When appointed to the Supreme Court in 1970 by President Nixon,
Harry A. Blackmun was seen as a quiet, safe choice to complement
the increasingly conservative Court of his boyhood friend, Warren
Burger. No one anticipated his seminal opinion championing abortion
rights in Roe v. Wade, the most controversial ruling of his
generation, which became the battle cry of both supporters and
critics of judicial power and made Blackmun a liberal icon.
Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice is Tinsley E. Yarbrough's
penetrating account of one of the most outspoken and complicated
figures on the Supreme Court. As a justice, Blackmun stood at the
pinnacle of the American judiciary. Yet when he took his seat on
the Court, Justice Blackmun felt "almost desperate," overwhelmed
with feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy over the immense
responsibilities before him. Blackmun had overcome humble roots to
achieve a Harvard education, success as a Minneapolis lawyer and
resident counsel to the prestigious Mayo Clinic, as well as a
distinguished record on the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court.
But growing up in a financially unstable home with a frequently
unemployed father and an emotionally fragile mother left a
permanent mark on the future justice. All his life, Harry Blackmun
considered himself one of society's outsiders, someone who did not
"belong."
Remarkably, though, that very self-image instilled in the justice,
throughout his career, a deep empathy for society's most vulnerable
outsiders--women faced with unwanted pregnancies, homosexuals
subjected to archaic laws, and ultimately, death-row inmates. To
those who saw his career as the constitutional odyssey of a
conservative juristgradually transformed into a champion of the
underdog, Blackmun had a ready answer: he had not changed; the
Court and the issues before them changed. The justice's
identification with the marginalized members of society arguably
provides the overarching key to that consistency.
Thoroughly researched, engagingly written, Harry A. Blackmun: The
Outsider Justice offers an in-depth, revelatory portrait of one of
the most intriguing jurists ever to sit on the Supreme Court.
Relying on in-depth archival material, in addition to numerous
interviews with Blackmun's former clerks, Yarbrough here presents
the definitive biography of the great justice, ultimately providing
an illuminating window into the inner-workings of the modern
Supreme Court.
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