Chuck Douglas

Last updated
Chuck Douglas
Chuck Douglas.jpg
Member of the U.S.HouseofRepresentatives
from New Hampshire's 2nd district
In office
January 3, 1989 January 3, 1991
Military service
Branch/service New Hampshire Army National Guard
Years of service1968–1991
Rank Colonel

Charles Gywnne "Chuck" Douglas III (born December 2, 1942) is an American politician, jurist, and trial lawyer. He is a former United States Representative from New Hampshire and a former New Hampshire Supreme Court associate justice.

Contents

Early life

Born in Abington, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the son of Betsy (née Graham) and Charles Gwynn Douglas, Jr. He graduated from William Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, 1960, and attended Wesleyan University from 1960 to 1962, He received a B.A. from University of New Hampshire in 1965 and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 1968 with honors. [1]

Career

Douglas was admitted to the bar in 1968 and commenced practice in Manchester, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, from 1970 to 1972. He was legal counsel and legislative counsel to Governor Meldrim Thomson Jr. from 1973 to 1974. [1] He served as associate justice, New Hampshire superior court, from 1974 to 1976, as associate justice, New Hampshire Supreme Court, from 1977 to 1983, and senior justice from 1983 to 1985.

Elected as a Republican to the 101st Congress, Douglas served as United States Representative for the state of New Hampshire from (January 3, 1989 – January 3, 1991). He served as a member of the Committee on the Judiciary from January 3, 1989 to October 28, 1990. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1990 to the 102nd Congress. From 2014 through 2017 he was Legal Counsel to the N.H. House of Representatives. In 2024 he served as Legal Counsel to the Nikki Haley for President campaign in New Hampshire.

Douglas has served as an Adjunct Faculty member at University of New Hampshire School of Law and at the American Bar Association's Appellate Judge's Seminars. He served as Chairman of the New Hampshire Constitution Bicentennial Education Commission and a member of the Constitutional Convention Study Commission.

In addition to publishing over forty articles, Douglas is the author of three books. One, New Hampshire Practice and Procedure: Family Law is the definitive source for New Hampshire Divorce and family law, and is used by New Hampshire divorce and family law attorneys, and is frequently referred to in New Hampshire Supreme Court decisions. He also authored the New Hampshire Evidence Manual. This evidence book is relied upon by New Hampshire lawyers and courts during litigation, and is cited to by the New Hampshire Supreme Court. In 2022 the book C.C.A. Baldi, The King of Little Italy about his great grandfather in Philadelphia was published.

As of 2023, he has been chairman of the Governor's Judicial Selection Commission since 2017. He was chairman of the New Hampshire Judicial Retirement Plan Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2008, and thereafter Executive Director of the Plan. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Hampshire Association for Justice in 2014 and a Distinguished Service to the Profession Award from the New Hampshire Bar Association in 2017. In 2018 he was named the #1 Personal Injury Trial Lawyer in New Hampshire by N.H. Magazine.

A retired Colonel with the New Hampshire Army National Guard (1968 to 1991), Douglas practices law as the President of Douglas Leonard & Garvey P.C., a plaintiff's law firm in Concord. He is also the publisher of the Bow Times newspaper in Bow, N.H. where he served on the Town Budget Committee.

Personal life

Because of his experience as a New Hampshire Judge and New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice as well as his record of success as a trial lawyer, Douglas is frequently requested to lecture on personal injury and employment law matters.

He is a resident of Pembroke, Merrimack County, New Hampshire, and is married to Debra M. Douglas, Chairman of the State's Lottery Commission.

He is the first cousin, once removed of singer, Taylor Swift, through his grandmother Louise Baldi Douglas, daughter of Charles Carmine Antonio Baldi. Douglas wrote a book about his great-grandfather's life. [2]

Related Research Articles

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert H. Jackson</span> US Supreme Court justice from 1941 to 1954

Robert Houghwout Jackson was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General and United States Attorney General, and is the only person to have held all three of those offices. Jackson was also notable for his work as Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Hampshire Supreme Court</span> Highest court in the U.S. state of New Hampshire

The New Hampshire Supreme Court is the supreme court of the U.S. state of New Hampshire and sole appellate court of the state. The Supreme Court is seated in the state capital, Concord. The Court is composed of a Chief Justice and four Associate Justices appointed by the Governor and Executive Council to serve during "good behavior" until retirement or the age of seventy. The senior member of the Court is able to specially assign lower-court judges, as well as retired justices, to fill vacancies on the Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George W. Campbell</span> American judge (1769–1848)

George Washington Campbell was an American statesman who served as a U.S. Representative, Senator, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice, U.S. Ambassador to Russia and the 5th United States Secretary of the Treasury from February to October 1814.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Thompson (jurist)</span> American judge

James Thompson was a lawyer, politician and jurist from Pennsylvania. He served in the United States Congress and in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he was Speaker in 1835. He also served as a federal judge and as a member of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis C. Wyman</span> American politician (1917–2002)

Louis Crosby Wyman was an American politician and lawyer. He was a U.S. Representative and, for three days, a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. This was one of the shortest tenures in Senate history. He was a member of the Republican Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice J. Murphy Jr.</span> American politician

Maurice James Murphy Jr. was an American politician and lawyer from New Hampshire. He was the Attorney General of New Hampshire and an appointed United States Senator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simeon Olcott</span> American judge

Simeon Olcott was a New Hampshire attorney and politician. His career began before the American Revolution and continued afterwards, and among the positions in which he served were Chief Judge of the New Hampshire Supreme Court (1795–1801) and United States Senator from New Hampshire (1801–1805).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Der-Yeghiayan</span> American judge (born 1952)

Samuel Der-Yeghiayan is a former United States District Court Judge of the Northern District of Illinois. He was appointed in 2003. Der-Yeghiayan is noteworthy as being the first Armenian immigrant U.S. District Court Judge in the United States and served over 40 years of distinguished government service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Canady</span> American judge (born 1954)

Charles Terrance Canady is an American attorney and judge serving on the Supreme Court of Florida since 2008. He previously served as Chief Justice from 2010 to 2012 and from 2018 to 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin J. Rabin</span> American politician

Benjamin J. Rabin was an American lawyer, jurist, World War I veteran, and politician who served one term as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from New York from 1945 to 1947.

Joseph Normand Laplante is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremiah Smith (lawyer)</span> American judge (1759–1842)

Jeremiah Smith was a United States representative for New Hampshire, United States Attorney for New Hampshire, a United States circuit judge of the United States Circuit Court for the First Circuit, the sixth governor of New Hampshire and chief justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court of Judicature and the New Hampshire Supreme Judicial Court. He was a member of the Federalist Party.

John T. Broderick Jr. is a former Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. He served as Associate Justice of the court from 1995 to 2004 and as its Chief Justice from 2004 to 2010. Broderick holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross. Broderick also served as Dean and President of the University of New Hampshire School of Law until May 2015. Since 2015, Broderick has been on a journey to end the stigma surrounding mental health in New Hampshire.

Ernest D. Preate, Jr. is a former Republican Pennsylvania Attorney General. As Attorney General, he argued before the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case, Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey on behalf of Robert P. Casey, then governor of Pennsylvania. Preate also successfully argued another landmark case, Blystone v. Pennsylvania in the United States Supreme Court addressing the death penalty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alison Nathan</span> American judge (born 1972)

Alison Julie Nathan is an American lawyer who has served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since 2022. She served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2011 to 2022. She previously served as associate White House counsel for President Barack Obama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William S. Greenberg</span> American judge (born 1942)

William S. Greenberg is an American lawyer who serves as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Previously he was a New Jersey attorney in private practice.

Carol Ann Conboy is an American lawyer, former teacher, and former justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan G. Braden</span> American judge (born 1948)

Susan Gertrude Braden is a former judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Braden was appointed to that court in 2003 by President George W. Bush. She was appointed chief judge by President Donald Trump on March 13, 2017 and assumed senior status on July 13, 2018, and retired in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles C. A. Baldi</span> American businessman

Charles Carmine Antonio Baldi, was an Italian-American merchant, banker, newspaper publisher, entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

References

  1. 1 2 Supreme Court of New Hampshire, "An Introduction to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire" (August 1977), p. 22.
  2. "Chuck Douglas presents Philadelphia's King of Little Italy: C.C.A. Baldi & His Brothers". www.gibsonsbookstore.com. October 5, 2022.


U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Member of the  U.S. House of Representatives
from New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district

1989–1991
Succeeded by
U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded byas Former US Representative Order of precedence of the United States
as Former US Representative
Succeeded byas Former US Representative

PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress