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 until 1994. Appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, Blackmun ultimately became one of the most liberal justices on the Court. He is best known as the author of the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade.

Early years and professional career

Harry Blackmun was born in Nashville, Illinois, the son of Theo Huegely (Reuter) and Corwin Manning Blackmun. He grew up in Dayton's Bluff, a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He attended the same grade school as future Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, with whom he eventually served on the Supreme Court for some sixteen years. He attended Harvard College on scholarship, earning an A.B. summa cum laude in mathematics and graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1929. While at Harvard, Blackmun joined Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity and sang with the Harvard Glee Club (with whom he performed for President Herbert Hoover in 1929, Blackmun's first visit to Washington). He attended Harvard Law School (among his professors there was future Justice of the Supreme Court Felix Frankfurter), graduating in 1932. He served in a variety of positions including private counsel, law clerk, and adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School and William Mitchell College of Law (then the St. Paul College of Law). Blackmun's practice as an attorney at the law firm now known as Dorsey & Whitney focused in its early years on taxation, trusts and estates, and civil litigation. He married Dorothy Clark in 1941 and had three daughters with her, Nancy, Sally, and Susan. Between 1950 and 1959, Blackmun served as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He would later describe his time at Mayo as "his happiest time" (while describing his later work on the judiciary as where he "performed his duty").