Customer Reviews

Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice

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The author has written extensively on the Supreme Court, including biographies of Harlan I and II, and especially his fine book on Justice Souter (also reviewed on Amazon), as well as one of the ABC-CLIO Supreme Court handbooks on the Burger Court where Justice Blackmun served most of his tenure on the Court. The book is typical Yarbrough: comprehensive research; clarity of analysis; some suggestive insights into the subject. The book begins with Blackmun's formative years, follows him to Harvard and Harvard Law, his early friendship with Warren Burger, the critical clerkship with Judge Sanborn of the 8th Circuit;his career as a Minnesota lawyer (especially resident counsel at Mayo Clinic during 1950-1959) and his appointment to the Eighth Circuit and his service thereupon. So, by the time Blackmun makes it to the big Court, which is at the 141 page mark, readers can really feels they have a good grasp of Blackmun, his character, strengths, and weaknesses. Thereby, the author avoids a mistake frequently encountered in judicial biographies of rushing through the pre-Court career to concentrate on the years as a Justice.

I found the chapter on chamber procedures especially interesting. The author discusses Blackmun's preference for clerks writing first drafts of opinions, a practice he initiated on the Circuit, and raises always the key question re Blackmun: was he the author or editor of his opinions? He analyzes the firestorm that emerged when various articles and Linda Greenhouse's biography of Blackmun, based upon his papers, disclosed his heavy reliance upon clerks. Also, of course, of great interest is his discussion of Blackmun's deteriorating relationship with Burger. The book also discusses Blackmun's key decisions, including "Roe v. Wade," although I think more attention could have been devoted to the prolonged drafting torment Blackmun endured while working on the opinion at Mayo.

Blackmun emerges as somewhat a solid but not brilliant Justice, inclined to be conservative in his judgments, but willing to modify his positions (such as on the death penalty) over time. The author finds him always to have been a somewhat insecure individual, unsure of his own talents, but always a very hard worker. In the final chapters, the author returns to the issue of who "sculpted" Blackmun's jurisprudence, he or his clerks, since more studies based on his paper have emerged. The oral history interviews with former clerk Harold Koh of Yale Law School are discussed and afford some valuable insights. My only concern with the book is that the author almost totally ignores Linda Greenhouse's fine book on Blackmun, perhaps because he is upset that she was granted exclusive early access to this treasurehouse of information by Blackmun's family (see p. 341). This is most puzzling given the author's otherwise impeccable research. This is, however, but a tiny blemish--the book is a major achievement and adds substantially to our understanding of Blackmun the man and Justice and his role on the Court.