Harry Blackmun
Harold Andrew Blackmun was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by President Richard Nixon, Blackmun ultimately became one of the most liberal justices on the Court. He is best known as the author of the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade.
Raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Blackmun graduated from Harvard Law School in 1932. He practiced law in the Twin Cities, representing clients such as the Mayo Clinic. In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. After the defeat of two previous nominees, President Nixon successfully nominated Blackmun to the Supreme Court to replace Associate Justice Abe Fortas. Blackmun and his close friend, Chief Justice Warren Burger, were often called the "Minnesota Twins", but Blackmun drifted away from Burger during their tenure on the court. He retired from the Court during President Bill Clinton's administration and was succeeded by Stephen Breyer.
Aside from Roe v. Wade, notable majority opinions by Blackmun include Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, Bigelow v. Commonwealth of Virginia, and Stanton v. Stanton. He joined part of the joint opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey but also filed a separate opinion, warning that Roe was in jeopardy. He wrote dissenting opinions in notable cases such as Furman v. Georgia, Bowers v. Hardwick, and DeShaney v. Winnebago County.
Early life and education
Blackmun was born on November 12, 1908, in Nashville, Illinois, to Theo Huegely and Corwin Manning Blackmun. His grandparents were German immigrants who operated a flour mill in Nashville, Illinois. Three years after his birth, his brother, Corwin Manning Blackmun Jr., died soon after birth; his sister, Betty, was born in 1917. Blackmun grew up in Dayton's Bluff, a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where his father owned a small store. He attended the same grade school as future Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Blackmun was a Methodist.Blackmun attended Mechanic Arts High School in Saint Paul, where he graduated fourth in his class of 450 in 1925. He expected to attend the University of Minnesota but received a scholarship to attend Harvard University, from which he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1929. At Harvard, Blackmun joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He attended Harvard Law School, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1932.
Career
After graduating from law school, Blackmun returned to Minnesota, where 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. 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 they had three daughters. Motivated by his initial passion for medicine, Blackmun accepted a position as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester from 1950 to 1959.Court of Appeals
In the late 1950s, Blackmun's close friend Warren E. Burger, then an appellate judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, repeatedly encouraged Blackmun to seek a judgeship. Judge John B. Sanborn Jr. of the Eighth Circuit, whom Blackmun had clerked for after graduating from Harvard, told Blackmun of his plans to assume senior status. He said that he would recommend Blackmun to the Eisenhower administration if Blackmun wished to succeed him. After much urging by Sanborn and Burger, Blackmun agreed to accept the nomination, duly offered by Eisenhower and members of the Justice Department. On August 18, 1959, Eisenhower nominated Blackmun to the seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated by Sanborn. The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary gave Blackmun a rating of "exceptionally well qualified". He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 14, 1959, and received his commission on September 21. Over the next decade, Blackmun wrote 217 opinions for the Eighth Circuit. His service on the Court of Appeals ended on June 8, 1970, due to his appointment to the Supreme Court.Supreme Court
President Richard Nixon nominated Blackmun as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on April 15, 1970, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him on May 12, by a 94–0 vote. He was sworn into office on June 9, 1970. This was Nixon's third attempt to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Abe Fortas on May 14, 1969. His earlier failed nominees were Clement Haynsworth in September 1969 and G. Harrold Carswell in February 1970. Not since 1894, during the second Cleveland Administration, had a president had two Supreme Court nominees rejected by the Senate. This was also the longest vacancy on the court since 1873–74, during the Grant Administration391 days from Fortas's resignation to Blackmun's swearing-in.While on the Court, Blackmun served as Circuit Justice for the Eighth Circuit and for the First Circuit.
Early years on the Supreme Court
A lifelong Republican, Blackmun was expected to adhere to a conservative interpretation of the Constitution. The Court's Chief Justice at the time, Warren E. Burger, a longtime friend of Blackmun's and best man at his wedding, had recommended Blackmun for the job to Nixon. The two were often called 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% of the closely divided cases during his first five terms, and with William J. Brennan, the Court's leading liberal, in only 13%. In 1972, Blackmun joined Burger and Nixon's other two appointees in dissenting from Furman v. Georgia, the 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. In both instances Blackmun indicated his personal opinion of the death penalty's shortcomings as a policy, but 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% of the divided cases, and Burger in 45.5%. Shortly after Blackmun dissented in Rizzo v. Goode, William Kunstler embraced him and "welcom him to the company of the 'liberals and the enlightened.'"
From 1981 to 1986, when Burger retired, the two men voted together in only 32.4% of close cases, whereas Blackmun joined Brennan in 70.6% of the close cases.
Abortion
In 1973, Blackmun authored the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, invalidating a Texas statute that banned abortion except when a pregnant woman's life was in danger. The Court's judgment in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton held a less restrictive Georgia law to be unconstitutional as well. Roe was based on the right to privacy announced in Griswold v. Connecticut, and it established a constitutional right to abortion in the United States. Blackmun's opinion in Roe made him a target for criticism by opponents of abortion, and he received voluminous negative mail and death threats because of it.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 Roes critics. Defending abortion rights in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Blackmun wrote:
Blackmun filed separate opinions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and 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.
Split with Burger
After Roe, Blackmun began to drift away from Burger's influence to increasingly side with Brennan in finding constitutional protection for unenumerated individual rights. For example, Blackmun wrote a dissent to the Court's opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick. The Court's ruling in this case denied constitutional protection to homosexual sodomy. Burger's opinion in Bowers read: "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching." In his dissent, Blackmun responded by quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "t is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past." 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% of the time, and with Thurgood Marshall 76.1%. From 1986 to 1990, his rate of agreement with the two most liberal justices was 97.1% and 95.8%.
Blackmun's judicial philosophy increasingly seemed guided by Roe, even in areas where Roe was not apparently directly applicable. His concurring opinion in 1981's Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County, a case that upheld statutory rape laws that applied only to men, did not directly implicate Roe, but because the laws were justified on the basis that women would be subject to the "risk" of pregnancy, Blackmun had cause to discuss Roe further in his opinion.