Subjects:

Biographies and Legal Humour

Justice Harry A. Blackmun, author of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, was the pivotal figure in one of the most contentious decisions in Supreme Court history and indeed the most divisive issue facing the Court today.

Harry A. Blackmun: The Outsider Justice is Tinsley E. Yarbrough's penetrating account of one of the most outspoken and complicated figures on the modern 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. 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 jurist gradually transformed into a champion of the underdog, Blackmun had a ready answer: he had not changed; the Court and the issues before them changed.

Drawing on considerable archival research and a wealth of knowledge of Supreme Court history, Yarbrough has written a nuanced and deeply insightful account of the life and career of one of the court's most intriguing justices.