Legal Commentary

My friend and former teacher Mike Dorf knows something about the peril of common names.  When he taught at Columbia, he was not even the most famous Michael Dorf in New York: that honor belonged to the Michael Dorf who founded the Knitting Factory.  Even in legal academia, there's someone named Michael Dorff, who teaches at Southwestern -- "West Coast Mike," as I've always thought of him.  

I mention this because East Coast Mike writes on his blog that Justice William O. Douglas's "opinions about religion manifested a view that it is generally a force for good that should be accommodated," and that "in free exercise cases, his esteem for religion and spirituality led him to an accommodationist position."

This is not completely untrue -- Mike cites some relevant cases -- but it's not the whole truth either.  Douglas also wrote a dissent in Wisconsin v. Yoder, one that had a decidedly anti-accommodationist tenor; and it must be said that his view of the Catholic Church did not exactly exude the sense that it was "a force for good that should be accommodated."  But, in fairness, Bill Douglas is a pretty common name.