Harry Andrew Blackmun

BLACKMUN, HARRY ANDREW

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 considered 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 16 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 (Tex. Rev. Civ. Stats. 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. Two months before
his retirement from the Court, Blackmun, who
had been a strong and consistent supporter of
the death penalty, announced that he had come
to believe that the system for capital punishment
was so riddled with bias and error as to be
unworkable. “From this day forward,” he stated,
“I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of
death.”After his retirement in April 1994, Blackmun
continued to come daily to the court and
go to the cafeteria for breakfast with his clerks.
Blackmun died in Washington, D.C., on March
4, 1999, at the age of 90.

FURTHER READINGS
Abraham, Henry Julian. 1999. Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to Clinton. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Barnes, Catherine A. 1978.Men of the Supreme Court: Profiles of the Justices. New York: Facts on File.

Congressional Quarterly. 1989. Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Cushman, Claire, ed. 1993. The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1993. Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Quarterly.

Levy, Leonard. 1974. Against the Law: The Nixon Court and Criminal Justice. New York: Harper & Row.

Schwartz, Bernard. 1993. A History of the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

CROSS-REFERENCES
Abortion; Privacy.