HARRY A. BLACKMUN: THE OUTSIDER JUSTICE

by Tinsley E. Yarbrough. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. 424pp. Hardback. $35.00/£19.99. ISBN: 9780195141238.

Reviewed by Artemus Ward, Northern Illinois University. Email: aeward [at] niu.edu.

pp.456-466

Recently, a former Blackmun clerk told me the following story: “It seems that one day he got the short straw and was asked to go to the White House to swear in a new cabinet member. President Nixon praised the new cabinet member profusely. The conversation then went something like this. President Nixon: ‘I want you to know that of all the people we looked at for this job, this man was my very first choice. . . The outstanding thing about this man is that when we looked around the country we knew he would be our very first choice for this job. . .’ At this point President Nixon saw that Justice Blackmun was standing beside him. The President quickly recovered: ‘No offense to you, Mr. Justice.’” Blackmun laughed every time he told this story. While many interpreted his self-deprecating comments and stories to be the product of a confident man’s personal modesty, in HARRY A. BLACKMUN: THE OUTSIDER JUSTICE, Tinsley Yarbrough argues that they were instead the result of deeply ingrained insecurities born from the childhood wounds of family tragedy. The author suggests that in order to understand Blackmun the justice we must first understand “Poor Harry” the boy (p.348).

In yet another highly readable judicial biography, Yarbrough once again delivers the kind of scholarly, yet thoroughly engaging, book that we have come to expect from one of the best practitioners of the genre. As in such previous works as DAVID HACKETT SOUTER: TRADITIONAL REPUBLICAN ON THE REHNQUIST COURT (2005), JUDICIAL ENIGMA: THE FIRST JUSTICE HARLAN (1995) and MR. JUSTICE BLACK AND HIS CRITICS (1988) – to name but a few – Yarbrough deftly blends careful political and legal analysis with thoughtful insights into the personal and psychological nature of his subject. In the pages of his latest book, Yarbrough provides an absorbing account of Justice Harry Blackmun’s life and work – with particular focus on his US Supreme Court years: 1970-1994. The author admits that Blackmun’s importance as a subject for judicial biography is largely predicated on his landmark opinion in ROE v. WADE (1974). Without it, and the controversy that it spawned during his tenure on the Burger and Rehnquist Courts, the author submits, “Justice Blackmun arguably would have achieved little prominence as a justice” (p.viii). Yet there is much to learn from Yarbrough’s account of Blackmun’s life, not only about the workings and decisions of the Supreme Court but also about how childhood experiences shape adult decisions.

Yarbrough explains that his initial thesis for the book was the degree to which Blackmun changed during his years on the Court from a conservative [*457] Republican, initially dubbed one of the “Minnesota Twins” along with his childhood friend and fellow Nixon appointee Chief Justice Warren Burger, to an alliance with the Court’s liberal members William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. But Blackmun always felt that the explanation was that the Court became more conservative rather than that he became more liberal. While Yarbrough discusses this phenomenon, he explains that what he found most telling about Blackmun was his “outsider” roots and empathy for “little people” and how they affected his judicial decision making. Viewed through this lens, the author contends that Blackmun produced a “remarkably consistent” record over time and that “as Blackmun contended, the Court and the issues, not the justice, changed most during his years on the high bench” (p.xiii). Still, readers will have to draw their own conclusions about whether Blackmun is “exhibit A” for “ideological drift” as a number of quantitative scholars contend (e.g. Epstein, Martin, Quinn, and Segal 2007; Ruger 2005) or whether Yarbrough’s more subtle, qualitative evidence is convincing.

Yarbrough’s thesis is different from the one offered by NEW YORK TIMES reporter Linda Greenhouse in BECOMING JUSTICE BLACKMUN (2005). In her admittedly incomplete account of the justice based on her special/early access to his private papers, she argues that Blackmun not only changed, but he became a feminist icon. Tying ROE to the sex discrimination cases and linking them to the breakdown of his relationship with Burger and the rise of conservatism generally, Greenhouse suggests the justice underwent a kind of on-the-job training in women’s rights. In contrast, Yarbrough suggests that Blackmun’s broader concern for outsiders was tied to childhood experiences and remained remarkably consistent throughout his life. Yarbrough spends more time placing Blackmun’s behavior – or “continuing psychological therapy” as he ultimately terms it – in the larger institutional contexts of both the justices and clerks he served with and the political environment in which they operated (p.348). In this sense, Yarbrough’s book is a far more traditional judicial biography, more complete, and arguably more convincing, than what is seen by some as Greenhouse’s almost premeditated flattery.

A boon for researchers, Blackmun wrote a diary as a young man and later kept every scrap of paper that passed through his chambers as a justice. Yarbrough not only made extensive use of the extremely rich Blackmun Papers but also conducted interviews with his longtime secretary Wanda Martinson and a number of his clerks. He also mined the Black, Douglas, Brennan, Marshall, and Powell Papers. The result is a detailed, yet highly readable biography of Blackmun’s life. Indeed, one of the major strengths of the book is not just that the author consults Blackmun’s clerks but that he places the clerks squarely into his analysis as part of the decision-making team – something Greenhouse and many others fail to do. For example, in UNITED STATES v. VUITCH (1971) – a precursor to the landmark abortion case ROE v. WADE (1973) – we learn that Blackmun was inclined to consider extending the right to privacy to include abortion despite the fact that clerk Mike LaFond did not [*458] agree. This is but one clear-cut example of how Blackmun was anything but a puppet for activist clerks, as some have suggested. Of course, that did not mean that clerks were not influential, such as when Randall Bezanson helped Blackmun reconcile the trimester framework and viability with the state interests in health and life, which became the core of ROE.

Yarbrough paints a portrait of a shy, unassuming man whose self-doubts were evident from his initial days as a Harvard undergraduate through his tenure on the Court. The author convincingly argues that Blackmun’s deep-seated feelings of inadequacy allowed him to identify with and have empathy for “society’s ‘outsiders’ or ‘little people,’ those denizens of that ‘other world out there’” (p.ix). Blackmun himself recognized as much when he remarked during his lengthy post-retirement oral history, “I suppose growing up as I did there on the east side of St. Paul the people I knew were people of not great influence politically or by wealth or otherwise. They lived on the other side of town. And naturally I probably had empathy for them” (p.ix).

In chapter 1 – Dayton’s Bluff to Harvard – the author recounts the financial instability that plagued Blackmun’s childhood in Minnesota. Though he won a scholarship to Harvard, he was reluctant to attend for the financial burden it might place on his family. His letters home make constant references to the cost of living and his concern with family finances. He also felt like an outsider at Harvard. As a scholarship student who held various jobs, he immediately noticed the rigid social structure with the wealthy students at the top. We are also introduced to Warren Burger, about whom Blackmun recalled, “Warren was always a little stronger than the rest of us, much to my annoyance. . . . He liked to dominate things and, in a nice way, . . . make himself known” (p.7). Blackmun once wrote home from Harvard that his letter was “getting to be a book and [was], as Warren Burger has been claiming of all of [my letters], terribly incoherent” (p.18). A mathematics major, Blackmun thought about medical school before settling on Harvard Law School – not without a little encouragement from Burger who wrote him, “Believe me, old man, I have no end of admiration for you, for your courage and for your determination and fighting spirit that has carried you to the top. . . . I am sure and know that the day is not far when you will come to a place as high in life as you are now in the esteem of your friends” (p.25). In law school, Blackmun took courses from such legal luminaries as Felix Frankfurter, Calvert Magruder, James M. Landis, and Thomas Reed Powell.

In chapter 2 – Minnesota Lawyer – Blackmun comes into his own. After graduation from law school he returned to Minnesota to clerk for Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Sanborn which led to a position at Junell, Driscoll, Fletcher, Dorsey and Barker – the largest, most prominent firm in Minneapolis. Blackmun was assigned to the dreaded tax department, perhaps because of his math background, but he soon took to the work which included drafting tax bills for the Minnesota legislature and writing briefs for two tax cases that made it to the US Supreme Court. This chapter, like the rest, are filled with wonderful vignettes of [*459] Blackmun’s life such as the time he and Burger attended President Herbert Hoover’s St. Paul campaign speech just days before the 1932 presidential election and Burger’s wedding where Blackmun stood as best man. Blackmun also married, had three daughters, made partner, and continued to advance in Minneapolis/St. Paul legal and social circles. He began doing legal work for the Mayo Clinic and in 1950 left the Dorsey firm to be resident counsel at one of the nation’s premier medical centers – a post he held until 1959. He described his years there as “the happiest decade of my life. If I had it to do over again, I’d probably go to medical school” (p.27).

Chapter 3 – Circuit Judge – details Blackmun’s years on the US Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit. His appointment is a fascinating case study in the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and lobbying that takes place to secure a federal judgeship. In Blackmun’s case, both the departing judge – his former boss Judge Sanborn – and his close friend and newly appointed DC Court of Appeals Judge Warren Burger were instrumental in securing Blackmun’s appointment. Writing his patron Judge Sanborn, Blackmun was characteristically humble, “I appreciate your comments more than I can tell you, but I strongly feel my lack of experience and of qualifications” (p.70). When Burger made the final push for his friend’s selection, Blackmun wrote him, “As always, you demonstrate your friendship with unbelievable actions, and it is overwhelming to me” (p.78).

Yarbrough spends most of this chapter on various areas of the law that Blackmun encountered as an appeals judge: privacy, race, criminal justice, and religion. For each, the author suggests “Blackmun’s votes and opinions on the circuit bench did provide signals to the positions he would assume as a justice. Arguably, they also provide additional support for the thesis that he was largely consistent in his jurisprudence throughout his career” (p.85). For example, in MARION v. GARDNER (1966) Blackmun wrote a unanimous decision overturning a denial of social security benefits to a gay man who had been committed to a mental institution. In the 1966 case he wrote about the topic in respectful tones, “History and common knowledge teach us . . . that many persons with homosexual tendencies have been economically productive and, indeed, have achieved marked success in many fields” (p.85). A former colleague at the Mayo Clinic had urged Blackmun to go further, likening the issue to racial discrimination and BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION (1954). While sympathetic, Blackmun chose to take a more moderate approach to achieve consensus among the other judges on his panel. On race issues, while he was supportive of the Court’s school desegregation decisions, he was sometimes sympathetic with southern judges and school officials. In criminal justice matters he regularly sided with the state. And though he was skeptical of the Court’s decisions expanding the rights of defendants, he applied their rulings from such landmark cases as ESCOBEDO v. ILLINOIS (1964) and MIRANDA v. ARIZONA (1966). Yarbrough also documents Judge Blackmun’s distaste for the death penalty and in particular his concern over the racial disparities in its application, as well as Blackmun’s opposition to prison brutality including [*460] the use of a strap called the “hide” in the Arkansas penal system.

Chapter 4 covers Blackmun’s appointment to the Supreme Court and how it hit him like “a ton of bricks” (p.118). Blackmun liked to refer to himself as “Old Number Three” as President Richard Nixon’s third choice after the failed nominations of southerners Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. While Burger, now Chief Justice, was consulted by the administration on Blackmun’s selection, there is little evidence to suggest that Burger played any significant role in the selection – certainly not compared to his earlier efforts to place his old friend on the Court of Appeals. Blackmun recalled, “I think he was content to let the facts speak for themselves” (p.111). Blackmun’s nomination was greeted enthusiastically by the press and his moderate lower court record was seen as a benefit. While early reports suggested that Blackmun was a Burger clone, some commentators suggested that he was more moderate, and Michigan law professor Yale Kamisar even went so far as to “wonder if Nixon might have been misled” (p.123). The American Bar Association assigned Blackmun its most favorable evaluation, and Blackmun’s confirmation hearing was largely pro forma. He explained that, while he would not inject his personal views into his decisions and would rely on the intent of the framers, he also pointed out that “this is a changing world” and that the Constitution is at times “obscure” on an exact meaning (p.134). He noted his concern as a lower court judge for “the treatment of little people, what I hope is a sensitivity to their problems” (p.135). Blackmun also explained to the committee that he would have qualms about disagreeing with the Chief Justice, despite their long-standing friendship. The committee voted 17-0 to recommend his confirmation, and the full Senate agreed on May 12, 1970 by a vote of 94-0.

Blackmun’s 23-plus years on the Supreme Court constitute the bulk of the book: chapters 5 through 9 at nearly 200 pages. Chapter 5 – The Chambers – begins by noting the self-doubt that the new justice felt upon assuming office. The day after his confirmation, Burger sent him a mail sack of 47 certiorari petitions that he could provide the fourth vote to grant. He decided that 17 were worthy of full consideration by the Court. Yarbrough details how Blackmun selected his staff including his clerks. His self-deprecating manner was apparent to the clerks from the start, as it was not uncommon for the justice to refer to himself as the “dumbest” member, or sincerely asking prospective clerks whether they were aware that he had authored ROE and whether they could work for a jurist who was the subject of so much vitriol because of it. Former clerk Pamela Karlan recalled, “I almost thought he was joking. How could you get through and not know this! But he was actually very sincere” (p.149). We read about Blackmun’s daily breakfasts with his clerks in the Court’s cafeteria, annual clerk-reunion dinners, and their ongoing relationships after their clerkships ended.

Yarbrough spends considerable time in this chapter detailing how Blackmun ran his chambers. He worked long hours, spending most of his time in the upstairs library cloistered away from his office staff and the other members of the Court. He spent considerable time briefing his [*461] clerks about what was said at the private conferences of the nine justices. Not only did Blackmun recount for his clerks the votes and reasoning of each justice, but he also did impressions of each – mimicking their inflections and tone! These detailed briefings gave the Blackmun clerks a decided advantage over clerks from other chambers as they knew where each justice stood on an issue and could use that information in the negotiations that took place across chambers via the clerk network. Initially, Blackmun drafted his own opinions, despite the fact that most opinions coming from other chambers were drafted by clerks. But after criticism from Justice Hugo Black that his chambers was taking too long to circulate drafts and Blackmun’s own clerks volunteering for opinion-duty, Blackmun largely conformed to the norm of clerk-written opinions and edited their work – sometimes substantially but sometimes hardly at all. Yarbrough enters the debate over whether Blackmun ceded too much authority to his clerks and abdicated his judicial responsibility by concluding that such arguments are “overdrawn, especially given the growing reliance of most justices on their clerks during Blackmun’s tenure. Instead, the pattern of decision making in his chambers was not substantially different, for better or worse, from that in the chambers of most of his contemporaries. The memos Blackmun personally prepared for cases demonstrate that he was hardly disengaged from the Court’s work. So, too, do his extensive post-conference briefings, daily breakfasts with his clerks, and the extraordinarily long hours he devoted to reviewing their work and the cases on which they relied” (p.168-169).

In chapter 6, Yarbrough delves into the nature of the Burger-Blackmun relationship on the Supreme Court. Yarbrough’s description of the Chief Justice is consistent with other portraits: “[Burger] displayed from the beginning a domineering and pugnacious temperament and an inability to suppress his personal preferences in the interest of Court collegiality” (p.172). Burger saw Blackmun as an ideological ally from the start. Breaking with the tradition that a new justice’s first opinion for the Court be in a unanimous, non-controversial case, Burger assigned Blackmun the opinion in WYMAN v. JAMES (1971), a contentions 6-3 decision upholding the requirement that recipients of public assistance submit to home visits by social workers or forfeit their eligibility for assistance. Blackmun, joined by Burger and Black, dissented in COHEN v. CALIFORNIA (1971) where the majority overturned the breach-of-peach conviction of a young man who wore a jacket with the words “fuck the draft.” Blackmun said that “Cohen’s immature and childish antic, in my view, was mainly [unprotected] conduct and little speech” (p.181). Similarly, “The Minnesota Twins” dissented in NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. UNITED STATES (1971) where the majority rejected the Nixon administration’s attempts to bar further publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, the classified Defense Department history of US involvement in Vietnam. Yarbrough further details the general agreement between the two justices in other areas, including equal protection and race and sex discrimination: “In fact, until the Court’s 1977 term, Burger and Blackmun voted together in about 90 percent of nonunanimous civil liberties cases” (p.204). [*462]

Still, despite this general level of agreement, Yarbrough concludes, “There is simply no evidence to support the notion that Blackmun and Burger were ever the ‘Minnesota Twins’ in the sense that the chief justice exerted an undue influence over his boyhood friend” (p.205). While Burger’s handling of ROE frustrated Blackmun, it was Blackmun’s behavior in the Watergate tapes case, UNITED STATES v. NIXON (1974), that Blackmun felt caused the permanent breach in their relationship. After Burger circulated his majority opinion in the case, a number of justices suggested modest changes, including Blackmun who rewrote the fact-portion of the opinion. Burger felt betrayed after Blackmun received quick support from Brennan for the new section. Blackmun later recalled, “I’m sure that this case was a factor in the divergence from our former rather close relationship” (p.206).

In chapter 7 – “Roe and Beyond” – Yarbrough details Blackmun’s contribution to the landmark abortion case and the subsequent “fallout” from arguably the most controversial Supreme Court decision in the modern era. As I mentioned before, we learn that in the pre-ROE abortion case VUITCH, Blackmun commented in his pre-oral argument analysis that “I may have to push myself a bit, but I would not be offended by the extension of privacy concepts to the point presented in the present case” (p.211). As he did for all attorneys, Blackmun graded Sarah Weddington’s initial oral argument in the case a “C+” and commented on her appearance. Yarbrough’s use of both Blackmun’s and Brennan’s conference notes place the reader directly inside the justices’ private conferences, and Blackmun’s initial conference position on ROE split the difference between the conservative “fetal life thesis” and the “absolute right to do what you will with your body” (p.213). Yarbrough details the internal politics surrounding Burger’s attempts to control the decision through his opinion assignment to Blackmun, as well as the decision to have the case reargued. Blackmun clerk Randall Bezanson told the author that Blackmun’s central focus was on women’s rights and not on physicians’ rights as some have suggested. The fallout from ROE is discussed, including the endless bags of mail, both positive and negative, that the justice received for the rest of his life. The balance of chapter 7 is spent on how the Court slowly dismantled the commercial speech doctrine. Yarbrough includes it here because, in addition to ROE, it was the only other area where Blackmun was the Court’s chief spokesperson in terms of opinion assignments.

Yarbrough spends a fair amount of time in the pages after ROE chronicling the hate mail and death threats that Blackmun routinely received. Consider this chilling threat: “I am preparing myself for sacrifice. You and I will enter eternity together before the year is over. It will happen outside Washington. It will happen when you least expect it. I dress well, belong to no political party, and have a pleasant middle-age prosperous appearance. I am ready to die” (p.278). Blackmun was relatively indifferent to it all until February 29, 1985, when a shot from a 9 mm handgun shattered his living room window, covered his wife Dottie in glass, and lodged in a chair in which she had been sitting moments before. Blackmun had just left the living room before the shot [*463] was fired. Yarbrough concludes that “opposition to ROE and whatever concerns Blackmun had about his personal safety in no way inhibited his commitment to causes he considered just” (p.283).

In chapter 8, Yarbrough rounds out Blackmun’s contribution to the Burger Court in the areas of freedom of the press and opening the criminal justice system to public scrutiny, the federalism debate from NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES v. USERY (1976) to GARCIA v. SAN ANTONIO METROPOLITAN TRANSIT AUTHORITY(1985), his support for affirmative action in REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA v. BAKKE (1978), and his dissent in the gay rights case BOWERS v. HARDWICK (1986) – a decision predicated on “the right to be let alone” and the opinion he later claimed he was most proud of. Yarbrough also includes the debate over whether Blackmun’s participation in the annual Aspen Institute retreats affected his behavior and specifically whether it cultivated what many saw as his increasing liberalism. Instead of taking a firm position on the matter, the author places Aspen in the context of a larger movement by the justice to “go public,” which included participation in THE BRETHREN (1979), 1982 interviews with CNN and the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, and his increasing selection of liberal clerks who the author suggests were drawn to him as the author of ROE. For Yarbrough, Blackmun’s increasingly public visibility was a direct result of “his growing reputation as the justice most sensitive to the needs of society’s outsiders” (p.277). The chapter closes with Blackmun’s public thoughts on Burger after the Chief’s retirement and death: “when disagreement came, his disappointment in [me] was evident and not concealed. The situation was not comfortable” (p.288).

The author covers Blackmun’s years as a member of the Rehnquist Court in chapter 9. The centerpieces of the chapter were the challenges to ROE including WEBSTER v. REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES (1989) and PLANNED PARENTHOOD v. CASEY (1992). Again, Yarbrough places Blackmun’s clerks at the center of the insider-story of how ROE barely survived. Yarbrough details other areas as well. He notes that, while a clerk drafted Blackmun’s oft-cited, champion-of-the-underdog dissent in DESHANEY v. WINNEBAGO COUNTY (1989), it was Blackmun himself who added the “Poor Joshua!” introduction (p.292). In religious establishment cases Yarbrough recounts how Blackmun remained faithful to his initial separationist position in LEMON v. KURTZMAN (1971) despite attacks on its three-prong test by his conservative colleagues. Blackmun remained similarly consistent in supporting free-exercise claims in the face of the Rehnquist Court’s retreat from the broad protections of prior religious liberty cases. The author also covers the death penalty and Blackmun’s final statement in CALLINS V. COLLINS (1994) that he would “no longer tinker with the machinery of death” (p.319).

In chapter 10 – “Citizen Blackmun” – Yarbrough provides an account of the justice’s retirement decision and his post-Court years. The author shows how politics drove the justice’s choice to [*464] depart under a president – in this case Democrat Bill Clinton – who would select a like-minded successor. Yarbrough recounts the debate over Blackmun’s judicial legacy and the controversy over his former clerk’s widely publicized book about the internal politics of the Court and the influence of law clerks (Lazarus 1998). Though Blackmun did not hear cases during his retirement years, as many federal judges do, he continued to work full-time giving speeches, receiving honors, and even portraying Justice Joseph Story in Steven Spielberg’s AMISTAD (1997). But soon his health deteriorated and Yarbrough details his decline, death, burial at Arlington National Cemetery, and the controversy surrounding release of his papers and Linda Greenhouse receiving advance access.

In the epilogue, Yarbrough returns to his thesis of Blackmun “as an outsider, as someone who did not belong” and who had “deep-seated feelings of insecurity and self-doubt” despite his myriad accomplishments (p.346). The author reiterates how this manifested itself in his relationships with colleagues, clerks, and acquaintances and in the issues he confronted as a jurist: “Indeed, each blow he struck for one of society’s ‘Poor Joshua[s]!’ was in a very real sense a blow for ‘Poor Harry!’” (p.348).

While Yarbrough’s biography will not be the last word – see Kobylka (2005) for a window on his upcoming Blackmun book (2008) – it is an important addition to our understanding of the justice and the Courts upon which he served. There is still much room for future studies that place Blackmun more squarely in the judicial decision making literature: i.e., the borderline behavioral sink of the attitudinal, strategic, institutional, judicial-audience, and ideological-drift theories – to name but a handful. Yarbrough has aptly demonstrated that, contrary to what some see as an atavistic endeavor, contemporary judicial biography can augment broader judicial decision-making literature in important ways. Indeed, more systematic and comprehensive approaches my help us resolve the debates over whether Blackmun is best understood as feminist or outsider, whether he grew and changed over time or whether he was generally consistent, and the extent to which his clerks influenced his decisions. Toward that end, Yarbrough’s thought-provoking treatment is a welcome and important contribution.


REFERENCES:

AMISTAD. 1998. DreamWorks SKG.

Epstein, Lee, Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn, and Jeffrey A. Segal. 2007. “Ideological Drift Among Supreme Court Justices: Who, When, and How Important?” 101 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW 1483-1542.

Greenhouse, Linda. 2005. BECOMING JUSTICE BLACKMUN. New York, NY: Times Books.

Kobylka, Joseph. 2005. “Tales From the Blackmun Papers: A Fuller Appreciation of Harry Blackmun’s Judicial Legacy.” 70 MISSOURI LAW REVIEW 1075-1132.

Kobylka, Joseph. 2008. THE JUDICIAL ODYSSEY OF HARRY A. BLACKMUN. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press (forthcoming). [*465]

Lazarus, Edward. 1998. CLOSED CHAMBERS: THE FIRST EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE EPIC STRUGGLE INSIDE THE SUPREME COURT. New York: Random House.

Ruger, Theodore W. 2005. “Justice Harry Blackmun and the Phenomenon of Judicial Preference Change.” 70 MISSOURI LAW REVIEW 1209-1230.

Woodward, Bob, and Scott Armstrong. 1979. THE BRETHREN: INSIDE THE SUPREME COURT. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Yarbrough, Tinsley E. 2005. DAVID HACKETT SOUTER: TRADITIONAL REPUBLICAN ON THE REHNQUIST COURT. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yarbrough, Tinsley E. 1995. JUDICIAL ENIGMA: THE FIRST JUSTICE HARLAN. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yarbrough, Tinsley E. 1988. MR. JUSTICE BLACK AND HIS CRITICS. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.


CASE REFERENCES:

BOWERS v. HARDWICK, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

CALLINS v. COLLINS, 510 U.S. 1141 (1994).

COHEN v. CALIFORNIA, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

DESHANEY v. WINNEBAGO COUNTY, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).

ESCOBEDO v. ILLINOIS, 378 U.S. 478 (1964).

GARCIA v. SAN ANTONIO METROPOLITAN TRANSIT AUTHORITY, 469 U.S. 528 (1985).

LEMON v. KURTZMAN, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).

MARION v. GARDNER, 359 F .2d 175 (8th Cir. 1966).

MIRANDA v. ARIZONA, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES v. USERY, 426 U.S. 833 (1976).

NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. UNITED STATES, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

PLANNED PARENTHOOD v. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA v. BAKKE, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).

ROE v. WADE, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

UNITED STATES v. NIXON, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

UNITED STATES v. VUITCH, 402 U.S. 62 (1971). [*466]

WEBSTER v. REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES, 492 U.S. 490 (1989).

WYMAN v. JAMES, 400 U.S. 309 (1971).


© Copyright 2008 by the author, Artemus Ward.