William O. Douglas was one of the more idiosyncratic and naturally contrarian justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court. In his more than thirty-six years on the bench, Douglas authored 531 dissents, more than any other justice. His legal philosophy was strongly influenced by Underhill Moore, his professor at Columbia Law School and one of the most prominent of the legal realists, and by Louis D. Brandeis, the justice whose place Douglas took on the Supreme Court. From these two, he learned to draw upon sources as varied as poetry, sociology, agricultural reports, or his own intuition and to use these sources to justify his decisions, reflecting the realist belief that “real world” information needed to be considered in rendering legal decisions rather than relying exclusively on legal precedent. Douglas was known as a liberal throughout his tenure on the Court. In the 1930s he strongly supported President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program, the legislative and governmental reorganization measures aimed at alleviating the Great Depression. He also was generally a consistent civil libertarian, though he grew into that role haltingly during World War II.