Becoming Justice Blackmun by Linda Greenhouse

For most of his remaining two decades on the Court, he endured a regular stream of abusive letters and hostile demonstrations, as well as a number of death threatsincluding a gun shot that shattered a window of his apartmentwhich restricted his movements and cast a melancholy pall over his existence. From the moment he announced that decision, he involuntarily became its leading public symbol, accused by an increasingly organized and strident antiabortion movement of being no less than an accomplice to murder. Wade (1973), which recognized a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Named to the Supreme Court after two unsuccessful efforts by President Richard Nixon to secure Senate confirmation of a nominee, Blackmun’s life was suddenly changed forever during his third term after he “got hit” with writing the majority opinion in Roe v.

Indeed, it is difficult to think of another justice who changed as profoundly as did Blackmun during his time on the Court. For this reason alone, Harry Blackmun’s lonely transformation over the 24 years (1970-1994) he served on the Supreme Court would be especially fascinating. Most justices, after all, have been nominated to the Court at a time in their careers when their basic patterns of belief have already become more or less settled.

Few Supreme Court justices, after their appointments, have drastically changed their fundamental views of law and life.

Becoming Justice Blackmun by Linda Greenhouse