Some Personal Reminiscences and What They Meant for Me

Abstract

Some Personal Reminiscences and What They Meant for Me HARRY A. BLACKMUN* I. Preliminary There are those who have said I should write a book, and there are those—about the same in number—who have said I should not write a book. Those in the negative assert that my “book” already is written in the several hundred opinions (majorities, concurrences, dissents) I have filed over the years, and in my public utterances. There are valid arguments, I suppose, on both sides. I certainly do not wish to write anything that merely seeks to explain further my vote in decided cases, or to comment—supportively or adversely—on colleagues’ votes, or to express little more than after-the-fact criticism. In that context, what might be said belonged in the decisional process itself. But there are other things in Supreme Court experience. Law students are inclined to ask questions. Example: “Tell me, how does one come to be a federal judge?” Justice Tom Clark had a direct response: “One has to be on the corner when the bus comes by.” One federal appellate judge plaintively said to me: “The only reason I am on the federal bench is because I was a close friend of a United States Senator.” (He had served for a time as the Senator’s administrative assistant.) It may perhaps be said that every federaljudge comes by his status in his own way. Of course, there are things one must not do, but I doubt that there is a specific path one must follow to be eligible and seriously regarded as a candidate for federal judicial service. I took my first federal judicial oath on November 4, 1959, more than thirty-six years ago. That was a day with emotional overtones for me. One reason forthis was the respect and, indeed, almost reverence I felt for the federal bench, having had the good fortune to be the recipient of a Court of Appeals’ clerkship in 1932-1933 and having seen firsthand the re­ sponsible work of most federal judges of that time, their devotion to duty, their integrity, and their concern for the positions they occupied. Buta more intimate reason forme was that my clerkship was with a newly elevated federal appellate judge whom I greatly admired, and whom I hadthe privilege to succeed. He, rather than some of us lesser figures, deserved to be 324 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY This photograph shows Harry Blackmun (standing second from the right) with the other associates at the Minnesota law firm of Junell, Driscoll, Fletcher, Dorsey & Barker. on the Supreme Court. But the political situ­ ation at the time, and for several years there­ after, was out ofstep for him. That fact did not lessen my respect for John Benjamin Sanborn, Jr., an able, fair-minded, hard-workingjurist of Minnesota who came to his years of influen­ tial service in the late 1920s and the 1930s. I was extraordinarily fortunate in having met him, in having worked as a clerk for him, and in having profited so much from his strikingly correct mentorship. II. Getting There I suppose I first should say something about how I landed on the federal bench. Much of what I say at this point contains elements of speculation, for atthe time I actually knew little ofwhat was happening. Nevertheless, I believe that most of what I recite did take place. After I left a pleasant private practice with a large and influential Minneapolis law firm that had afforded me many instructive pro­ fessional moments, we moved in late 1950 to Rochester, Minnesota, tojoin the Mayo staff. I had two primary reasons for making regularre­ turn visits to the Twin Cities. The first was the fact that my mother and my sister were there. Mother had become a widow in 1947 and lived in that status for more than three decades. My only living sibling, a sister, resided at White Bear Lake, an eastern suburb of Saint Paul. The second reason was Judge Sanborn, espe­ cially after Mrs. Sanborn’s death, when he was living alone in Saint Paul. I remained in touch with him, and every few weeks I would tele­ phone...