Harry Blackmun

Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. He is best known as the author of the majority opinion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, overturning laws restricting abortion in the United States.

Later years on the bench: Blackmun and the death penalty

While it is widely believed that Blackmun grew more liberal over the years, he argued that instead the Court grew more conservative with the elevation of William Rehnquist to Chief Justice and the replacement of the last of the Warren Court justices.

Related Topics:
William Rehnquist - Warren

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Still, Blackmun undoubtedly changed his views on many issues. For example, Blackmun voted to uphold mandatory death penalty statutes at issue in 1976's Roberts v. Louisiana and Woodson v. North Carolina, even though these laws would have automatically imposed the death penalty on anyone found guilty of first-degree murder. On February 22, 1994, he announced that he now saw the death penalty as always unconstitutional by issuing a dissent from the Court's refusal to consider the relatively routine death penalty case of Callins v. Collins, in which he famously wrote "From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death." Subsequently, adopting the practice begun by Justices Brennan and Marshall, he issued in every death penalty case presented to the Court, a brief statement reiterating his Callins dissent.

Related Topics:
February 22 - 1994 - Callins v. Collins - Brennan - Marshall

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Some commentators also call Blackmun a "sentimentalist" justice as he sometimes appealed to his own emotions in justifying opinions. In his emotional dissent in 1989's DeShaney v. Winnebago County, rejecting the constitutional liability of the state of Iowa for the death of Joshua DeShaney at the hands of an abusive father, Blackmun famously opined, "Poor Joshua!".

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