William O. Douglas Quotes

Segregation is a very simple constitutional question for me: No classification on the basis of race can be made.

The Constitution doesn’t say that whites alone shall have our basic rights.., but that we shall all have them

The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.

Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.

Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.

The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.

Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state.

When the 14th Amendment, equal protection clause was enacted, the galleries in the Senate were segregated. Now we have integration.

If the gentlemen from the South really want to take such action, let them propose a constitutional amendment that will deny to the colored people of the country equality of rights under the Constitution, and see how far they will get with the American people.

Essentially, Eisenhower passed on to his successors the problem of guaranteeing constitutional rights to Negro citizens.

Race has no place in American life or law.

Its whole effect is not to confer or regulate rights, but to require that whatever of these enumerated rights and obligations are imposed by State laws shall ... be without distinction based on race.

Whatever rights as to each of these enumerated civil (not political) matters the State may confer upon one race ... shall be held by all races in equality … It secures … equality of protection in those enumerated civil rights which the States may deem proper to confer upon any races.

The South opposes the civil rights of Negroes and their protection by law. Witness lynchings where no one is punished, witness the Jim Crow laws that deny the letter and spirit of the Constitution. For democracy to have real meaning, the Negro must have the same civil rights as any other American citizen. It seems obvious that the South does not yet know what this war is all about

Ultimately, the reason we have a Constitution, the reason we have separation of powers, the reason we have the Fourteenth Amendment is to provide the courts with the opportunity to override the will of the people when the will of the people discriminates against a segment of our society.

The foundations of modern civil-rights law are exceptionally secure. Conservative judges nibble around the edges sometimes, and people still debate the constitutionality of affirmative-action programs. But almost no one seriously argues about the basic meaning or legitimacy of core civil-rights protections.

If colleges wanted to admit only legacies, or only tuba players, or only people who got astonishingly low SAT scores ' to ensure some of their graduates would be U.S. senators one day ' the Constitution wouldn't stop them. What the states, including state colleges, cannot do under the Constitution is discriminate on the basis of race.

Every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes.

I think the Supreme Court does have the authority, which is not used, to declare a blanket right for all people, all adults.

The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.

Our constitution got built around the idea of minority protection.

The language of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws did not change between 1896 and 1954, and it would be very hard to say that the obvious facts on which 'Plessy' was based had changed.