Harry Andrew Blackmun was born in 1908 and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, the boyhood friend of Warren Burger (§97) — the two so close the press later called them the 'Minnesota Twins.' A Harvard-trained lawyer, he spent years as resident counsel to the Mayo Clinic, an experience that shaped his lifelong attention to medicine and the doctor-patient relationship. He served on the Eighth Circuit before Richard Nixon, after two failed nominations to the seat, named him to the Supreme Court in 1970.
Blackmun arrived a cautious Nixon conservative and left, twenty-four years later, the Court's most outspoken liberal — one of the great migrations in its history. He is inescapably the author of Roe v. Wade, grounding a woman's right to choose in the constitutional right of privacy and drawing on his Mayo Clinic years for its medical framing. Over time his voice grew more anguished and more liberal: he broke into open feeling in his DeShaney dissent — 'Poor Joshua!' — over a battered child the Constitution would not protect, and near the end renounced capital punishment altogether, declaring that he would 'no longer tinker with the machinery of death.' His meticulous papers, opened at the Library of Congress in 2004, made him the great documentarian of the modern Court. He retired in 1994.
Roe v. Wade
1973 · 7–2Holding · The constitutional right of privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision to end a pregnancy, subject to increasing state regulation as it progresses.
Role · Blackmun wrote for the Court.
The most famous and most contested opinion of the modern era; its trimester framework fell in Casey (1992, O'Connor §102) and the right itself in Dobbs (2022, Alito §110).
Read the opinion →DeShaney v. Winnebago County
1989Holding · (Dissenting) The state's failure to protect a boy from a violent father — leaving him permanently brain-damaged — should not escape constitutional accountability. 'Poor Joshua!'
Role · Blackmun dissented.
One of the most emotionally powerful dissents in the U.S. Reports, and a landmark in the debate over whether law should speak in the language of feeling.
Read the opinion →Callins v. Collins
1994Holding · (Dissenting from denial of certiorari) The death penalty cannot be administered consistently with the Constitution; 'I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.'
Role · Blackmun dissented alone, at the end of his career.
His final renunciation of capital punishment, joining Marshall (§96) and Brennan (§90) in categorical opposition.
Read the opinion →Harry Blackmun arrived at the Supreme Court in 1970 as a cautious Minnesota Republican — a former Mayo Clinic lawyer and boyhood friend of Warren Burger, the two so alike that the press dubbed them the 'Minnesota Twins' — and left it twenty-four years later as the Court's most outspoken liberal, the author of Roe v. Wade and, at the end, an abolitionist who declared he would 'no longer tinker with the machinery of death.' No justice's papers have illuminated the modern Court more: Blackmun kept everything, and when the Library of Congress opened his archive in 2004 it revealed the inner life of Roe, the drafting of opinions, and a decades-long correspondence that made him, unexpectedly, the great documentarian of the Burger and Rehnquist years. Linda Greenhouse's Becoming Justice Blackmun, drawn straight from those papers, is the indispensable and moving starting point. Begin with Greenhouse, follow the road to Roe through David Garrow's monumental history, read Roe itself, and end with the anguished dissent — 'Poor Joshua!' — that shows the justice he became.
The Bookshelf
The first book written from Blackmun's newly opened papers, and still the best introduction to the man and his transformation. Greenhouse, the Pulitzer-winning Times Supreme Court correspondent, uses Blackmun's own files — memos, drafts, letters, even his handwritten notes on the abortion cases — to trace his evolution from Burger's shy conservative ally to the Court's liberal conscience. Short, elegant, and deeply humane, it is both a biography and a rare guided tour through a justice's private working life. Times Books / Henry Holt.
The full scholarly biography, drawing on Blackmun's vast papers — Tinsley Yarbrough on the anxious, self-doubting 'outsider' who wrote Roe and drifted left across twenty-four years. The scholarly complement to Greenhouse's shorter, papers-based portrait. Oxford University Press.
The definitive history of the constitutional right to privacy and the long litigation campaign that produced Roe. Garrow, a Pulitzer-winning historian, reconstructs the decades from Griswold's contraception fight through Roe and beyond in exhaustive, authoritative detail — the lawyers, the plaintiffs, the strategies, and the Court's internal deliberations. It is long and dense, but no book better explains where Roe came from or how contested its foundations were. The essential context for reading Blackmun's most famous opinion. Macmillan; expanded edition University of California Press.
The most famous, and most fought-over, opinion of the modern era. Drawing on his Mayo Clinic years, Blackmun grounded a woman's right to choose in the constitutional right to privacy and built the trimester framework that governed abortion law for a generation. Praised as a landmark of liberty and attacked — including by sympathizers — as legislative in form and thinly reasoned, it made Blackmun a hero to some and a target for the rest of his life. The framework fell in Casey (1992) and the right itself in Dobbs (2022); read the original to judge for yourself what Blackmun wrote, and what he did not.
The dissent that captures the justice Blackmun became. When the Court held that the Constitution imposed no duty on the state to protect a four-year-old, Joshua DeShaney, from a father's beatings that left him permanently brain-damaged, Blackmun broke from legal formalism into open moral anguish: 'Poor Joshua!' he wrote, indicting a jurisprudence that could look away from a child's suffering. Brief and unforgettable, it is the clearest statement of the empathy that came to define his later years, and a landmark in the debate over whether law should speak in the language of feeling. Read it beside Roe to see the whole arc.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.Greenhouse, Becoming Justice Blackmun — for the man and his transformation, from his own papers
- 2.Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality — for the long road that led to Roe
- 3.Roe v. Wade — for the opinion that defined and haunted him
- 4.DeShaney dissent — for the empathy of the justice he became — 'Poor Joshua!'
Where the Papers Are Kept
Blackmun's papers, opened at the Library of Congress in 2004, five years after his death, are among the richest archives any justice has left — a near-complete record of his twenty-four years, including his files on Roe, his voluminous correspondence, and the case histories he meticulously kept. They transformed scholarship on the Burger and Rehnquist Courts and are the direct source of Greenhouse's biography. One of the essential American judicial archives. Visit →
Ideas for Further Research
- The longest journey. Few justices have moved as far as Blackmun — from Burger's conservative 'twin' to the Court's liberal standard-bearer. Scholars debate whether he changed or the Court moved right around him, and how much his open, anguished temperament drove the shift. Using the papers, trace the evolution case by case, and ask what makes a justice's convictions migrate across a long tenure.
- Roe under the microscope. No modern opinion has been more praised, criticized, and finally overruled. Read Roe alongside the critiques from across the spectrum — including friendly critics like John Hart Ely who admired the result but doubted the reasoning — and alongside Dobbs (2022), which undid it. Ask what Roe got right, what left it vulnerable, and what its fifty-year life and death reveal about the limits of judicial protection for contested rights.
- The abolitionist's turn. Blackmun spent two decades trying to make capital punishment fair before concluding, in Callins v. Collins (1994), that it could not be done: 'I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.' Study his long evolution on the death penalty beside Marshall's and Brennan's categorical opposition, and ask what it means for a justice to renounce, near the end, a project he had labored at from within. Seat lineage: Abe Fortas §95 → Harry Blackmun → Stephen Breyer §108.