On this day (April 15) in 1970, Congressman Gerald R. Ford, Republican of Michigan and House minority leader, called for the impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas.
Douglas’ offense? Writing for magazines.
The magazines in question were Avant Garde and the Evergreen Review. Avant Garde had paid Douglas $350 for an article on folk singing published in its March 1969 issue. The Evergreen Review bought an excerpt from Douglas’ latest book, “Points of Rebellion.” Both the publications themselves and the fact that Douglas had accepted money from them figured in Ford’s attack on Douglas’ “misbehavior.”
“When I first encountered the facts of Mr. Justice Douglas’ involvement with pornographic publications and espousal of hippie-yippie style revolution I was inclined to dismiss his fractious behavior as the first sign of senility,” Ford said. “But I believe I underestimated the Justice.”
As a visual aid, Ford produced a copy of the April 1970 issue of the Evergreen Review, which included Douglas’ article. “Perhaps the name [Evergreen] has some secret erotic significance, because otherwise it may be the only clean word in this publication,” Ford said. “I am simply unable to describe the prurient advertisements, the perverted suggestions, the downright filthy illustrations and the shocking and execrable four-letter language it employs,” he said.
Ford called his colleagues’ attention to a section of photographs in the issue: “There are nude models of both sexes in poses that are perhaps more shocking than the postcards that used to be sold only in the back alleys of Paris and Panama City.”
While Ford maintained that the Evergreen Review made Avant Garde look like “a family publication,” he also pointed out that Avant Garde’s editor and publisher, Ralph Ginzburg, had been convicted in 1963 for sending obscene literature through the mails, namely his magazine Eros. The case made it to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled five to four against Ginzberg, with Douglas dissenting.
In 1963, Ford noted, Ginzburg was involved in another controversy, when his magazine Fact: published the results of a poll of psychiatrists, the majority of whom concluded that the Republicans’ presidential candidate for 1964, Barry Goldwater, was psychologically unfit for the job. Goldwater sued Ginzburg for libel, and that case also ended up before the Supreme Court, where Douglas again sided with Ginzburg.
Ford's entire speech is available here.
A House committee looked into Ford’s charges but decided, later in 1970, that there were insufficient grounds for impeaching Douglas. He retired from the court in 1975, after 36 years, its longest serving member to date.
By then, of course, Ford had become president, the result of a more successful impeachment initiative. That gave him the opportunity to nominate Douglas’ successor on the court. His choice was John Paul Stevens, who seems not to have contributed to any controversial magazines.
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