The Worldview of Justice Harry A. Blackmun
Stephen Raper
Robertson School of Government
Regent University
Abstract
Justice Harry A. Blackmun is most famous for his role in the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision as
well as his instrumental role in overturning the death penalty. When he was appointed to the
Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon, Blackmun was thought to be a sound conservative
in both law and morality. This was due to Blackmun’s deference to past precedent, much of
which was conservative in nature. But when given an opportunity to promote his own views
from the bench, Blackmun’s liberal beliefs came to the forefront.
Key Words: Abortion, conservative, death penalty, Harry Blackmun, homosexuality, liberal,
mainline liberalism, U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Constitution, United Methodist Church
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The Worldview of Justice Harry A. Blackmun
Harry Blackmun was appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon in 1970. At that
time, Blackmun was a lifelong Republican and generally believed to be a conservative. But by
the time of his retirement from the Court in 1994, Justice Blackmun was looked upon as the
Supreme Court’s most liberal member. Contrary to popular belief which holds that Justice
Blackmun transitioned to the left, Blackmun was never a conservative.
Many of Blackmun’s opinions bear the unmistakable mark of a conservative because, for
most of his lower court experience, he enforced the constitution as he understood it, not as he
wished for it to be. Furthermore, Blackmun had a tendency throughout his early career to defer
to the legislature for formulation of public policy. Because of this, Blackmun’s lower court
opinions do not always bear out his personal worldview as much as they bear an imprint of
judicial deference to the constitutional order and the other branches of government.
But
Blackmun was a liberal, and when given an opportunity to change the law from the bench, he did
so in keeping with his liberal belief system. In this short paper, the author will review Justice
Blackmun’s career to show that Justice Blackmun always had liberal ideas and opinions
concerning the constitution.
Background and Training
Harry Andrew Blackmun was born in his grandmother’s home in Nashville, Illinois, in
the same room where his mother had been born. Blackmun grew up in Dayton’s Bluff, a
working-class neighborhood.
Blackmun attended Mechanic Arts High School where he
graduated fourth in a class of 450. Blackmun was the president of the student council, winner of
a citywide award for oratory, and generally an A student. But just two months after graduation,
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Blackmun wrote in his diary that “I seem to have absolutely no courage, either physically or
mentally” (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 2-4). Blackmun was referring to is lack of self-confidence and
a deferential character which he recognized in himself.
Blackmun attended Harvard College on a scholarship. During his senior year, he briefly
considered and rejected the idea of attending Medical school. To Blackmun, law school seemed
a simpler route to the security a professional career would offer (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 9).
Blackmun had the scholarly intelligence to get into Harvard, but his family could not offer him
financial support.
Blackmun thus was forced to work during his tenure at law school.
Greenhouse notes that “paid jobs ate into precious study time” (2005, p.11).
Blackmun’s
average for his first year was 67, and his aggregate scores dropped to 66 in the second year. But
during his third year, Blackmun managed to average a 70. Blackmun graduated from Harvard
Law School in 1932, with a rank of 120 out of a class of 451 (Greenhouse, 2005, p.11-12).
Blackmun studied for the Minnesota bar examination over one weekend and passed it.
He then applied for a clerkship with Judge John B. Sanborn, who had himself recently been
appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. The clerkship lasted for eighteen
months, at which time Blackmun was hired by the firm of Junell, Driscoll, Fletcher, Dorsey and
Baker. Greenhouse notes that at the time, this was the best law firm in Minneapolis-St.Paul
(2005, 13-16). Blackmun mainly worked in the non-controversial areas of taxation, trusts and
estates. In 1949, he was approached with an offer to become the resident counsel of the Mayo
Clinic (Greenhouse, 2005, 18).
Blackmun accepted the offer and later stated that his years at the Mayo clinic were the
“happiest of his professional life.” Greenhouse notes that Blackmun attended weekly surgeon
dinners where the doctors analyzed one another’s work and he also regularly watched medial
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procedures and laboratory experiments. Blackmun stated that “I felt the more I could learn about
how medicine was practiced there, the better off I would be in advising the physicians”
(Greenhouse, 2005, p.18). Years later, when serving on the Supreme Court, it would be the
medical experience he gained while serving at the Mayo Clinic which Blackmun would use to
finally break with his habit of deferring to others on public policy issues.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
In 1959, shortly before his fifty-first birthday, Blackmun was approached by Judge
Sanborn with an offer to join the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Sanborn was taking senior status
at the circuit, and the move would open a position on the court. Normally judges do not get to
nominate their own successors, but Sanborn was politically connected. Sanborn conspired with
Warren Burger and Lawrence E. Walsh, the deputy attorney general, to persuade President
Eisenhower to accept Blackmun as Sanborn’s successor. Blackmun’s nomination was in no way
controversial, but with the 1960 election approaching, Eisenhower’s appointments had been
stalled in the Democrat controlled Senate.
But with some intervention by Senator Hubert
Humphrey, Blackmun’s nomination was confirmed at two-thirty in the morning of September
15, 1959, in the closing hours of the congressional session (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 25-28).
Blackmun would author 217 opinions for the Eighth Circuit. Most of these opinions
were tax related and non-controversial (Greenhouse, 2005, p.29). Blackmun’s judicial deference
to higher authority was displayed in the case of Jones v. Alfred Mayer Co. (1967). In this case a
white property owner refused to sell a home to a citizen who was black. The plaintiff brought
suit under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the issue raised was whether the act applied only to
government action or also extended to the conduct of private parties. At this time, most case law
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held the act only applied to government, but Blackmun had sympathies with the plaintiff and
perceived that “It would not be too surprising if the Supreme Court one day were to hold that a
court errs when it dismisses a complaint of this kind.”
Blackmun then noted several
interpretations that could be used to hold that section 1982 was “free of the shackles of state
action.” But Blackmun determined that the arguments for changing the current interpretation
“falls short of justification by us as an inferior tribunal.” Blackmun concluded by stating the
“matter, thus, is one of policy, to be implemented in the customary manner by appropriate
statutes directed to the need. If we are wrong in this conclusion, the Supreme Court will tell us
so…” Blackmun then reluctantly ruled that the suit must fail (Jones v. Alfred Mayer Co., 1967).
But Blackmun did not stop there.
Blackmun privately told several of his colleagues that he hoped that Supreme Court would agree
to review the case. Blackmun informed Gerald Heaney that “I did my best to serve the issues up
on a tray, figuratively for the Supreme Court to take. I hope they will. This is the kind of
situation where one does not mind being reversed.” Blackmun also stated that “[p]erhaps I
should be more willing to strike out for the frontier and be less influenced by Supreme Court
decisions which remain on the books” (Greenhouse, 2005, p.30). Blackmun, as a judge, felt
himself bound by precedent. But for much of his career, he desperately wanted to change the
law so that it would conform to his own standards of justice. Blackmun had his chance one year
later in the case of Jackson v. Bishop (1968).
The question presented in Jackson v. Bishop (1968) dealt with how to apply the Eighth
Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment to the conditions within a prison
where corporal punishment was practiced by whipping the inmates. Blackmun wrote in his own
personal notes that the punishment “inflicts such pain and is so barbarous that it is abhorrent to
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public opinion.” Blackmun also wrote in his notes that “Constitutional standards are evolving
and are not static… We must look at present day concepts and opinions… A court’s conscience
is necessarily the product of prevailing public opinion.” Blackmun was assigned to write the
majority opinion, and his opinion closely parallels his personal notes.
After the decision,
Blackmun received a congratulatory letter from the president-elect of the American Bar
Association who had also argued the case on behalf of one of the inmates. Blackmun wrote back
that the “opinion was not the easiest to prepare. I suppose this in part is due to the fact that one
necessarily becomes somewhat emotionally involved in the record” (Greenhouse, 2005, 31-32).
Thus Blackmun’s personal evolution from a judge who deferred to the legislature and the
constitution to a liberal activist judge who was emotionally identifying with the parties before the
court was already underway. Blackmun’s evolution can be shown in Pope v. United States
(1967).
Pope v. United States (1967) involved a twenty-two year old college football star who
shot three people, including a seventy-seven year old, to death. Pope’s appeal raised questions
about the way the trial court handled jury selection and psychiatric evidence. On appeal, the
Eighth Circuit heard the case en banc, and all seven judges voted to affirm the death sentence.
Blackmun still viewed the death penalty as a matter for the legislature, not the courts, to decide.
But at the end of his originally twenty-five page opinion, Blackmun added a paragraph
expressing doubts about the value of capital punishment and suggesting the executive clemency
would better serve the ends of justice.
The paragraph prompted two other judges to object to it. Both Judge Matthes and Judge Gibson
began a heated exchange of letters with Blackmun over this issue. This exchange of letters
prompted Judge Lay to intervene. Lay informed Blackmun that if he would withdraw the
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paragraph, he [Lay] would write a separate concurring opinion raising the issue. Blackmun
agreed but several months later he wrote a letter to Warren Burger in which he stated “In
retrospect, I suppose it was expediency, namely, to avoid a hoedown in the court. Yet, I was
right about it and one never should compromise when one is right. I gained nothing by it except
misunderstanding and, if that was to come anyway, I might as well have held my position”
(Greenhouse, 2005, p. 32-35). Judges Matthes and Gibson, by objecting to Blackmun’s open
statement of his worldview on capital punishment, may have helped him to gain entry to the
Supreme Court.
SCOTUS
By 1969, Blackmun was already mentioned as a possible Nixon appointment. In 1970,
the assistant attorney general, William H. Rehnquist, analyzed Blackmun’s court of appeals
record and turned in a favorable report. Rehnquist wrote “I think he can be fairly characterized
as conservative-to-moderate in both criminal law and civil rights… He does not uniformly come
out on one side o the other, though his tendencies are certainly more in the conservative direction
than in the liberal.
His opinions are all carefully reasoned, and give no indication of a
preconceived bias in one direction or the other” (Greenhouse, 2005, p.46-7).
Following the announcement of Blackmun’s appointment, the Washington Post stated of
Blackmun: “His opinions and reputation indicate that he is a conservative with an independent
mind and sensitivity to new ideas (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 50). A Year later, the Associated Press
“observed that Blackmun ‘has demonstrated that not all conservative jurists speak with a
Southern accent’” (Greenhouse, 2005, p.62-63). Blackmun would, however, show his liberal
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worldview just two years later with Roe V. Wade (1973), a decision that marked a turning point
in Blackmun’s life.
Blackmun had always shown deference to the other branches of government in the sphere
of public policy.
But with the decision in Roe, Blackmun began to implement his own
worldview through his cases.
In his own words, Roe is “distinctly in line with the cases
expanding concept to privacy” and one of his two most “liberal” decisions. Blackmun further
noted that Roe was a “liberating experience” that empowered him to think of things in a new way
(Totenberg for National Public Radio, n.d., para. 1).
Blackmun’s original draft of the Roe
decision was seventeen pages in length with only three pages analyzing the constitutional
question: the medical imprecision of anti-abortion laws restricting abortion to incidents where
the life of the mother was at stake. In his original draft, Blackmun concluded the Texas statute at
issue was “insufficiently informative to the physician to whom it purports to afford a measure of
professional protection but who must measure its indefinite meaning at the risk of his liberty”
(Greenhouse, 2005, p. 88). At the same time that Blackmun was writing the opinion in Roe, he
was also circulating a more extensive draft of another abortion case, Doe v. Bolton (1973).
In the draft opinion in Doe, Blackmun noted that “a woman’s interest in making the
fundamental personal decision whether or not to bear an unwanted child is within the scope of
personal rights protected by the Ninth and fourteenth Amendments.” Blackmun noted that this
right was not absolute because the “pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy.”
Greenhouse notes that Blackmun’s draft opinion received a trepid response from the other
justices, so Blackmun officially requested that both cases be reargued. The court agreed to the
proposal for reargument (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 89-90). But in the interim, rather than allow the
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parties involved in the case to raise issues, Blackmun stepped over the line from neutral arbiter to
advocate.
Blackmun visited the Mayo in July 1973, where he researched the legal and medical
history of abortion for himself. From his research, Blackmun became convinced that regulation
of abortion was a recent phenomenon and without roots in the common-law tradition. In the new
outline he prepared for Doe, Blackmun stated “the right of privacy as exemplified in the decided
cases here. This is broad enough to encompass the decision whether to terminate a pregnancy”
(Greenhouse, 2005, p.95).
In the final opinion of Roe, Blackmun wrote in section VIII that
“The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of
decisions, however, the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a
guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In
varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of
that right in the First Amendment,... in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments... in the
penumbras of the Bill of Rights,... in the Ninth Amendment... or in the concept of liberty
guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment... These decisions make it
clear that only personal rights that can be deemed 'fundamental' or 'implicit in the concept
of ordered liberty... are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it
clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage... procreation...
contraception... family relationships... and child rearing and education...” (Roe v. Wade,
1973).
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Though both Roe and Doe were primarily interested in the rights of the physician,
Blackmun wrote the opinions in such a way to highlight the rights of women to privacy. Later in
the case of Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth (1976), Blackmun again spoke
of the interests of the woman during pregnancy in the context of husband rights: “Inasmuch as it
is the woman who physically bears the child and who is the more directly and immediately
affected by the pregnancy, as between the two, the balance weighs in her favor.”
Later, in the case of Beal v. Doe (1977), Blackmun goes to the outermost edge of the
abortion debate in his dissenting opinion where he finds a refusal of a state to pay for abortions
to be paramount to violating the right to abortion. Blackmun wrote “The Court concedes the
existence of a constitutional right but denies the realization and enjoyment of that right on the
ground that existence and realization are separate and distinct.
For the individual woman
concerned, indigent and financially helpless, as the Court's opinions in the three cases concede
her to be, the result is punitive and tragic. Implicit in the Court's holdings is the condescension
that she may go elsewhere for her abortion. I find that disingenuous and alarming, almost
reminiscent of: ‘Let them eat cake.’” Blackmun however also openly challenged the public
policy of the state of Connecticut.
Blackmun noted:
“The Court's financial argument, of course, is specious. To be sure, welfare funds
are limited and welfare must be spread perhaps as best meets the community's concept of
its needs. But the cost of a nontherapeutic abortion is far less than the cost of maternity
care and delivery, and holds no comparison whatsoever with the welfare costs that will
burden the State for the new indigents and their support in the long, long years ahead.”
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This passage marks the final departure of the young school child who felt that he had no
courage and the extremes the new Blackmun, as a judicial activist, was prepared to go. Not only
was he prepared to tell the world what he thought public policy should be, he was willing to use
his vote on the Supreme Court to advance his views. A similar transition took place in the
capital punishment debate.
At the conference to determine whether or not to hear the case of Aikens v. California
(1972), Blackmun stated “at this point I still adhere to the concept that ordinarily punishment,
including even the death penalty, is a matter for the legislature and not for the judiciary.”
However, Blackmun wrote in his notes “were I a legislator, I would vote against the death
penalty.... I would disagree with the policy, but I cannot throw it out, at this point at least, on
constitutional grounds” (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 113).
Writing in the dissent in Furman v. Georgia (1972) Blackmun stated “cases such as these
provide for me an excruciating agony of the spirit. I yield to no one in the depth of my distaste,
antipathy, and, indeed, abhorrence, for the death penalty, with all its aspects of physical distress
and fear and of moral judgment exercised by finite minds. That distaste is buttressed by a belief
that capital punishment serves no useful purpose that can be demonstrated. For me, it violates
childhood's training and life's experiences, and is not compatible with the philosophical
convictions I have been able to develop. It is antagonistic to any sense of 'reverence for life.'
Were I a legislator, I would vote against the death penalty...” But with each passing term,
Blackmun’s distaste for the death penalty grew.
By 1985, Blackmun was writing that “Since 1976, this Court has come to a clearer
understanding that the death penalty, although it may be imposed constitutionally, is so
profoundly different from all other penalties that extraordinary safeguards must attend its
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imposition” (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 167). In a dissent made from the bench in the case of
Herrera v. Collins (1993), Blackmun noted his doubts as to the constitutionality of capital
punishment when there are no “restrictions on the States’ power to execute whomever and
however they please” (Greenhouse, 2005, p. 175). Blackmun also wrote in his dissent that “the
Eighth Amendment prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments.’ This proscription is not static but
rather reflects evolving standards of decency” (Herrera v. Collins, 1993). Blackmun’s own
evolving standards of decency were prodded along by his own law clerks.
Late in 1992, Greenhouse notes that Andrew H. Schapiro persuaded Blackmun, who was
close to his eighty-fifth birthday, to drop all pretense and declare the deal penalty
unconstitutional (2005, p. 176-177). Blackmun agreed, and as Shapiro’s term was expiring, the
task of writing a death penalty dissent was assigned to Michelle L. Alexander. Blackmun found
a vehicle to which he could attach he pre-written twenty-two page dissent in the case of Callins
v. Collins (1994). All Blackmun had to do was plug-in Mr. Callins name, the time of his
scheduled execution, and the state of execution.
In the dissent Blackmun’s staff wrote “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker
with the machinery of death.
For more than 20 years I have endeavored--indeed, I have
struggled--along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and rules that would lend
more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue
to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need
for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the
death penalty experiment has failed... Experience has taught us that the constitutional goal of
eliminating arbitrariness and discrimination from the administration of death... can never be
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individualized sentencing... The death penalty must be imposed ‘fairly, and with reasonable
consistency, or not at all’” (Callins v. Collins, 1994). From this point on, Blackmun opposed all
forms of capital punishment as operationally impracticable in a constitutionally acceptable way.
Blackmun told his clerks that in the future they were to use the phrase “adhering to my view that
the death penalty cannot be imposed fairly within the constraints of the Constitution” as a
standard dissent that would be attached to every death penalty decision (Greenhouse, 2005,
p.178).
On the issue of homosexuality, Blackmun’s position seems clear from Bowers v.
Hardwick (1986). Blackmun wrote this case is not “about ‘a fundamental right to engage in
homosexual sodomy’... this case is about ‘the most comprehensive of rights and the right most
valued by civilized men,’ namely, ‘the right to be let alone.’”
Quoting Justice Holmes,
Blackmun wrote “I believe that ‘[i]t is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than
that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon
which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind
imitation of the past’” (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986).
Blackmun continued his privacy theme with “I believe we must analyze Hardwick's
claim in the light of the values that underlie the constitutional right to privacy. If that right means
anything, it means that, before Georgia can prosecute its citizens for making choices about the
most intimate aspects of their lives, it must do more than assert that the choice they have made is
an 'abominable crime not fit to be named among Christians.'” Blackmun continued “we protect
the decision whether to have a child because parenthood alters so dramatically an individual’
self-definition, not because of demographic considerations or the Bible’s command to be fruitful
and multiply... The Court claims that its decision today merely refuses to recognize a
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fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy; what the Court really has refused to
recognize is the fundamental interest all individuals have in controlling the nature of their
intimate associations with others” (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986).
Of particular note is the following passage written by Justice Blackmun:
“The assertion that "traditional Judeo-Christian values proscribe" the conduct
involved... cannot provide an adequate justification for [the Georgia statute]. That
certain, but by no means all, religious groups condemn the behavior at issue gives
the State no license to impose their judgments on the entire citizenry. The
legitimacy of secular legislation depends instead on whether the State can
advance some justification for its law beyond its conformity to religious
doctrine.... A State can no more punish private behavior because of religious
intolerance than it can punish such behavior because of racial animus. The
Constitution cannot control such prejudices, but neither can it tolerate them”
(Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986).
This passage may strike an observer as odd as it came from a justice who claimed to be a
Christian. The passage affirms a strict wall of separation between state and morality; a wall that
was not visible to the Supreme Court until well into the Twentieth Century. But one must
remember that not all Christians are conservative in theology nor are all Christians of the
evangelical stripe. Blackmun was a practicing Methodist, and he always insisted that he did not
change his views (Oyez, n.d., para. 7). Perhaps Blackmun was right. Perhaps he did not change
his view, perhaps his views were in keeping with a mainline liberal denomination: the United
Methodist Church.
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Justice Blackmun was raised a Methodist and was a member of the Metropolitan
Memorial United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., where he frequently read scriptures at
Sunday Morning worship. The Senior Pastor Bill Lawrence, stated of Blackmun that he “was
active in the Fellowship life of the Church... His life was an expression of his faith.” Rev.
William Holmes also stated that Blackmun had a “great love for the Scripture...” and “had a
great love for the Untied Methodist Church as a denomination” (United Methodist News Service,
1999, para. 7-8).
Of particular note was Blackmun’s statements made from the pulpit on September 20,
1987, the Sunday nearest the bicentennial celebration of the signing of the U.S. Constitution.
Blackmun stated that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were “short, precise and imperfect.”
Blackmun described the Constitution as being defective in many areas but could be valuable to
Christians because it “provides roots for our living together and getting along together,
presumably as a family, under the rule of law rather than of force” (United Methodist News
Service, 1999, para. 9-10).
John C. Green, writing in The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes: A
Baseline for 2004 stated that “Modernist mainliners are typically called ‘liberals’ or
‘progressives’ (2004, 5). Green characterizes modernists as having a “desire to adopt modern
beliefs and practices in a changing world” (2004, 4). Blackmun’s worldview was in keeping
with Green’s definition of a mainline Christian as he believed the Constitution was imprecise and
needed to evolve with changing standards. Furthermore, Blackmun’s belief that the state should
pay for abortions as a form of social welfare policy is in keeping with the modernist mainliners,
fifty-five percent of whom think the government should offer help to the disadvantaged and
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sixty-two percent of whom think abortion should always be legal and up to a woman to decide
(Green, 2004, p. 28, 40).
Though Blackmun began looking at abortion from the perspective of a doctor, he ended
up seeing the issue as one of a women’s right to privacy. This belief carried over into the
homosexuality debate. Green notes that seventy-three percent of modernist mainliners support
gay rights (2004, 45). Green also notes that a large plurality of modernist mainliners also oppose
the death penalty (2004, 43). Again, Blackmun would fit in with the mainliners on that issue.
Conclusion
While it should be obvious that Blackmun was never a conservative in the sense of
agreeing with the conservative position of strict constructionism, he did pass as a conservative
for much of his life. This was due to his willingness to defer to the legislatures and the
constitution. But his private writings and his opinions once he was appointed to the Supreme
Court, show a distinct and continuous liberal bent. This liberal bent was in keeping with the
modernist traditions of the Untied Methodist Church, and his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick
(1986) not only shows that he had broken with moral traditions, but that he felt Christianity was
an insufficient basis for legislation of any kind. Even in the year 2006, that is a fairly modernist
position to take. While we cannot be sure how much the United Methodist Church influenced
his thinking, his worldview is in keeping with the UMC and the modernist mainliners who
control that denomination.
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Reference
Green, John C., (2004). The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes: A Baseline
for 2004. Retrieved on October 10, 2006, from
http://regent.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/commo
n/course.pl?course_id=_24190_1.
Greenhouse, Linda. (2005). Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court
Journey. (pp. 2-178). New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company.
Oyez.org (n.d.). “Harry A Blackmun.” Retrieved on November 10, 2006, from
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/98/print.
Totenberg, Nina for National Public Radio. (1995). “Web Extra: Blackmun Reflects on ‘Roe v.
Wade’” and “Blackmun Papers Detail Road to 'Roe.'” Retrieved on November 10, 2006,
from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1749005.
United Methodist News Service (1999). “Justice Harry Blackmun was active United Methodist.”
Retrieved on 10 November 2006, from
http://archives.umc.org/umns/news_archive1999.asp?ptid=2&story=%7B002726ADBE49-4FDF-9AB4-FA5444666FE9%7D&mid=3368.
Aikens v. California, 406 U.S. 813, 92 S.Ct. 1931 (1972).
Beal v. Dole, 432 U.S. 454, 97 S.Ct. 2394 (1977).
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S.Ct. 2841 (1986).
Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141, 114 S.Ct. 1127 (1994).
Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 93 S.Ct. 739 (1973).
Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (1972).
Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 113 S.Ct. 853 (1993) for 8th cir use (8th Cir. 1993).
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Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571 (8th Cir. 1968).
Jones v. Alfred Mayer Co,. 379 F.2d 33 (8th Cir. 1967).
Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 96 S.Ct. 2831 (1976).
Pope v. United States, 372 F.2d 710 (8th Cir. 1967).
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705 (1973).
Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309, 91 S.Ct. 381 (1971).
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