William O. Douglas, Sterling Professor of Law, 1928-36
William O. Douglas
REFERENCES:
Robert W. Gordon, “Professors and Policymakers,” in Anthony T. Kronman, ed., History of the Yale Law School (2004).
Laura Kalman, Legal Realism at Yale 1927-1960 (1986).
View telegram showing the perception that Douglas had of the Wall Street reception to his appointment as the SEC Chair.
View YLS Bulletin announcing the creation of the joint program between the Law School and the Harvard Business School.
William Orville Douglas (1898-1980) had a short but remarkably productive career as an academic. Lured away from the University of Chicago in 1928, Douglas was at Yale for only five years before embarking on his long career in the public sector. In 1934 he started commuting between New Haven and Washington, D.C. to direct a study on creditor protective committees in corporate insolvency reorganizations for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Douglas took a formal leave of absence in 1936 when he became a commissioner of the agency, and resigned in 1937 when he was appointed chairman of the Commission. In 1939, he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until he retired in 1975.
During his tenure at Yale, Justice Douglas became one of the most prominent corporate law scholars of his generation, writing foundational articles on business tort liability, corporate reorganizations, and the Securities Act of 1933. Associated with the Legal Realist movement, Justice Douglas was concerned with the real-life effects of formal legal doctrines. To this end, he carried out a massive study of corporate bankruptcies in New York. Like many of the Realists, he was also an innovator in legal education. He authored casebooks that radically reorganized how business law was to be taught, and was involved in the creation of a joint law and business program between the Law School and the Harvard Business School, the first of its kind. Justice Douglas’ casebooks were pioneering because they focused on what businesses did – the allocation of resources, control, and losses – in contrast to the traditional casebook organized around legal forms (agency, partnerships, and corporations). Although the books were not commercial successes, the core insight of his approach is the basis for the study of business law today.
A professorship was established in his honor at the Law School in 1989.