DOUBT
To question or hold questionable. Uncertainty of
mind; the absence of a settled opinion or conviction;
the attitude of mind toward the acceptance of
or belief in a proposition, theory, or statement, in
which the judgment is not at rest but inclines
alternately to either side.
Proof
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT is not
beyond all possible or imaginary doubt, but
such proof as precludes every reasonable
HYPOTHESIS except that which it tends to support.
It is proof to a moral certainty, that is, such
proof as satisfies the judgment and consciences
of the jury, as reasonable people and applying
their reason to the evidence before them, that
the crime charged has been committed by the
defendant, and so satisfies them as to leave no
other reasonable conclusion possible.
A
REASONABLE DOUBT is such a doubt as would
cause a reasonable and prudent person in the
graver and more important affairs of life to
pause and hesitate to act upon the truth of the
matter charged. It does not mean a mere possible
doubt, because everything relating to human
affairs, and depending on moral evidence, is
open to some possible or imaginary doubt.
v
DOUGLAS, STEPHEN ARNOLD
Stephen Arnold Douglas achieved prominence

1868 14th Amendment
gave citizenship rights
to former slaves
1852, 1856
Unsuccessfully
sought
Democratic
nomination for
president
1843–47
Represented
Illinois in U.S.
House
▼▼
▼▼
18001800
18501850
18751875
18251825
1858 Debated Abraham Lincoln seven
times; won reelection to Senate
1861 Died, Chicago, Ill.
1847–61 Represented Illinois in U.S. Senate
1850 Helped formulate Popular Sovereignty
section of the Compromise of 1850
1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision
denied citizenship to African Americans
1860 Chosen as Democratic candidate for
president, but lost to Republican Lincoln
❖

antislavery forces in Kansas clashed in a violent
action. Two separate governments were estab-
lished, the Lecompton, or proslavery, faction
and the abolitionist faction. Douglas vehement-
ly opposed the Lecompton Constitution, and
criticized President James Buchanan’s support
of such a measure. After much violence and
debate, Kansas was admitted as a free state.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN and Douglas were oppo-
nents in the Illinois senatorial election of 1858,
and they met seven times throughout their
campaign to debate the issues. Thes e arguments
were the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, and
several of Douglas’s responses won him disfavor
with southern Demo crats. Although he won the
senatorial election, this faction was res ponsible
for Douglas’s removal from the Committee on
Territories.
In 1860 Douglas fared better with the
Democrats, and his Popular Sovereignty policy
was incorporated into the national program. He
was chosen as the Democratic candidate for
the presidential election. The southern Demo-
crats still refused to accept him and supported
their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge. Both
Douglas and Breckenridge lost the election to
the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Douglas
staunchly supported the newly elected Lincoln.
Adept at public speaking, Douglas’s last contri-

civil liberties on the high court in seminal cases
interpreting
FREEDOM OF SPEECH, privacy, PORNOG-
RAPHY
, TREASON, the rights of the accused, the
limits of the military, the limits of Congress,
and even the limits of the
PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES
. As an outspoken New Deal
reformer and a popular libertarian, he was
courted by the
DEMOCRATIC PARTY for high
political office, and likewise excoriated by
leading Republicans who three times tried to
IMPEACH him. A man of enormous energy, he did
not confine his public views to opinions from
William Orville Douglas 1898–1980
❖
1898 Born,
Maine, Minn.
◆
1925 Graduated
from Columbia
Law School
◆
1951–52 Defended
First Amendment free
speech rights in
dissents in Dennis v.

World War I
1961–73
Vietnam War
1939–45
World War II
1950–53
Korean War
▼▼
▼▼
19001900
19501950
19751975
20002000
19251925
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
DOUGLAS, WILLIAM ORVILLE 9
the U.S. Supreme Court alone, but wrote more
than 30 books on a variety of legal and social
topics. As an engaging storyteller, vigorous
outdoorsman, and blunt social critic, he was
irresistible to the liberal press, under whose
influence he was named Father of the Year in
1950. At his death in 1980, he was lionized as
an outstanding protector of freedoms.
Since his death, however, historians have
criticized both his public career and his private
life. From his position on the U.S. Supreme
Court, he twice flirted with a place on the
presidential ticket—with
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

insisted on lingering in his judicial office for
months, demanding attention as though he
were still on the Court.
This brilliant and complex man was born
October 16, 1898, in Maine, Minnesota. He grew
up in small towns of rural Minnesota, California,
and Washington as his family moved in search of
a climate that would preserve the frail health of
his father, a hardworking Presbyterian minister
of Scottish pioneer ancestry. Douglas’s father
died in Washington when the boy was five,
leaving the family with only a meager inheri-
tance, which a local attorney immediately
squandered on a foolish investment. Douglas’s
widowed mother, Julia Bickford Fiske Douglas,
had saved just enough to buy a house for the
family in Yakima (Washington), across the street
from the elementary school, where she raised
Douglas and his two siblings on the virtues of
hard work and high ambition as preparation for
success in life. All three of the children achieved
success in school and in professional life, but
William was brilliant: valedictorian of his high
school class, Phi Beta Kappa at Whitman
College, and second in his class and on the
LAW
REVIEW
at Columbia Law School.
Polio had stricke n Douglas when he was an
infant, and the local doctor had advised the

tuition. While in law school, in 1924 he married
Mildred Riddle, with whom he had his only
two children, Millie Douglas and
WILLIAM O.
DOUGLAS Jr. The marriage ended in divorce
29 years later.
After graduating from Columbia Law School
in 1925, he practiced in a Wall Street firm for
one year before joining the faculty at Columbia.
A year later, he went to teach at Yale, where he
specialized in corporate law and finance, writing
respected casebooks and gaining recognition as
an expert in those fields. Desperate for a cure
for the continuous headaches and stomach
pains that had plagued him since his days on
Wall Street, he briefly undertook psychoanalysis
at Yale.
Following the stock market crash of 1929,
Douglas did original and painstaking work with
the help of sociologist Dorothy S. Thomas,
interviewing failed businesses in
BANKRUPTCY
court to determine the causes of their loss. He
was asked to head a study committee of the
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC)in
1934. In 1936 he became a member of the
SEC, and in 1937 he was appointed chairman
with the man date from Franklin D. Roosevelt to
reform practices of the stock exchange that
had led to the great crash.

In 1951, when fears of
COMMUNISM exacer-
bated by the public ravings of Senator
JOSEPH R.
MCCARTHY overtook the nation, Douglas’sdissent
in Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S. Ct.
857, 95 L. Ed. 1137 (1951), defended the
FIRST
AMENDMENT
free speech rights of Eugene Dennis
and ten other members of the American
Communist Party who admitted teaching the
works of
KARL MARX, Friedrich Engels, VLADIMIR
LENIN
,andJOSEPH STALIN.Douglasarguedthat
despite current fears of communist influence in
U.S. society, their speech alone presented no
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to the nation. Similarly,
in dissent, he defended the First Amendment
rights of several New York schoolteachers who
had challenged the state’sFeinberglaw(Educ.
Law N.Y.S. 3022) giving authorities the right to
compile a list of subversive organizations to
which a teacher could not belong. Douglas wrote
that teachers need the guarantee of free expres-
sion more than anyone and that the Feinberg
Law “turned the school system into a spying
project” (Alder v. Board of Education of City of
New York, 342 U.S. 485, 72 S. Ct. 380, 96 L. Ed.

—WILLIAM O.
D
OUGLAS
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
DOUGLAS, WILLIAM ORVILLE 11
of the cold war (Rosenberg v. United States, 346
U.S. 273, 73 S. Ct. 1173, 97 L. Ed. 1607 [1953]).
After voting four times not to hear the case, he
finally ordered a stay at the last possible minute,
and then headed off on vacation. Unable to
reach Douglas en route, the other justices called
a special session to vacate the stay, and the
Rosenbergs were executed. Douglas’s colleagues
accused him of grandstanding. His enemies
in Congress accused him of treason, and he
survived three
IMPEACHMENT attempts led by
GERALD R . FORD. Ford, eager to be rid of Douglas,
declared that “an impeachable offense is
whatever a majority of the House of Repre-
sentatives considers it to be at a given moment
in history.” However, Douglas was not a traitor
but an adamant civil libertarian, unwilling to let
the heavy hand of the government crush any
individual’s rights.
During the tenure of Chief Justice
EARL
WARREN
(1953–69), Douglas found more frequent
majorities for his activist philosophy. He took a

GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct.
1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, striking down a state law
that prohibited the use of contrac eptives. In the
opinion, he argued that, taken together, the
First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments
created a constitutional right to privacy. This
may have been Douglas’s most influential
single opinion on the Court. He argued that
the government did not belong in the bedroom,
which was one of the “zones of privacy”
protected by “penumbras” emanating from the
specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Criticism
of the Griswold opinion was fierce. But based on
this right to privacy, a majority of the Court,
Douglas concurring, would vote for a woman’s
right to have an
ABORTION in ROE V. WADE, 410 U.
S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973).
Douglas made no secret of his long-standing
dislike for the Vietnam War. In the fall of 1967,
he dissented from the Court’s decision not
to review several cases that might have raised
the issue of the legality of the Vietnam War.
On August 4, 1973, in a solitary performance
reminiscent of the Rosenberg stay of execution,
acting from the Yakima courthouse near his
summer vacation home, Douglas reinstated a
lower-court order to stop the Nixon adminis-
tration’s bombing of Cambodia and, in effect,
bring the Vietnam War to a halt by judicial

Felled by a stroke in 1974, Douglas became
confined to a wheelchair pushed by an aide,
wracked by constant pain, glazed by medication,
and increasingly incoherent. But he would not
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
12 DOUGLAS, WILLIAM ORVILLE
resign. He tried to return to the Court in 1975,
refusing all advice to the contrary. His presence
was embarrassing to the Court and impossible to
sustain. He officially resigned on November 12,
1975, but tried to hang on to an unofficial role as
the Court’s tenth justice. When even his clerks
would not support his fantasy, he prepared a
statement of farewell to be read to the justices on
his behalf while he sat in his wheelchair. His
farewell compared the relationship he had shared
with his Court colleagues to the slow warm
growth of friendships on a camping trip in the
wilderness. His colleagues wept.
Douglas died on January 19, 1980, in
Washington, D.C.
Douglas had shattered the popular view of
the high court as a somber gathering of elderly
people in black robes pondering the weighty
truths of the Constitution. His irrepressible per-
sonality, extralegal activities, popular book writ-
ing, and serial marriages brought unprecedented
color and controversy to the Court. A libertari-
an by disposition and principle, he would not
easily allow the government to abridge the

Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amend-
ments to the U.S. Constitution, which were
created in large measure to protect, respectively,
the freedom, citizenship, and voting rights of
ex-slaves. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass (1845) is a classic account of the
dehumanizing effects of slavery for slave and
slaveholder alike.
According to his own calculations, Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey was born in Febru-
ary 1817, on a plantation west of the Tuckahoe
River in Talbot County, Maryland. (As an adult,
he celebrated his birthday on February 14.) His
mother was a black slave, and his father most
likely her white owner. Douglass was separated
from his mother at an early age, and at age
seven he was sent to Baltimore to work for a
family. He later regarded this change from the
plantation to the city as a great stroke of fortune
because in Baltimore he was able to begin
educating himself. His master’s wife taught him
the alphabet, and Douglass, under the tutelage
of young boys on the streets and docks,
proceeded to teach himself how to read and
Frederick Douglass 1817(?)–1895
❖
❖
◆
1817 Born Frederick
Augustus Washington

N.Y.; founded
the North Star
1888–91 Served as
minister resident and
consul general to Haiti
◆
1868 14th Amendment gave
citizenship rights to former slaves
1870 15th Amendment established
right of all male citizens to vote
1881–86
Served as
recorder
of deeds
for D.C.
1865 13th Amendment
abolished slavery
◆
1872 Became first
African American
nominated
for vice president
NO MAN CAN PUT A
CHAIN ABOUT THE
ANKLE OF HIS FELLOW
MAN WITHOUT AT
LAST FINDING THE
OTHER END FASTENED
ABOUT HIS OWN
NECK

reputation as an eloquent speaker for the cause.
In 1841 he met Garrison and was recruited to
speak for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
Throughout his life, he would travel all over
the United States on speaking engagements,
becoming a famous and sought-after orator.
In part to refute those who did not believe
that someone as eloquent as he had once been
a slave, Douglass published Narrative of the Life
of Frederick Douglass in 1845. The book became
a bestseller and made Douglass into a celebrity.
It also made known his status as a fugitive slave,
and he was forced to flee to the British Isles
for safety in 1845. During his travels, he was
greatly impressed by the relative lack of racism
in Ireland, England, and Scotland. English
friends purchased his legal freedom in 1846,
paying his old master $711.66.
Upon his return to the States in 1847,
Douglass settled in Rochester, New York, and
founded his own abolitionist newspaper, the
North Star. In its pages, he published writers and
focused on achievements. He also wrote highly
influential editorials f or the paper. Douglass
published a series of newspapers, including
Frederick Douglass’ Weekly, until 1863.
Douglass continued to lecture widely and
became sympathetic to other reformist causes
of the day, including the temperance, peace,
and feminist movements. By the 1850s and

Americans in the military.
Frederick Douglass.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION
14 DOUGLASS, FREDERICK
After the Thirteenth Amendment had been
ratified in 1865, some abolitionists pronounced
their work finished. Douglass argued that much
more remained to be done, and he continued to
struggle for the rights of former slaves. He called
for voting rights, the repeal of racially discrimi-
natory laws, and the redistribution of land in
the South. Although disappointed that land
redistribution was never achieved, he was
encouraged by the passage of the Fourteenth
(1868) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments,
which, respectively, protected aga inst the in-
fringement of constitutional rights by the states
and established the right of all citizens to vote.
Although these constitutional amendments
appeared to guarantee the
CIVIL RIGHTS of newly-
freed African American, the actual laws and
practices of states and localities continued to
discriminate against blacks. They were also
harassed by violence from private groups. The
KU KLUX KLA N waged a campaign of terror against
blacks who sought to exercise their civil rights,
and white lynch mobs killed hundreds of men
each year. Douglass spoke out against these

the little known Equal Rights Party in 1872.
Until the end of his life, Douglass continued
to lecture and write for the cause of freedom.
He died on February 20, 1895, in Washington,
D.C., after attending a meeting of the National
Council of Women.
FURTHER READINGS
Chesnutt, Charles. 2002. Frederick Douglass. Mineola, NY:
Dover. Available online at />etext/10986; website home page: enberg.
org (accessed July 20, 2009).
Douglass, Frederick. 2008. The Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass. Blacksburg, Va.: Wilder
McKivigan, John R., ed. 2004. Frederick Douglass. San Diego,
Calif.: Greenhaven.
Mieder, Wolfgang. 2001. “No Struggle, No Progress”.
Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial Rhetoric for Civil
Rights. New York: Lang.
Miller, Douglas T. 2002. Frederick Douglass and the Fight
for Freedom. New York: Replica.
Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. 2004. Creative Conflict in African
American Thought. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
CROSS REFERENCES
Celia, a Slave; Civil Rights Acts; Civil Rights Cases; Dred
Scott v. Sandford; Jim Crow Laws; Prigg v. Pennsylvania.
DOWER
The provision that the law makes for a widow out
of the lands or tenements of her husband, for her
support and the nurture of her children. A species
of life estate that a woman is, by law, entitled to
claim on the death of her husband, in the lands

a transfer of property made to defraud, delay,
or hinder a creditor, or in this case, the wife, or
to place such property beyond the creditor’s
reach—by the husband in contemplation of, or
subsequent to, the marriage. Protection is also
available against the claims of creditors if the
claims arose after the marriage. The posting of
security can be required to protect the interest if
oil, gas, or other substances are removed from
the land, which thereby results in a deprecia-
tion—a reduction of worth—with respect to the
value of the estate. Decisions supporting a
contrary view take the position that a wife
cannot interfere with her husband’s complete
enjoyment of the land during his lifetime.
A wife can relinquish her inchoate right of
dower by an antenuptial agreement—which is
a contract entered into by the prospective
spouses prior to the marriage that resolves
issues of support, division of property, and
distribution of wealth in the event of death,
separation, or divorce—or by a release, that is,
the relinquishment of a right, claim, or privilege.
The claim of dower is based upon proof of a
legally recognized marriage, as distinguished from
a
GOOD FAITH marriage or a DE FACTO marriage—
one in which the parties live together as husband
and wife but that is invalid for certain reasons,
such as defects in form. A voidable marriage, one

dower has been abolished and replaced by the
elective share. In others, statutes expressly pro-
vide that a spouse choose among the elective
share, the dower, or the provisions of the will.
COMMON LAW prescribes that an absolute
DIVORCE will bar a claim of dower. A legal
separation—sometimes labeled a divorce from
bed and board, a mensa et thoro—does not end
the marital relationship. Unless there is an
express statute, such a divorce will not defeat
a claim of dower. This is also true with respect
to an
INTERLOCUTORY decree of divorce, an
interim or temporary court order.
In some states, statutes provide that dower
can be denied upon proof of particular types of
misconduct, such as
ADULTERY, which is volun-
tary sexual intercourse of a married person with
a person other than his or her spouse. Statutes
in several states preserve dower if a divorc e
or legal separation is obtained due to the fault
of the other spouse.
In many states, statutes provide that a
murderer is not entitled to property rights in
the estate of the victim upon the principle that
a person must not be allowed to profit from
personal wrong. Following this theory, a
CONSTRUCTIVE TRUST will be declared in favor of
the heirs or devisees of the deceased spouse.

GOOD FAITH intention as well as an ability to pay
the balance.
DRACONIAN LAWS
A code of laws prepared by Draco, the celebrated
lawgiver of Athens, that, by modern standards, are
considered exceedingly severe. The term draconian
has come to be used to refer to any unusually
harsh law.
DRAFT
A written order by the first party, called the
drawer, instructing a second party, called the
drawee (such as a bank), to pay money to a third-
party, called the payee. An order to pay a sum
certain in money, signed by a drawer, payable on
demand or at a definite time, to order or bearer.
A tentative, provisional, or prepara tory writ-
ing out of any document (as a will, contract, lease,
and so on) for purposes of discussion and
correction, which is afterward to be prepared in
its final form.
Compulsory
CONSCRIPTION of persons into
military service.
Also, a small arbitrary deduction or allowance
made to a merchant or importer, in the case of
goods sold by weight or taxable by wei ght, to cover
possible loss of weight in handling or from
differences in scales.
A draft that is payable on demand is called a
SIGHT DRAFT because the drawee must comply with

Arctic Ocean
United States of America
U.S.A.
Canada
Mexico
Brazil
Argentina
Uruguay
Paraguay
Chile
Bolivia
Peru
Ecuador
Colombia
Venezuela
French Guiana (Fr.)
Suriname
Guyana
The Bahamas
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Panama
Costa Rica
Nicaragua
Honduras
Guatemala
El Salvador
Trinidad and Tobago
Jam.
Haiti