congress could deport, arguing that the term “psychopathic personality” was unconstitutionally vague, and even if it were not, not all gays and lesbians are psychopaths.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In 1968, in a concurring opinion in the case of "Flast v. Cohen", Douglas indicated that he did not believe in judicial restraint.


title: William O. Douglas

text: There has long been a school of thought here that the less the judiciary does, the better. It is often said that judicial intrusion should be infrequent, since it is "always attended with a serious evil, namely, that the correction of legislative mistakes comes from the outside, and the people thus lose the political experience, and the moral education and stimulus that come from fighting the question out in the ordinary way, and correcting their own errors"; that the effect of a participation by the judiciary in these processes is "to dwarf the political capacity of the people, and to deaden its sense of moral responsibility." J. Thayer, John Marshall 106, 107 (1901).¶


title: William O. Douglas

text: The late Edmond Cahn, who opposed that view, stated my philosophy. He emphasized the importance of the role that the federal judiciary was designed to play in guarding basic rights against majoritarian control. ... His description of our constitutional tradition was in these words: "Be not reasonable with inquisitions, anonymous informers, and secret files that mock American justice. Be not reasonable with punitive denationalizations, ex post facto deportations, labels of disloyalty, and all the other stratagems for outlawing human beings from the community of mankind. These devices have put us to shame. Exercise the full judicial power of the United States; nullify them, forbid them, and make us proud again." Can the Supreme Court Defend Civil Liberties? in Samuel, ed., Toward a Better America 132, 144 -145 (1968).


title: William O. Douglas

text: "Critics have sometimes charged that [Douglas] was result oriented and guilty of oversimplification; those who understand how he thought, and who share his compassion, conscience, and sense of fair dealing, see him as courageous and farsighted." "There is no necessary contradiction between these two views."


title: William O. Douglas

text: On June 17, 1953, Douglas granted a temporary stay of execution to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been convicted of selling the plans for the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The basis for the stay was that Judge Irving Kaufman had sentenced the Rosenbergs to death without the consent of the jury. While this was permissible under the Espionage Act of 1917, under which the Rosenbergs were tried, a later law, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, held that only a jury could pronounce the death penalty. Since at the time the stay was granted the Supreme Court was out of session, this stay meant that the Rosenbergs could expect to wait at least six months before the case was heard.


title: William O. Douglas

text: When Attorney General Herbert Brownell heard about the stay, however, he immediately took his objection to Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who reconvened the Court before the appointed date and set aside the stay. Douglas had departed for vacation, but on learning of the special session of the Court, he returned to Washington. Because of widespread opposition to his decision, Douglas briefly faced impeachment proceedings in Congress, but attempts to remove him from the Court went nowhere.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas took strong positions on the Vietnam War. In 1952 Douglas traveled to Vietnam and met with Ho Chi Minh. During the trip Douglas became friendly with Ngo Dinh Diem and in 1953 he personally introduced the nationalist leader to senators Mike Mansfield and John F. Kennedy. Douglas became one of the chief promoters for U.S. support of Diem, with CIA deputy director Robert Amory crediting Diem becoming "our man in Indochina" to a conversation with Douglas during a party at Martin Agronsky's house.


title: William O. Douglas

text: After Diem's assassination in November 1963, Douglas became strongly critical of the war, believing Diem had been killed because he "was not sufficiently servile to Pentagon demands." Douglas now outspokenly argued the war was illegal, dissenting whenever the Court passed on an opportunity to hear such claims. In 1968 Douglas issued an order blocking the shipment of Army reservists to Vietnam, before the eight other justices unanimously reversed him.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In "Schlesinger v. Holtzman" (1973) Justice Thurgood Marshall issued an in-chambers opinion declining Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman's request for a court order stopping the military from bombing Cambodia. The Court was in recess for the summer but the Congresswoman reapplied, this time to Douglas. Douglas met with Holtzman's ACLU lawyers at his home in Goose Prairie, Washington, and promised them a hearing the next day. On Friday, August 3, 1973, Douglas held a hearing in the Yakima federal courthouse, where he dismissed the Government's argument that he was causing a "constitutional confrontation" by saying, "we live in a world of confrontations. That's what the whole system is about." On August 4, Douglas ordered the military to stop bombing, reasoning "denial of the application before me would catapult our airmen as well as Cambodian peasants into the death zone." The U.S. military ignored Douglas's order. Six hours later the eight other justices reconvened by telephone for a special term and unanimously overturned Douglas's ruling.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In his dissenting opinion in the landmark environmental law case "Sierra Club v. Morton", 405 U.S. 727 (1972), Douglas argued that "inanimate objects" should have standing to sue in court:


title: William O. Douglas

text: In his autobiographical "Of Men and Mountains" (1950), Douglas discusses his close childhood connections with nature. In the 1950s, proposals were made to create a parkway along the path of the C&O Canal, which ran on the Maryland bank parallel to the Potomac River. "The Washington Post" editorial page supported the action. However, Douglas, who frequently hiked on the Canal towpath, opposed the plan and challenged reporters to hike the 185 mile length of the Canal with him. After the hike, the "Post" changed its stance and advocated preservation of the Canal in its historic state. Douglas is widely credited with saving the Canal and with its eventual designation as a National Historic Park in 1971. He served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1960 to 1962 and wrote prolifically on his love of the outdoors. In 1962, Douglas wrote a glowing review of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring", which was included in the widely-read Book-of-the-Month Club edition.


title: William O. Douglas

text: He later swayed the Supreme Court to preserve the [[Red River Gorge]] in eastern Kentucky, when a proposal to build a dam and flood the gorge reached the Court. Douglas personally visited the area on November 18, 1967. The Red River Gorge's Douglas Trail is named in his honor.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In May 1962, Douglas and his wife, Cathleen, were invited by Neil Compton and the Ozark Society to visit and canoe down part of the free-flowing [[Buffalo National River|Buffalo River]] in Arkansas. They put in at the low water bridge at Boxley. That experience made him a fan of the river and the young organization's idea of protecting it. Douglas was instrumental in having the Buffalo preserved as a free-flowing river left in its natural state. The decision was opposed by the region's [[United States Army Corps of Engineers|Corps of Army Engineers]]. The act that soon followed designated the Buffalo River as America's first National River.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas was a self-professed outdoorsman. According to "The Thru-Hiker's Companion", a guide published by the [[Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association]], Douglas hiked the entire trail from Georgia to Maine. His love for the environment carried through to his judicial reasoning.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas's active role in advocating the preservation and protection of wilderness across the United States earned him the nickname "Wild Bill". Douglas was a friend and frequent guest of [[Harry R. Truman]], the owner of the [[Mount St. Helens]] Lodge at [[Spirit Lake (Washington)|Spirit Lake]] in Washington.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In 1967, on a hike to save [[Sunfish Pond]] on the [[Appalachian Trail]] in [[New Jersey]], Douglas was accompanied by more than a thousand people. He said: "It's a vital element in the need to save some of our wilderness from the encroachment of civilization."


title: William O. Douglas

text: From 1950 to 1961, Douglas travelled extensively in the Middle East and Asia. Douglas wrote many books about his experiences and observations during these trips. Other than writers from "National Geographic"—whom he sometimes met on the road—Douglas was one of the few American travel writers to visit these remote regions during this period in time. His travel books include:


title: William O. Douglas

text: In his memoir, "The Court Years", Douglas wrote that he was sometimes criticized for taking too much time off from the bench, and writing travel books while on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Douglas maintained that the travel gave him a world-wide perspective that was helpful in resolving cases before the Court. It also gave him a perspective on political systems that did not benefit from the legal protections in the American Constitution.


title: William O. Douglas

text: When, in early 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided not to support the renomination of Vice President [[Henry A. Wallace]] at the party's national convention, a short list of possible replacements was drafted. The names on the list included former senator and Supreme Court justice [[James F. Byrnes]] of South Carolina, former senator (and future Supreme Court justice) [[Sherman Minton]], former governor and [[High Commissioner to the Philippines|high commissioner to the Philippines]] [[Paul McNutt]] of Indiana, [[Speaker of the United States House of Representatives|House speaker]] [[Sam Rayburn]] of Texas, Senator [[Alben W. Barkley]] of Kentucky, Senator [[Harry S. Truman]] of Missouri, and Douglas.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Five days before the vice presidential nominee was to be chosen at the convention, on July 15, [[Democratic National Committee|Committee chairman]] [[Robert E. Hannegan]] received a letter from Roosevelt stating that his choice for the nominee would be either "Harry Truman or Bill Douglas". After Hannegan released the letter to the convention on July 20, the nomination went without incident, and Truman was nominated on the second ballot. Douglas received two votes on the second ballot and none on the first.


title: William O. Douglas

text: After the convention, Douglas's supporters spread the rumor that the note sent to Hannegan had read "Bill Douglas or Harry Truman", not the other way around. These supporters claimed that Hannegan, a Truman supporter, feared that Douglas's nomination would drive Southern white voters away from the ticket (Douglas had a strong anti-[[Racial segregation|segregation]] record on the Supreme Court) and had switched the names to suggest that Truman was Roosevelt's real choice.


title: William O. Douglas

text: By 1948, Douglas's presidential aspirations were rekindled by Truman's low popularity, after he had succeeded Roosevelt in 1945. Many Democrats, believing that Truman could not be elected in November, began trying to find a replacement candidate. Attempts were made to draft popular retired General [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], a war hero, for the nomination. A "Draft Douglas" campaign, complete with souvenir buttons and hats, sprang up in New Hampshire and several other primary states. Douglas campaigned for the nomination for a short time, but he soon withdrew his name from consideration.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In the end, Eisenhower refused to be drafted, and Truman won nomination easily. Although Truman approached Douglas about the vice presidential nomination, the justice turned him down. Douglas's close associate Tommy Corcoran was later heard to ask, "Why be a number two man to a number two man?" Truman selected Senator [[Alben W. Barkley]] and the two won the [[1948 United States presidential election|election]].


title: William O. Douglas

text: On June 17, 1953, U.S. Representative [[William McDonald Wheeler|William M. Wheeler]] of Georgia, infuriated by Douglas's brief [[stay of execution]] in the [[Julius and Ethel Rosenberg|Rosenberg case]], introduced a resolution to impeach him. The resolution was referred the next day to the Judiciary Committee to investigate the charges. On July 7, 1953, the committee voted to end the investigation.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas maintained a busy speaking and publishing schedule to supplement his income. He became severely burdened financially because of a bitter divorce and settlement with his first wife. He sustained additional financial setbacks after divorces and settlements with his second and third wives.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas became president of the Parvin Foundation. His ties to the foundation (which was financed by the sale of the infamous [[Flamingo Hotel]] by casino financier and foundation benefactor Albert Parvin) became a prime target for House Minority Leader [[Gerald Ford]]. Besides being personally disgusted by Douglas's lifestyle, Ford was also mindful that Douglas's protégé [[Abe Fortas]] was forced to resign because of ties to a similar foundation. Fortas would later say that he "resigned to save Douglas," thinking that the dual investigations of himself and Douglas would stop with his resignation.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Some scholars have argued that Ford's impeachment attempt was politically motivated. Those who support this contention note Ford's well-known disappointment with the Senate over the failed nominations of [[Clement Haynsworth]] and [[G. Harrold Carswell]] to succeed Fortas. In April 1970, Ford moved to impeach Douglas in an attempt to hit back at the Senate. House Judiciary Chairman [[Emanuel Celler]] handled the case carefully and did not uncover evidence of any criminal conduct by Douglas. Attorney General [[John N. Mitchell]] and the Nixon administration worked to gather evidence against him. Ford moved forward with the proceedings.


title: William O. Douglas

text: The hearings began in late April 1970. Ford was the main witness, and attacked Douglas's "liberal opinions", his "defense of the 'filthy' film", the controversial Swedish film "[[I Am Curious (Yellow)]]" (1970), and his ties to Parvin. Douglas was also criticized for accepting $350 for an article he wrote on [[folk music]] in the magazine "[[Avant Garde (magazine)|Avant Garde]]". Its publisher had served a prison sentence for the distribution of another magazine in 1966 that had been deemed obscene by some critics. Describing Douglas's article, Ford stated, "The article itself is not pornographic, although it praises the lusty, lurid, and risqué along with the social protest of left-wing folk singers." Ford also attacked Douglas for publishing an article in "[[Evergreen Review]]", which he claimed was known to publish photographs of naked women. The Republican congressmen, however, refused to give the majority Democrats copies of the magazines described, prompting Congressman [[Wayne Hays]] to remark, "Has anybody read the article – or is everybody over there who has a magazine just looking at the pictures?" As it became clear that the impeachment proceedings would be unsuccessful, they were brought to a close without a public vote.


title: William O. Douglas

text: According to Joshua E. Kastenberg of the [[University of New Mexico School of Law]], there were several purposes behind Ford's and Nixon's push to have Douglas impeached. First, while it was true that Nixon and Ford were angered at the Senate's determination not to confirm Haynsworth and Carswell, Nixon had a deep-seated hatred of Douglas. An attempt to have Douglas impeached and then brought to a Senate trial would further cement the alleged "Southern Strategy", as most of Ford's congressional allies against Douglas were Southern Democrats. Additionally, Nixon and Kissinger had secretly planned for a April 30 – May 1 invasion of Cambodia and Nixon thought that there was a possibility of using a House investigation into Douglas to deflect news coverage. Professor Kastenberg notes in his recent book on the subject that Attorney General John Mitchell and his deputy, William Wilson, had promised Ford that the Central Intelligence Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had evidence of Douglas's criminal conduct. In the end, however, none of these agencies had any evidence of wrongdoing by Douglas, but the promise led Ford to accuse Douglas of consorting with organized crime and Communists, and therefore of being a threat to national security.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Around this time, Douglas came to believe that strangers snooping around his Washington home were [[FBI]] agents, attempting to plant [[marijuana]] to entrap him. In a private letter to his neighbors, he said: "I wrote you last fall or winter that federal agents were in Yakima and Goose Prairie looking me over at Goose Prairie. I thought they were merely counting fence posts. But I learned in New York City yesterday that they were planting marijuana with the prospect of a nice big TV-covered raid in July or August. I forgot to tell you that this gang in power is not in search of truth. They are 'search and destroy' people."


title: William O. Douglas

text: During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Douglas set a number of records, all of which still stand. He sat on the U.S. Supreme Court for more than thirty-six years (1939–75), longer than any other justice. During those years, he wrote some thirty books in addition to his [[legal opinions|opinions]] and [[dissenting opinion]]s and gave more speeches than any other justice. Douglas had the most marriages (four) and the most divorces (three) of any justice serving on the bench.


title: William O. Douglas

text: During his time on the Supreme Court, Douglas picked up a number of [[nicknames]] from both admirers and detractors. The most common epithet was "Wild Bill" in reference to his independent and often-unpredictable stances and his [[cowboy]]-style mannerisms, but many of the latter were considered by some to be affectations for the consumption of the press.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Since the 1970 impeachment hearings, Douglas had wanted to retire from the Court. He wrote to his friend and former student [[Abe Fortas]]: "My ideas are way out of line with current trends, and I see no particular point in staying around and being obnoxious." However, he did not want to do so when a Republican was in the White House and would nominate his successor, saying "I won't resign while there's a breath in my body —until we get a Democratic President."


title: William O. Douglas

text: At 76 on December 31, 1974, on vacation with his wife Cathleen in the [[Bahamas]], Douglas suffered a debilitating stroke in the right hemisphere of his brain. It paralyzed his left leg and forced him to use a wheelchair. Douglas was severely disabled but insisted on continuing to participate in Supreme Court affairs despite his obvious incapacity. Seven of his fellow justices (with [[Byron White|Bryon White]] disagreeing) voted to postpone until the next term any argued case in which Douglas's vote might make a difference. At the urging of Fortas, Douglas finally retired on November 12, 1975, after 36 years of service. He had been the last serving Supreme Court justice to have been appointed by Roosevelt. Indeed, Douglas had outlasted the last of [[Harry S. Truman Supreme Court candidates|Harry S. Truman's appointments]] by eight years and was the last sitting justice to have served on the [[Hughes Court|Hughes]], [[Stone Court (judges)|Stone]], and [[Vinson Court|Vinson]] Courts.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas's formal resignation was submitted, as required by federal protocols, to his longtime political nemesis, then-President [[Gerald Ford]]. In his response, Ford put aside previous differences and paid tribute to the retiring justice:May I express on behalf of all our countrymen this nation's great gratitude for your more than thirty-six years as a member of the Supreme Court. Your distinguished years of service are unequaled in all the history of the Court.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Ford hosted William and Cathleen Douglas as honored guests at a White House [[state dinner]] later that month. Ford later said of the occasion, "We had had differences in the past, but I wanted to stress that bygones were bygones."


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas maintained that he could assume judicial [[senior status]] on the Court and attempted to continue serving in that capacity, according to authors [[Bob Woodward]] and [[Scott Armstrong (journalist)|Scott Armstrong]]. He refused to accept his retirement and tried to participate in the Court's cases well into 1976, after [[John Paul Stevens]] had taken his former seat. Douglas reacted with outrage when, returning to his old chambers, he discovered that his clerks had been reassigned to Stevens, and when he tried to file opinions in cases whose arguments he had heard before his retirement, Chief Justice [[Warren Burger]] ordered all justices, clerks, and other staff members to refuse help to Douglas in those efforts. When Douglas tried in March 1976 to hear arguments in a capital-punishment case, "[[Gregg v. Georgia]]", the nine sitting justices signed a formal letter informing him that his retirement had ended his official duties on the Court. It was only then that Douglas withdrew from Supreme Court business.


title: William O. Douglas

text: One commentator has attributed some of his behavior after his stroke to [[anosognosia]], which can lead an affected person to be unaware and unable to acknowledge disease in himself, and often results in defects in reasoning, decision-making, emotions, and feeling.


title: William O. Douglas

text: Douglas's first wife was Mildred Riddle, a teacher at [[A.C. Davis High School (Washington)|North Yakima High School]] six years his senior, whom he married on August 16, 1923. They had two children, Mildred and William Jr. They were divorced on July 20, 1953. Douglas was not informed about Riddle's 1969 death until several months had passed because his children had stopped talking to him. William Douglas Jr. became an actor, playing Gerald Zinser in "[[PT 109 (film)|PT 109]]".


title: William O. Douglas

text: On October 2, 1949, Douglas had thirteen of his ribs broken after he got thrown by a horse and he tumbled down a rocky hillside. As a result of his injuries, Douglas did not return to the Court until March 1950, and did not take part in many of that term's cases. Four months after his return to the court, Douglas had to be hospitalized again when he was kicked by a horse.


title: William O. Douglas

text: While still married to Riddle, Douglas began openly pursuing Mercedes Hester Davidson in 1951. Other justices at the time kept mistresses as secretaries or kept them away from the Court building according to Douglas's messenger Harry Datcher, but Douglas "did what he did in the open. He didn't give a damn what people thought of him." He divorced Riddle in 1953. Douglas's former friend [[Thomas Gardiner Corcoran]] represented Riddle in the divorce, securing alimony with an "escalator clause" that financially motivated Douglas to publish more books. Douglas married Davidson on December 14, 1954.


title: William O. Douglas

text: In 1961, Douglas pursued Joan "Joanie" Martin, an [[Allegheny College]] student writing her thesis on him. In the summer of 1963, he divorced Davidson; later that year, at the age of 64, Douglas married 23-year-old Martin on August 5, 1963. Douglas and Martin divorced in 1966.


title: William O. Douglas

text: On July 15, 1966, Douglas married Cathleen Heffernan, then a 22-year-old student at [[Marylhurst University|Marylhurst College]]. They met when he was vacationing at [[Mount St. Helens]] Lodge, a mountain wilderness lodge in Washington state at [[Spirit Lake (Washington)|Spirit Lake]], where she was working for the summer as a waitress. Though their [[Age disparity in sexual relationships|age difference]] was a subject of national controversy at the time of their marriage, they remained together until his death in 1980.