Harry Blackmun

(b. Nashville, Ill., 12 Nov. 1908; d. 4 Mar. 1999, Arlington, Va., interred Arlington National Cemetery), associate justice, 1971–1994. Blackmun grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father owned a small store. He was educated at Harvard College, where he majored in mathematics, and at Harvard Law School. His early interest in medicine was reflected in his service as counsel for the Mayo Clinic. In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, to fill the seat vacated by John Sanborn, for whom Blackmun had clerked.

The “third man” after the defeated nominations of judges Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, Blackmun was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon. He was at the time a little‐known federal judge, and it was thought he would bring to the Court the same values as his friend Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, playing his part in Nixon's effort to reorient the Court in a conservative ideological direction. Initially, Blackmun's voting was quite close to Burger's—something Burger may have taken for granted—and they were sometimes referred to as the “Minnesota Twins.” He was quiet, even diffident, and a slow writer, which limited his influence within the Court. As he became more sure of himself, however, he moved away from Burger toward the liberal end of the Court, becoming outspoken and explicit in his efforts to keep an increasingly conservative Court on center.

Blackmun's early opinions reflected conservatism, support for law enforcement, and a general deference to government and social institutions. Later he came to demonstrate a growing skepticism about those institutions' effectiveness in relation to the common person. By the mid‐1980s, Justice Blackmun, giving a high level of support for civil liberties claims, had become a regular voting partner of Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. His judicial transformation manifested itself even on matters of criminal procedure, where his initial conservatism had lasted longest. He questioned the Court's search‐and‐seizure positions and disagreed with the Court's haste in upholding death‐penalty convictions, thus bringing his votes into line with his early statement, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), of “distance, antipathy, and … abhorrence” for the death penalty, which for him “violated childhood's training and life's experience” (p. 405).

Blackmun made a number of major contributions to Supreme Court jurisprudence. He was a key player on the question of whether Congress, through the Commerce Clause, could impose requirements on state and local governments, and he wrote for the Court in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985) in holding local governments subject to minimum wage requirements, saying that their representation in Congress provided states and localities with adequate protection (see Commerce Power). He also showed he could be the states' friend by allowing them to impose nondiscriminatory, properly apportioned franchise taxes and by supporting state economic policy making if it was not narrowly parochial.

His changing views on judicial federalism paralleled his changes on civil liberties. At first he was unwilling to let state courts provide greater federal constitutional protection than did the U.S. Supreme Court, and he took a restrictive view of federal courts' use of habeas corpus to redress state defendants' claims. Later, however, Blackmun wished to make habeas more available for those pressing federal constitutional claims, and he also gave a broad reading to title 42, section 1983 of the U.S. Code, the primary federal civil rights statute. In his Madison Lectures at New York University Law School in 1984, Blackmun argued strongly that federal courts should work actively to uphold individuals' federal rights asserted in section 1983 cases.

Blackmun's major civil liberties contributions concerned commercial speech, aliens' rights, and abortion. On the question of First Amendment protection for “commercial speech” such as lawyer advertising, he opposed the states' paternalistic position of denying access to information that advertising would provide and argued that consumers ought to have more, not less, information. He took the side of aliens denied welfare benefits without satisfying long residence requirements or barred from holding public jobs (see Alienage and Naturalization). His key opinions opposed states' denying aliens the right to be civil servants, public school teachers, or probation officers; however, he was willing to allow a ban on their being police officers.

Blackmun's best‐known contributions are his abortion opinions, particularly those for the Court in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (1973), in which, respectively, the justices invalidated criminal penalties for performing abortions and established the basic trimester framework for evaluating whether and when the state could impose restrictions on a woman's freedom to obtain an abortion. He was strongly committed to any woman's right to obtain an abortion and reacted strongly against the Court's upholding the government's refusal to provide Medicaid funding of abortions. The strength of his commitment continued through the many cases in which the Court dealt with states' efforts to limit abortion and was nowhere clearer than in his dissent in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989). There he attacked his colleagues for dismantling Roe v. Wade and for “cast[ing] into darkness the hopes and visions of every woman who had come to believe that the Constitution guaranteed her the right to exercise some control over her unique ability to bear children,” creating “inevitable and brutal consequences” with the government again able to intrude improperly into women's lives (pp. 3077–3078).

When Blackmun took his seat on the Supreme Court, few would have expected him to be a spokesperson for those on whom the hand of government weighed heavily. His service on the Court signified the possibility, and actuality, that a justice can change views when confronted with situations that call deeply held beliefs into question. Blackmun will also remain the symbol of one of the nation's most divisive issues—abortion. However, he stood out most as a thoughtful justice representing centrism laced with compassion.

— Stephen L. Wasby

Harry Blackmun (born 1908), appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Nixon, became a highly regarded justice usually taking a middle-of-the-road position.

Harry A. Blackmun was born November 12, 1908, in Nashville, Illinois, but spent his youth in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota where his father, Corwin Manning Blackmun, was a businessman. There he developed a lifelong friendship with Warren Burger, a school classmate. Attending Harvard as a mathematics major, he thought of becoming a physician, but instead chose law, graduating in 1932 from the Harvard Law School, where he had studied under Felix Frankfurter. Returning to St. Paul, he served as law clerk to a U.S. circuit court judge, John B. Sanborn, whom he later succeeded on that court. In 1933 he took a teaching position at the St. Paul College of Law, and in 1945 he began teaching at the University of Minnesota Law School. He then had a private practice in Minneapolis until he became resident counsel for the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Appointed by Eisenhower to the eighth circuit, he developed a reputation as a conservative, relatively progressive in civil rights matters and moderate in civil liberties cases.

Appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon, Blackmun was confirmed without opposition. In his first years Blackmun was frequently described as one of the "Minnesota Twins," given the frequency of his agreement with Chief Justice Burger. This pattern changed in time, with Blackmun moving to a more liberal posture.

Blackmun's lower court career presaged his later judicial behavior. A believer in judicial restraint and limitation of the court's broad policy-making prerogatives, his decisions reflected his desire to keep issues narrow and avoid setting forth broad and bold principles.

Blackmun's Supreme Court opinions ranged widely. Generally devoid of any overarching ideology or philosophy, they reflected his own personal views and at times seemed somewhat contradictory. Very much a case by case justice, his absence of dogmatism contrasted with his more conservative colleagues such as William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor.

Blackmun wrote opinions of significance in four areas. In First Amendment cases, although he dissented from the Court's ruling that stopped the government from repressing The Pentagon Papers, he overturned a "gag order" imposed by a Nebraska court prohibiting commentary or reporting on a murder trial (Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 1975). Here he attempted to balance First Amendment rights of free press with Sixth Amendment rights of fair trial. He was conservative on obscenity cases, upholding a federal conviction which prohibited the mailing of obscene material even though the books involved were not obscene under applicable state law (Smith v. California, 1977). His landmark free speech cases were those overruling the commercial speech doctrine, extending speech protection to commercial advertising (Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 1976) and to attorneys to advertise their professional services (Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 1977). The press, consumers, and the general public all benefitted from these rulings.

Blackmun's most famous and controversial ruling was his opinion in Roe v. Wade (1973), declaring that the right of privacy included a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by means of an abortion. This effectively invalidated the varying abortion statutes in 46 of the 50 states and provoked a moral, philosophical, and theological controversy that has seldom abated since that time. Blackmun found women's fundamental right to personal privacy in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty affording a woman protection in determining whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The right, however, was not absolute, and he made clear that it could be regulated when the state's interest was "compelling." Subsequently, he set aside state laws requiring women to get the consent of a spouse or a parent before having an abortion (Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 1976).

In the area of criminal law, Blackmun generally voted to curb the expansion of defendant's rights. He took a restrictive view of the "exclusionary" rule and modified the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment permitting routine police inventory searches of cars without warrants (South Dakota v. Opperman, 1976). He sustained the right of states to use six-member juries (Ballew v. Georgia, 1978), but held that due process does not require jury trials in state juvenile delinquency proceedings (McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 1971). On the other hand, he did not always vote for the government. He sustained the Miranda warnings given after an arrest and found police misconduct indefensible in a number of instances. His own personal distaste and abhorrence for the death penalty was reflected in opinions in that area which put him at odds with the Court's majority.

On environmental issues he called for an imaginative expansion of traditional standing concepts that would allow public interest groups to enter environmental cases. His rulings regarding legal problems of the poor, on the other hand, proved unsympathetic.

In the civil rights area, Blackmun's record was moderately progressive. He sustained the rights of African American children to enter private schools on the same basis as white children (Runyon v. McCrary, 1976) and struck at racial restrictions in private swimming clubs (Tillman v. Wheaton-Heven, 1973). He also held that Mexican American defendants had a right to proper representation on grand juries which were investigating them (Castenada v. Partida, 1977).

Although Blackmun was frequently harrassed and assailed by anti-abortionists, he retained his composure and dignity and, in the process, much public respect. He married Dorothy E. Clark on June 21, 1941, and was the father of three daughters. Blackmun has taught law as a visiting instructor at institutions including Louisiana State University Law School and Tulane University. He retired from the bench in 1994.

Further Reading

There is a good sketch of Blackmun's career up to the late 1970s in Leon Friedman, ed., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions, Vol. V (1978). Good brief material is also available in Catherine A. Barnes, Men of the Supreme Court: Profiles of the Justices (1978) and Congressional Quarterly, Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court (1979). Although it would have to be obtained in a law library or Bar Association library, the January 1985 Hamline Law Review comprises a whole issue "Dedicated to Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the Occasion of His Twenty-Fifth Year as a Federal Judge" and includes articles affording lengthy assessments of his career.

For more information on Harry Blackmun, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Nov. 12, 1908, Nashville, Ill.
• Education: Harvard College, A.B., 1929; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1932
• Previous government service: clerk, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, 1932–33; judge, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, 1959–70
• Appointed by President Richard M. Nixon Apr. 14, 1970, to replace Abe Fortas, who resigned
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate May 12, 1970, by a 94–0 vote; retired Aug. 3, 1994
• Died:Mar. 4, 1999, Arlington, Va.

Harry A. Blackmun spent most of his childhood in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where he began a lasting friendship with Warren E. Burger, a future chief justice of the United States. After graduation from Harvard Law School in 1932, Blackmun practiced law in Minnesota. In 1959 President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1970 President Richard Nixon appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Senate had refused to confirm two preceding appointments (Clement.F. Haynsworth of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida). The Senate confirmed Blackmun unanimously.

During his early years on the Court, Justice Blackmun tended to vote with his friend, Chief Justice Burger. Their opinions were so similar that news reporters named them “the Minnesota Twins.” Later on, however, their views diverged and Blackmun often voted with Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, who were more liberal in decisions about civil liberties.

Justice Blackmun's most significant opinion was written for the majority in Roe v. Wade (1973). In this case, the Court defended the right of a pregnant woman to decide whether or not to have an abortion. Criminal penalties against doctors for performing abortions were declared unconstitutional. Justice Blackmun, writing for the Court, based his decision on the division of a pregnancy into three periods, called trimesters. He held that a state government could have no authority to prevent an abortion during the first trimester (the first three months of a pregnancy). During the second trimester, the state could regulate abortion only to protect the mother's well-being. During the third trimester, however, the state could legally prevent a woman from undergoing an abortion.

The Roe v. Wade decision was controversial. Since 1973, public response has been intense, whether for or against the Court's decision in this case. In the years following Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmun has continued to defend the right of a pregnant woman to choose an abortion, in consultation with her doctor, during the first two trimesters of a pregnancy.

See also Privacy, right to; Roe v. Wade

Sources

• Benard Schwartz, ed., The Burger Court: Counter-Revolution or Confirmation? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
• Stephen L. Wasby, “Justice Harry A. Blackmun”, in The Burger Court: Political and Judicial Profiles, edited by Charles M. Lamb and Stephen C. Halpern (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991)

Harry Andrew Blackmun, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994, stepped into a political maelstrom when he authored the much-lauded, much-reviled 1973 opinion Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147. Roe guaranteed access to safe, legal abortions for women in the first trimester of pregnancy. Depending on one's viewpoint, Blackmun was either a public hero or a Supreme Court villain, for authoring the opinion upholding a woman's right to privacy in the matter of abortion.

An unassuming and highly intelligent man, Blackmun seemed an unlikely symbol for an explosive social and political issue. Born November 12, 1908, in Nashville, Illinois, he spent his childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father ran a hardware and grocery store. Blackmun was an outstanding student and received a scholarship to Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude with a mathematics degree in 1929. He went on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1932.

Blackmun's first job out of law school was a federal clerkship for Judge John B. Sanborn, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. After his clerkship, Blackmun spent the next sixteen years practicing law in Minneapolis as a tax and trust specialist at a large, prestigious firm. In 1941, Blackmun and Dorothy E. Clark married; they later raised three children.

Blackmun also taught at the St. Paul College of Law (later renamed the William Mitchell College of Law) and at the University of Minnesota Law School. In 1950, he became head counsel at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, a position he particularly enjoyed because of a lifelong interest in medicine.

In 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Blackmun to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to replace his former boss, Judge Sanborn. While on the appeals court, Blackmun was a diligent and fair-minded judge, with a conservative outlook. A significant portion of his decisions involved tax issues.

Blackmun sat on the Eighth Circuit until 1970 when President Richard M. Nixon appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Blackmun was Nixon's third choice for the Supreme Court seat formerly held by Associate Justice Abe Fortas. Earlier, Nixon had nominated Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., and G. Harrold Carswell, two candidates with unconvincing qualifications. After the Senate refused to confirm either Haynsworth or Carswell, Nixon turned to Blackmun as a candidate with sterling legal credentials and a fine personal reputation. Unlike the rancorous Senate proceedings for the two failed candidates, Blackmun's confirmation hearing was quick and congenial. He was approved unanimously by the Senate on May 12, 1970.

When Blackmun joined the Supreme Court, he teamed up with his boyhood friend Warren E. Burger, who was chief justice. Years before, Blackmun had been best man at Burger's wedding. The two St. Paul natives were immediately dubbed the Minnesota Twins.

Blackmun entered the Court with the reputation of being a hardworking, irreproachable, and conservative jurist. During his quarter century on the Supreme Court, his reputation changed in one significant way: although he continued to be seen as hardworking and irreproachable, he was perceived less and less as a conservative.

Court observers noted that Blackmun's voting record indicated a swing to the political left. His support for civil liberties in the areas of commercial speech and the rights of aliens, as well as his acceptance of a broadened judicial role, resulted in an alliance with liberal justices Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan, Jr.

Blackmun insisted that he was merely taking a central ground on the issues before the Court. Nevertheless, in 1991, he acknowledged the change in public perception, saying, "having been appointed by a Republican president and being accused now of being a flaming liberal, the Republicans think I'm a traitor and the Democrats don't trust me. And so I twist in the wind, I hope, beholden to no one, and that's just exactly where I want to be."

Roe is Blackmun's most famous contribution as a Supreme Court justice. Writing for the seven-member majority, Blackmun ruled that women could obtain abortions without interference from the state as a matter of right under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The case came about as a challenge to a Texas law (Vernon's Ann. Tex. P.C. arts. 1191-1194, 1196) that made abortion illegal unless performed to save the life of the mother. The law was challenged by a pregnant woman as a violation of her right to privacy.

Blackmun held that the privacy rights of the pregnant woman outweighed the state's interest. His knowledge of medical issues is evident in the case. Blackmun based his ruling on a three-part division of pregnancy: the first trimester, when a woman can obtain an abortion and the state has no interest; the second trimester, when the state has an interest in the licensing of the performing physician; and the last trimester, when the fetus is considered viable, or capable of living outside the mother's womb, and the state's interest reaches a level where the state may restrict access to abortion. Although Blackmun earned praise for this ruling, he also became the target of protests and death threats.

In another indication of his more liberal leanings, Blackmun publicly denounced capital punishment in 1994. He declared that he would no longer support the death penalty in cases before the Supreme Court, reversing his earlier hard-line support for criminal penalties.

Blackmun announced his retirement from the Court in April 1994.

Harry Andrew Blackmun
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office June 9, 1970 – August 3, 1994
Nominated by	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Abe Fortas
Succeeded by	Stephen Breyer
Born	November 12, 1908(1908-11-12) Nashville, Illinois
Died	March 4, 1999 (aged 90) Arlington, Virginia
Alma mater	Harvard College Harvard Law School
Religion	Methodist

Harold Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade.

Contents 1 Early years and professional career 2 Appellate bench 3 Tenure on the Supreme Court 3.1 Early years on the Supreme Court 3.2 Abortion 3.3 Transition to the left 3.4 Later years on the bench 3.5 Women's rights 4 Relationship with law clerks 5 Relationship with other justices 6 Post-Supreme Court 7 Further reading 8 References 9 External links

Early years and professional career

Harry Blackmun was born in Nashville, Illinois, and grew up in Dayton's Bluff, a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He attended Harvard College on scholarship, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics summa cum laude Phi Beta Kappa in 1929 . While at Harvard, Blackmun joined Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity and sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He attended Harvard Law School (among his professors there was Felix Frankfurter), graduating in 1932. He served in a variety of positions including private counsel, law clerk, and adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School and William Mitchell College of Law (then the St. Paul College of Law). Blackmun's practice as an attorney at the law firm now known as Dorsey & Whitney focused in its early years on taxation, trusts and estates, and civil litigation. He married Dorothy Clark in 1941 and had three daughters with her, Nancy, Sally, and Susan. Between 1950 and 1959, Blackmun served as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Appellate bench

President Dwight David Eisenhower nominated Blackmun to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on August 18, 1959. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 14, 1959, and received his commission on September 21, 1959. He replaced John B. Sanborn, Jr., for whom he had clerked 26 years earlier. Among other decisions, he wrote Jackson v. Bishop (1968), one of the first appellate opinions to declare that physical abuse of prisoners was cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution.^[1]

Tenure on the Supreme Court

Blackmun was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Richard M. Nixon on April 4, 1970, and was confirmed by the Senate on May 12, 1970, by a 94–0 vote.^[2] He received his commission on May 14, 1970. His confirmation followed contentious battles over two previous, failed nominations forwarded by Nixon in 1969-1970, those of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.

Early years on the Supreme Court

Blackmun, a lifelong Republican, was expected to adhere to a conservative interpretation of the Constitution. The Court's Chief Justice at the time, Warren Burger, a long-time friend of Blackmun's and best man at his wedding, had recommended Blackmun for the job to Nixon. The two were often referred to as the "Minnesota Twins" (a reference to the baseball team, the Minnesota Twins) because of their common history in Minnesota and because they so often voted together. Indeed, Blackmun voted with Burger in 87.5 percent of the closely-divided cases during his first five terms (1970 to 1975), and with Brennan, the Court's leading liberal, in only 13 percent.^[3] In 1972 Blackmun joined Burger and the other two Nixon appointees to the Court in dissenting from the Furman v. Georgia decision that invalidated all capital punishment laws then in force in the United States, and in 1976 he voted to reinstate the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia, even the mandatory death penalty statutes, although in both instances he indicated his personal opinion of its shortcomings as a policy. Blackmun, however, insisted his political opinions should have no bearing on the death penalty's constitutionality.

That began to change, however, between 1975 and 1980, by which time Blackmun was joining Brennan in 54.5 percent of the divided cases, and Burger in 45.5 percent.^[3] Shortly after Blackmun dissented in Rizzo v. Goode (1976), William Kunstler embraced him and "welcom[ed] him to the company of the 'liberals and the enlightened.'"^[4] During the final five years that Blackmun and Burger served together, Blackmun joined Brennan in 70.6 percent of the close cases, and Burger in only 32.4 percent.^[3]

Abortion

In 1973, Blackmun authored the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade, invalidating a Texas statute making it a felony to administer an abortion in most circumstances. The Court's judgment in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton held a less restrictive Georgia law to be unconstitutional also. Both decisions were based on the right to privacy announced in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and remain the primary basis for the constitutional right to abortion in the United States. Roe caused an immediate uproar, and Blackmun's opinion made him a target for criticism by opponents of abortion, receiving voluminous negative mail and death threats over the case.

Blackmun became a passionate advocate for abortion rights, often delivering speeches and lectures promoting Roe v. Wade as essential to women's equality and criticizing Roe's critics. Defending abortion, in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Blackmun wrote:

“

Few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private, or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a woman's decision — with the guidance of her physician and within the limits specified in Roe — whether to end her pregnancy. A woman's right to make that choice freely is fundamental...[5]

”

Blackmun filed separate opinions in 1989's Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, warning that Roe was in jeopardy: "I am 83 years old. I cannot remain on this Court forever, and when I do step down, the confirmation process for my successor well may focus on the issue before us today. That, I regret, may be exactly where the choice between the two worlds will be made."

Ancillary to the primary right to abortion, Blackmun extended First Amendment protection to commercial speech in Bigelow v. Commonwealth of Virginia, a case where the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of an editor who ran an advertisement for an abortion referral service.

Transition to the left

After Roe, Blackmun began to drift away from the influence of Chief Justice Warren Burger to increasingly side with liberal Justice William J. Brennan in finding constitutional protection for unenumerated individual rights. For example, Blackmun wrote a blistering dissent to the Court's opinion in 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick, denying constitutional protection to homosexual sodomy (Burger wrote a concurring opinion in Bowers in which he said, "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.") Burger and Blackmun drifted apart, and as the years passed, their lifelong friendship degenerated into a hostile and contentious relationship.

From the 1981 term through the 1985 term, Blackmun voted with Brennan 77.6 percent of the time, and with Thurgood Marshall 76.1%.^[6] From 1986 to 1990, his rate of agreement with the two most liberal justices was 97.1% and 95.8%.^[6]

Blackmun's judicial philosophy increasingly seemed guided by Roe, even in areas where Roe was not directly applicable. His concurring opinion in 1981's Michael M. v. Superior Court, a case that upheld statutory rape laws that applied only to men but did not implicate Roe or abortion, nonetheless included extensive citation of the Court's recent abortion cases.^[7]

Later years on the bench

Despite his stated personal "abhorrence" for the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia, he voted to uphold mandatory death penalty statutes at issue in 1976's Roberts v. Louisiana and Woodson v. North Carolina, even though these laws would have automatically imposed the death penalty on anyone found guilty of first-degree murder. But on February 22, 1994, less than two months before announcing his retirement, Blackmun announced that he now saw the death penalty as always and in all circumstances unconstitutional by issuing a dissent from the Court's refusal to hear a routine death penalty case (Callins v. Collins), declaring that "[f]rom this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death." Subsequently, adopting the practice begun by Justices Brennan and Marshall, he issued a dissent from denial of certiorari in every death penalty case, citing and reiterating his Callins dissent. As Linda Greenhouse and others have reported, Blackmun's law clerks prepared what would become the Callins dissent well in advance of the case coming before the Court; Blackmun's papers indicate that work began on the dissent in the summer of 1993, and in a memo preserved in Blackmun's papers, the clerk writing the dissent wrote Blackmun that

“

[t]his is a very personal dissent, and I have struggled to adopt your 'voice' to the best of my ability. I have tried to put myself in your shoes and write a dissent that would reflect the wisdom you have gained, and the frustration you have endured, as a result of twenty years of enforcing the death penalty on this Court.

”

Blackmun and his clerks then sought an appropriate case to serve as a "vehicle for [the] dissent," and settled on Callins.^[8] (That the case found the dissent, rather than the more traditional relationship of the dissent relating to the case, is underscored by the opinion's almost total omission of reference to the case it ostensibly addressed: Callins is relegated to a supernumerary in his own appeal, being mentioned but five times in a 42-paragraph opinion — three times within the first two paragraphs, and twice in footnote 2.^[9]

In his emotional dissent in 1989's DeShaney v. Winnebago County, rejecting the constitutional liability of the state of Wisconsin for four-year-old Joshua DeShaney, who was beaten until brain-damaged by his abusive father, Blackmun famously opined, "Poor Joshua!" In his dissent in 1993's Herrera v. Collins, where the Court refused to find a constitutional right for convicted prisoners to introduce new evidence of "actual innocence" for purposes of obtaining federal relief, Blackmun argued in a section joined by no other justice that "The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder."

Women's rights

In Stanton v. Stanton, a case striking down a state's discriminatory definitions of adulthood (males reaching it at 21, women at 18), Blackmun wrote:

“

A child, male or female, is still a child... No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family, and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas... If a specified age of minority is required for the boy in order to assure him parental support while he attains his education and training, so, too, is it for the girl.[10]

”

Relationship with law clerks

Blackmun has been noted for the fact that compared to other Justices on the Supreme Court, he has let his law clerks utilize great latitude as far as writing opinions for him, such as his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which was written by Stephanie Dangel, now a lawyer in Pennsylvania^[11] The Casey dissent attributed to Blackmun included sharp criticism of Chief Justice Rehnquist, Dangel said that the original draft sarcastically referred to Rehnquist as 'The Chief' rather than Chief Justice because 'I have my doubts as to whether he deserves to be called 'justice' on this one'^[12] however she changed it to Chief Justice at the urging of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

It has also been revealed by Blackmun in a 1995 oral history with Harold Koh that his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick was written by a clerk, Pam Karlan. Blackmun said of the dissent; "[K]arlan did a lot of very effective writing, and I owe a lot to her and her ability in getting that dissent out. She felt very strongly about it, and I think is correct in her approach to it. I think the dissent is correct."^[13]

Relationship with other justices

When Blackmun's papers were released at the Library of Congress, his sometimes negative notations regarding fellow Justice Clarence Thomas came to light.^[14] However, Thomas spoke positively of Blackmun when he appeared in 2001 at the dedication of the Harry A. Blackmun Rotunda at the St. Louis federal courthouse, mentioning that Blackmun drove a blue Volkswagen Beetle and would tell fast food workers that he was "Harry. I work for the government."^[14]

Post-Supreme Court

Blackmun announced his retirement from the Supreme Court in April 1994, four months before he officially left the bench. By then, he had become the court's most liberal justice.^[6] In his place, President Bill Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer who was confirmed by the Senate 87-9.

Blackmun is the only Supreme Court justice to have played one in a motion picture. In 1997, he portrayed Justice Joseph Story in the Steven Spielberg film Amistad.

On February 22, 1999, Blackmun fell in his home and broke his hip. The next day, he underwent hip replacement surgery at Arlington Hospital in Arlington, Virginia, but he never fully recovered. Ten days later, on March 4, he died at 1 a.m. from complications following the procedure. He was buried five days later at Arlington National Cemetery. His wife died seven years later on July 13, 2006, at the age of 95 and was buried next to him.

In 2004 the Library of Congress released his voluminous files. Blackmun had kept all the documents from every case, notes the Justices passed between themselves, 10 percent of the mail he received, and numerous other documents. After Blackmun announced his retirement from the Court, he recorded a 38-hour oral history with one of his former law clerks, Yale University dean Harold Koh, which was also released. In it, he discusses his thoughts on everything from his important Court cases to the Supreme Court piano, though some Supreme Court experts such as David Garrow have cast doubt on the accuracy of some of Blackmun's recollections, especially his thoughts on the Court's deliberations on Roe v. Wade.

Based on these papers, Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times wrote Becoming Justice Blackmun.

Further reading

• Clinton, Bill (2005). My Life. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-3003-X.
• Greenhouse, Linda (2005). Becoming Justice Blackmun. Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-8057-0.
• Woodward, Robert and Armstrong, Scott. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979). ISBN 9780380521838; ISBN 0380521830. ISBN 9780671241100; ISBN 0671241109; ISBN 0743274024; ISBN 9780743274029.
• Wrightsman, Lawrence S., and Justin R. La Mort (2005). Why Do Supreme Court Justices Succeed or Fail? Harry Blackmun as an Example. Missouri Law Review 70.
• Yarbrough, Tinsley. Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195141237.
• Harry Blackmun profile, NNDB.

References

1. ^ Greenhouse, Page 31.
2. ^ See Warren Weaver Jr., Blackmun Approved, 94-0; Nixon Hails Vote by Senate in The New York Times, May 13, 1970, page 1.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Greenhouse, Linda. Becoming Justice Blackmun. Times Books. 2005. Page 186.
4. ^ Woodward & Armstrong, The Brethren 506 (2005).
5. ^ Greenhouse, Linda. Becoming Justice Blackmun. Times Books. 2005. Page 185.
6. ^ ^{a b c} Greenhouse, Linda. Becoming Justice Blackmun. Times Books. 2005. Page 235.
7. ^ BLACKMUN, J., Concurring Opinion in Michael M. v. Superior Court
8. ^ http://legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=817
9. ^ http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-7054.ZA1.html#FNSRC2
10. ^ Greenhouse, Linda. Becoming Justice Blackmun. Times Books. 2005. Page 218.
11. ^ http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1113555914558
12. ^ http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=900005538237
13. ^ http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_04_17-2005_04_23.shtml#1114025448
14. ^ ^{a b} Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher (2004-10-10). "Thomas v. Blackmun". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2004/10/10/AR2005033105012.html. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 

• Harry Blackmun at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Harry Blackmun

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Harry Blackmun

• Excerpt from Blackmun's Callins opinion, and Justice Scalia's response
• NPR series on Justice Blackmun's Files
• Blackmun's Papers at the Library of Congress
• Transcript: The Justice Harry A. Blackmun Oral History Project

Legal offices
Preceded by John B. Sanborn, Jr.	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit September 21, 1959 – June 8, 1970	Succeeded by Donald Roe Ross
Preceded by Abe Fortas	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States June 9, 1970 – August 3, 1994	Succeeded by Stephen Breyer

Supreme Court of the United States

The Burger Court Chief Justice: Warren Earl Burger (1969–1986) 1970–1971: H. Black | Wm. O. Douglas | J.M. Harlan II | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun 1972–1975: Wm. O. Douglas | Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist 1975–1981: Wm. J. Brennan | P. Stewart | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist | J.P. Stevens 1981–1986: Wm. J. Brennan | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | Wm. Rehnquist | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor The Rehnquist Court Chief Justice: William Hubbs Rehnquist (1986–2005) 1986–1987: Wm. J. Brennan | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | L.F. Powell, Jr. | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia 1988–1990: Wm. J. Brennan | B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy 1990–1991: B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter 1991–1993: B. White | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas 1993–1994: H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg

Persondata
NAME	Blackmun, Harry Andrew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994
DATE OF BIRTH	November 12, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH	Nashville, Illinois
DATE OF DEATH	March 4, 1999
PLACE OF DEATH	Arlington, Virginia

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