This Thursday, under direction from the estate of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, more than 1,500 boxes of documents from the author of Roe v. Wade will go on display at the Library of Congress. According to USA Today reporter Joan Biskupic, "The papers include correspondence Blackmun had with other justices during his 24 years on the court, a tenure that ended in 1994." The archives likely will prove to be a bonanza for journalists and scholars and court watchers.
Yale University law professor Harold Koh is a former law clerk for Blackmun who helped to organize his papers. (By the way, it is very unusual for justices to have their papers opened so soon after their death.)
Koh told USA Today, "Justice Blackmun was a meticulous man.... My clear impression is that his files were far more comprehensive than files maintained in the same cases by other (justices') chambers."
For Biskupic, the chief fascination is two-fold: the light the correspondence will shed "on the thoughts of Blackmun, a Nixon appointee who became one of the court's liberals as other Republican appointees moved the bench to the right," and the "insights into personal relationships that remain at play on the court." (Of the current justices, only Associate Justice Stephen Breyer was not on the Court when Blackmun retired.)
Indeed, it ought to be interesting. Blackmun was infinitely self-congratulatory, a trait fed and nurtured by those who wanted the Court to substitute its policy preferences for those of elected officeholders.
Thus it came as absolutely no surprise that Sally Blackmun, one of the justice's daughters and the executor of the papers, gave the New York Times and National Public Radio special treatment. USA Today reports that they were allowed to "comb through" the files so that they could prepare stories for Thursday, the day the papers are officially opened. Needless to say, "The access they received has spurred protests by other media organizations."
In his long tenure on the High Court Blackmun's press coverage grew increasingly idolatrous. Why? Because he "grew," a euphemism for treating the justices as if their opinions came down from Mt. Olympus. Nowhere was this more true than with abortion.
Prior to Roe, Blackmun was dismissed by academic and media elites alike as a flyweight. In the pre-Roe days Blackmun and his childhood friend from St. Paul, Chief Justice Warren Burger (no less dismissively treated), were condescendingly dubbed the "Minnesota Twins." Until Blackmun discovered the "right" to abortion, there was no chance pro-abortion columnist Ellen Goodman would describe him (as she did at his death) as this "gentle, careful jurist."
Interestingly, Blackmun had a curious love/hate relationship with Roe.
With one breath he would whine about having his entire career reduced to authoring the 1973 decision. With the next breath he would pompously talk about how the 7-2 decision was "a step that had to be taken as we go down the road toward the full emancipation of women."
Roe remains very much worth reading. I wrote the following in 1999 following Blackmun's death:
"Few people, other than lawyers, read Roe today. What a pity. In an hour or two the careful reader can get quite an education. In his 50-page decision Blackmun (who had been on the Court less than three years) goes hither and yon in vain pursuit of an argument which would rebut the charge that he had created the 'right' to abortion out of whole cloth in an exercise of what Justice Byron White labeled 'raw judicial power.'
"In prose as tedious as it was revolutionary, the then-63-year-old Blackmun weaved together strands from various patches in the Constitution- -the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments - - in the hope that the resulting jurisprudential garment would give his results-driven decision cover. His choices may have been alliterative but the result was a hopelessly muddled, mixed-up, and misguided mess."
My guess is that his papers will likely illuminate some of the steps he took at he trod down the path toward the darkness that was Roe v. Wade. But however intellectually fascinating this may be, it will be no consolation to those who mourn the devastating results Blackmun unleashed: abortion on demand and 44 million deaths.
This Thursday, under direction from the estate of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, more than 1,500 boxes of documents from the author of Roe v. Wade will go on display at the Library of Congress. According to USA Today reporter Joan Biskupic, "The papers include correspondence Blackmun had with other justices during his 24 years on the court, a tenure that ended in 1994." The archives likely will prove to be a bonanza for journalists and scholars and court watchers.