Goals of Liberty
Wright, Charles Alan
Goals of Liberty The Right of the People, by William O. Douglas. Doubleday. 238 pp. $4. Reviewed by Charles Alan Wright "Tn recent years as we have de-J- nounced the loss of liberty abroad we...
...In this lecture Douglas considers every important Supreme Court decision about freedom of expression and finds not a single instance in which suppression was justified by his test...
...His own belief is that the absolute language of the First Amendment should be applied in a virtually absolute manner, allowing speech to be suppressed only where "speech is so closely brigaded with action that it is in essence a part of an overt act...
...Even against that background Douglas has the courage to call for drastic change...
...Present law and practice are compared with the ideal in such varied areas as legislative investigations, loyalty oaths, religious freedom, wiretapping, and abusive police practices...
...Reviewed by Charles Alan Wright "Tn recent years as we have de-J- nounced the loss of liberty abroad we have witnessed its decline here...
...Necessarily abridgements of the right to be let alone must be measured against a standard of reasonableness...
...Douglas is at his best in stating its implications in a form feasible in the present world...
...It may seem unimportant that a miserable person is forced to confess to a crime...
...But no thinking person is likely to dispute Justice Douglas' statement that these are the goals to which a free country must aspire...
...The concept of liberty, as Douglas views it, is both inspiring and breathtaking...
...These changes will hardly take place overnight...
...The final lecture, in many ways the most provocative if also the most technical, examines the much-neglected right of civilians to be free from military domination...
...In those words, taken from the Foreword, Justice Douglas states the justification for this book...
...But in the sweep of history, a nation that accepts that practice as normal, a country that engages in wire-tapping, a people that exalts the ends over the means have no claim to a position of moral leadership among the nations...
...Here are discussed such topics as the dangerous tendency to let the armed forces, rather than the civil authorities, decide important questions of foreign policy, attempts by military tribunals to try civilians, and abuses of martial law...
...It is time to put an end to the retreat...
...No absolute answer will suffice here, not only because the relevant provisions of the Bill of Rights are more qualified than is the First Amendment, but also because we patently cannot bar all legislative investigations or all searches by the police...
...The second lecture takes up a number of problems of individual liberty under the general heading, "The Right to Be Let Alone" (one of two chapters adapted for the December and January issues of The Progressive...
...That view, Douglas says, "has done more to undermine liberty in this country than any other single force...
...Here Douglas takes his stand firmly on the First Amendment and its flat prohibition of any law abridging freedom of speech or of the press...
...The first lecture deals with freedom of expression...
...Justice Douglas is no more successful in defining this standard than the Supreme Court itself has been—but he is eloquent in pointing out the ancient truth that a particular practice cannot be regarded as "reasonable" merely because it is effective in ferreting out criminals or subversives: "The means are all important in a civilized society...
...He rejects Judge Learned Hand's view that these words are "no more than admonitions of moderation...
...We have, indeed, been retreating from our democratic ideals at home...
...The Seventeenth Century rallying cry, "no standing armies," is not likely to be realized in the foreseeable future...
...In the book, which contains three lectures delivered at Franklin & Marshall College, Douglas undertakes to define what individual liberty must be, in the context of 1958, if democratic ideals are to be achieved...
...The Supreme Court received torrents of unjustified and intemperate abuse for the few tiny steps it took last June in the direction of the democratic ideal...
...Indeed it is useful to remember that on the legal and constitutional issues involved, there are arguments for a position contrary to Douglas', arguments sufficiently strong that they have consistently had the support of a majority of the Supreme Court...
Vol. 22 • March 1958 • No. 3
