Customer Reviews

The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglass and American Conservation

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This is a readable and effective study of the role William Douglas played in mid-century environmental conservation, in large part while he was on the bench of the Supreme Court. More than that, though, this book provides a well-written view of changing passions for nature's open spaces from before WWII through the birth of the modern environmental movement by the 1970s. Douglas is not an entirely sympathetic character--he comes across as gruff, difficult to get along with, probably a bit irascible--but Sowards does a nice job of identifying these character traits. He then uses most of the book to explain how the Justice took the imprint of his childhood backyard in Washington State and expressed it through a consistent lifelong passion for trails and parks and mountains across America. (As someone from the mid-Atlantic who has walked parts of the C&O Canal trail many times, I was most interested to learn about the role Douglas played in protecting that trail from development.) Readers will learn about how Justice Douglas worked to conserve those spaces for the future through his personal advocacy and through his support on the bench for the rise of new environmental legislation into the 1970s. I'd say this book does what most good histories do, which is to bring a broader awareness of past figures and decisions to light. And in a clear and effective way.