Harry A. Blackmun

A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress

Prepared by Connie L. Cartledge with the assistance of Joseph K. Brooks, Melinda Friend, Jennifer Gunter, Patrick Kerwin, David Luljak, Sherralyn McCoy, Brian McGuire, John Monagle, Karen Stuart, and Chanté Wilson
Revised and expanded by Connie L. Cartledge

Special thanks to Wanda S. Martinson, secretary to Justice Harry Blackmun, for her assistance in the transfer of the collection and for generously sharing her knowledge about the papers

Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Washington, D.C.

2003

Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html

Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress
Manuscript Division, 2003

Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms003030

Latest revision: 2004-08-12

Table of Contents

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

Names:

Subjects:

Occupation:

Administrative Information

Provenance:

Processing History:

Transfers:

Copyright Status:

Preferred Citation:

Biographical Note

Scope and Content Note

Organization of the Papers

Description of Series

Container List

Appendix: Legal Abbreviations

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.

Administrative Information

The papers of Harry A. Blackmun, lawyer, judge, and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, were given to the Library of Congress by Blackmun in 1997 and physically transferred in 1999 and 2000. Additional material was given to the Library by Blackmun's daughter, Sally Blackmun, from 2001 to 2003.

The papers of Harry A. Blackmun were arranged and described in 2000. Material received in 2001 and 2003 was processed as an addition.

Sound recordings and videotapes were transferred to the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.

Copyright in the unpublished writings of Harry A. Blackmun in these papers and in other collections of papers in the custody of the Library of Congress has been dedicated to the public.

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, Harry A. Blackmun Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Biographical Note

Scope and Content Note

The papers of Harry Andrew Blackmun (1908-1999) span the years 1913-2001 with the bulk concentrated from 1959 to 1994. Although the collection chronicles almost every phase of Blackmun's judicial career, the bulk of the material highlights his service as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 1959-1970, and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, 1970-1994. There are also a few items documenting Blackmun's early life as a student at Mechanic Arts High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, his undergraduate and law school studies at Harvard University, and his career as a lawyer in private practice and as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Association. The papers consist of five series: Pre-Judicial File, United States Court of Appeals File, Supreme Court File, Addition, and Oversize. Only a few photographs appear in the collection since most were given by his family to the Curator's Office of the Supreme Court. The Library holds the papers of a number of Supreme Court justices and federal appeals court judges that are of related research interest.

The Pre-Judicial File, 1913-1996, contains a wide range of material such as correspondence, diaries, notebooks and notes, speeches, writings, and other items relating to Blackmun's career prior to his appointment as a federal judge in November 1959. The Pre-Judicial File is arranged into five categories: academic file, appointment books, correspondence, diaries, and subject file. A major portion of the academic file documents Blackmun's endeavors as a high school and college student. The Harvard University material consists primarily of Blackmun's law school notebooks, although other papers reflect his activities with the Glee Club and rowing crew and as an usher at football games. Items relating to his days at Mechanic Arts High School include report cards, mechanical drawings, and an award-winning essay on the Constitution.

Family correspondence in the Pre-Judicial File consists mainly of Blackmun's letters to his parents, Corwin M. and Theo Manning Blackmun, and his sister, Betty. The letters primarily describe his studies and social activities while at Harvard. The general correspondence includes letters concerning employment during summer breaks from Harvard, a job with the solicitor of labor in Washington, D.C., in 1935, and Blackmun's law practice. The diaries, handwritten and typed, provide a detailed account of Blackmun's days as a student, 1919-1932, his work as a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 1932-1933, his early law career, 1934-1937, and his personal activities during that time. The subject file relates to Blackmun's law practice, his tenure as resident counsel at the Mayo Clinic, and his speeches and writings for the period. Also in the subject file are correspondence, clippings, and related material concerning Blackmun's boyhood friend, Warren E. Burger. Other prominent correspondents in the Pre-Judicial File are Felix Frankfurter and John B. Sanborn.

The United States Court of Appeals series, 1934-1998, documents Blackmun's service for almost eleven years as an appellate judge on the eighth circuit court, which hears cases originating in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The series is divided into five subseries: Correspondence, Administrative File, Administrative Panel File, Case File, and Subject File. The Correspondence subseries, 1959-1970, includes incoming and outgoing letters relating mainly to Blackmun's personal interests and activities. Because many of his friends were members of the legal profession, some of the correspondence also relates to Blackmun's professional activities. Appointment books, a chronological file, and court calendars comprise the Administrative File subseries, 1959-1970. The appointment books and court calendars document Blackmun's personal and official schedule while a circuit judge. The court calendars also contain a small amount of correspondence concerning scheduling matters. The chronological file consists primarily of correspondence and memoranda exchanged between Blackmun and lawyers, court clerks, and circuit and district judges concerning administrative matters. The Administrative Panel subseries, 1968-1969, chronicles Blackmun's six months of service as a member of a two-judge panel that reviewed routine requests that came before the court. The panel would grant, deny, or defer petitions, motions, and other legal measures. Examples of matters considered by the panel are an extension of time to file a brief, appointment or dismissal of counsel, dismissal of appeal, and requests for summary judgment. Preceding the administrative documents are lists containing a summary of most of the inquiries that came before the panel.

The Case File subseries, 1953-1971, comprises over half of the United States Court of Appeals File. Cases are arranged by an administrative number assigned by Blackmun and his staff. Docket numbers for the cases are listed in parentheses following the administrative number. Within each case folder, the material is arranged by type of material usually in the following order: slip opinions (when present), correspondence and memoranda, opinions, miscellaneous papers, oral argument notes, and clippings. Preceding the case files are ledgers that Blackmun maintained to track eighth circuit cases. Most of the case file correspondence is between Blackmun and his fellow judges, court clerks, and the staff of West Publishing Company. The files reflect the wide range of cases heard by the eighth circuit court, such as taxation, civil rights, and labor, administrative, constitutional, and criminal law. During his tenure on the circuit court, Blackmun wrote over two hundred signed opinions. Because of his interest and expertise in tax-related law, about twenty-five percent of those opinions related to tax litigation. His opinion in Jackson v. Bishop was one of the first decisions to declare unconstitutional the use of corporal punishment in prison under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment.

The Subject File, 1934-1998, the second largest subseries in the United States Court of Appeals File, relates to Blackmun's administrative and professional duties as a circuit judge and contains material documenting his appointment to the court, work with various judicial conferences, attendance at professional meetings, friendship with Warren E. Burger, recruitment of Minnesota students for Harvard University, and his committee service with the United Methodist Publishing House. Blackmun's speeches and writings while a circuit judge are also filed in this subseries. A few items from this period overlap the Subject File subseries of the Supreme Court File and are filed in that subseries.

The Supreme Court File, 1918-1999, comprising over ninety-five percent of the collection, documents Blackmun's twenty-four years of service as an associate justice. The series is divided into ten subseries: Appointment Books, Correspondence, Case File, Dockets, Briefs, Certiorari Memoranda, Subject File, Speech and Engagement File, Writings File, and Law Clerks File. Blackmun's appointment books provide a glimpse into his busy schedule, public and personal. Occasionally noted in the books are significant events such as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan on 30 March 1981. The Library received no appointment books dated after 1997.

The Correspondence subseries, 1970-1999, contains professional and personal correspondence divided into four categories: abortion mail, general, individual cases, and notes exchanged between justices during court proceedings. Having written the majority opinions in the 1973 landmark abortion rights cases, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Blackmun came to personify the abortion question for many supporters and detractors. The abortion mail reflects how closely people identified Blackmun with Roe and abortion rights. The justice received an enormous amount of correspondence, mostly critical, about abortion. Many of the critical letters were sent after the 1973 cases or were received before oral arguments in the 1989 ruling Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, in which the court upheld Missouri's restrictions on abortion and accepted limits on the use of federal funding for abortion-related services. All abortion letters answered by the justice have been retained in the collection. Following a systematic sample taken by Library staff of the unanswered abortion mail, ten percent of that correspondence was retained.

The general correspondence in the Supreme Court File, including incoming and outgoing letters, relates primarily to Blackmun's personal interests and activities, although some items pertain to professional matters. The bulk of the letters are from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, many of whom Blackmun met early in his career in Minnesota. Among the frequent and prominent correspondents in the general correspondence are Robert A. Bezoier, Myron H. Bright, Daniel C. Connolly, James Russell Eckman, Erwin N. Griswold, Henry Halladay, Russell C. Jewell, A. M. Keith, Robert E. Merry, Roy M. Mersky, Norval Morris, James F. Simon, Scott Turow, and Charles Alan Wright. Other correspondence includes letters relating to individual court cases and notes exchanged between the justices during court proceedings. The individual case correspondence consists of an extensive amount of correspondence concerning the adoption case of Jessica DeBoer, DeBoer v. DeBoer, and the fetal tissue case J. M. v. V. C. Because certiorari was denied, there is no case file for J. M. v. V. C. Notes of the justices consist of handwritten items exchanged while the Court heard oral arguments or was in conference. Some of the items relate to Court business while others concern personal interests and asides.

The Case File subseries, 1970-1994, constitutes one of the largest files in the collection. The bulk of the Case File is made up of administrative and opinion files for the appellate and in forma pauperis dockets. Preceding the dockets in the Case File are ledgers and notecards that Blackmun kept to track cases. The administrative files include correspondence, memoranda, argument and assignment lists, conference and order lists, opinion log sheets, applications, summaries of argued cases, and other material relating to cases heard by the court, non-argued cases, and various administrative matters. Opinion log sheets are arranged by seniority of the justices and in the order in which the case was announced, although an alphabetical list by case title usually precedes the justices' lists.

The opinion files are arranged chronologically by court term and therein numerically by docket number. Within these files, the material was usually arranged in the following order: slip opinion, correspondence and memoranda exchanged among the justices, draft opinions, conference notes, oral argument notes, certiorari memoranda, law clerk memoranda, bench memoranda, and public correspondence and clippings. The yellow highlighted markings on the bench memoranda are Blackmun's. The justice maintained a case file for each case ordered for argument before the Court and for each non-argued case in which he wrote. Most of the non-argued cases were dissents from denial of certiorari. If Blackmun wrote for a case, he retained every draft of every circulation between the justices. If he did not write, he kept only the circulations of the majority concurrences and the dissents that he read. Certiorari memoranda for the argued cases and the non-argued cases for which Blackmun wrote are included in the opinion files. Additional certiorari memoranda for all other non-argued cases are filed in the Certiorari Memoranda series. The original jurisdiction docket, listing cases concerning disputes between states, was filed separately by Blackmun's staff because the same cases kept returning to the Court so often. The original jurisdiction cases are divided into three groups: argued cases, miscellaneous memoranda, and non-argued cases. The argued cases and non-argued cases are arranged by docket number.

During his twenty-four years on the Court, Blackmun participated in more than eight hundred cases. The ruling that became almost exclusively linked to Blackmun, however, was Roe v. Wade in which he concluded that the constitutional right to privacy was “broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The papers reflect that Blackmun conducted much of the research for the opinion himself. The Roe file also includes many drafts of the opinion and a substantial amount of correspondence among the justices. Throughout his tenure on the Court, Blackmun continued to defend what he considered a woman's right to an abortion in cases such as Beal v. Doe, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Other significant decisions in which Blackmun participated concerned the rights of children and teenagers (DeShaney v. Winnebago Department of Social Services and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health), equality and affirmative action (Griggs v. Duke Power Co., Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, and Richmond v. J. A. Croson), and a death penalty dissent (Callins v. Collins).

The Docket subseries, 1969-1993, provides a record of the name and docket number of individual cases and indicates how the justices voted on a case. Blackmun's role in developing a uniform listing is documented in the “docket sheets” file of the Subject File subseries of the Supreme Court File. Most of the in forma pauperis sheets have eight cases per page, although there are occasional sheets with only one case. The Briefs subseries, 1970-1993, reflects Blackmun's practice of keeping only the briefs of what he considered to be the more significant cases that came before the court, such as Roe v. Wade, United States v. Nixon, and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Some of these briefs contain penciled notes by the justice. A few briefs are also filed in the opinion files of the Case File subseries.

The Certiorari Memoranda, 1968-1993, the largest subseries of the Supreme Court File, comprises memoranda, including occasional attachments, written by law clerks for cases that were never argued. Certiorari memoranda for the argued cases and the non-argued cases for which Blackmun wrote are included in the opinion files of the Case File subseries. When a certiorari pool was established in 1972, many of the justices pooled their clerks so that a single clerk's memorandum summarizing the case circulated to all the justices who participated in the “cert. pool.” Blackmun participated, but also had his clerks annotate memoranda written by the law clerks of other justices indicating who was writing a memorandum, whom they clerked for, and where they went to law school. Occasionally his clerks would make additions or changes to the memoranda.

The Subject File subseries, 1948-1999, relates primarily to Blackmun's administrative duties and professional activities and chronicles Blackmun's service with the Advisory Committee on Judicial Activities for the Judicial Conference of the United States, his attendance at judicial conferences of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, his work as co-moderator at the Aspen Institute, and his affiliation with the United Methodist Church. In remarks at annual eighth circuit conferences, Blackmun would review the cases of the previous Supreme Court term. Also featured in the series are materials relating to Blackmun's appointment to the Supreme Court, his retirement, and his death. The Subject File also contains oral history interviews and background information which provide an in-depth look at Blackmun's life from his youth through his career on the Court. Files consisting of correspondence and clippings pertaining to many of the justices are filed under “Justices” and then alphabetically by name. In addition, the Subject File includes correspondence, press clippings, and other material relating to a shooting incident in 1985 in which a bullet was fired through a window of the justice's apartment in Arlington, Virginia.

The Speech and Engagement File, 1937-1998, documents Blackmun's attendance at various events to give a speech, accept an award, or receive an honorary degree. This file has been organized as originally arranged and indexed by Blackmun's staff. Many of the state university entries were filed by name of state rather than university. Preceding the files are chronological and alphabetical indexes. Included are speeches and notes Blackmun utilized in his annual seminar on justice and society at the Aspen Institute. The institute was the only place that Blackmun publicly discussed Roe v. Wade and other abortion rights cases. Also featured are papers relating to Blackmun's appearance in 1997 as Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in the motion picture Amistad.

The last two series in the Supreme Court File are the Writings File, 1918-1999, and the Law Clerks File, 1968-1999. The Writings File relates mainly to Blackmun's articles, forewords, and introductions, and to writings by others about Blackmun. An autobiographical file focusing on all aspects of Blackmun's career contains drafts, notes, and research material such as photocopies and originals of correspondence between the justices, letters from friends and acquaintances, and public correspondence, critical and supportive, concerning abortion and the justice's retirement. The Supreme Court research files also contain documents relating to Roe v. Wade as well as notes in which Blackmun described the high points of his life and the changes in the Supreme Court during his many years as a justice. The Law Clerks File reflects Blackmun's close relationship with his clerks and mainly comprises correspondence between the justice and his clerks concerning their careers and personal accomplishments.

The Addition, 1959-2001, consists of Freedom of Information Act material released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to Blackmun's daughter, Sally Blackmun, after her father's death and a posthumous tribute dedicating the Harry A. Blackmun Rotunda in St. Louis. Most of the F.B.I. files relate to Blackmun's nomination as justice to the Supreme Court. These files supplement other Freedom of Information Act material pertaining to Blackmun's Supreme Court nomination in the Subject File subseries of the Supreme Court series. Also documented in the Addition is Blackmun's nomination to the United States Court of Appeals, security investigations by the FBI into threats against Blackmun, inquiries made by the bureau after the shooting into his apartment in 1985, and security arrangements for some of his trips.

Organization of the Papers

The collection is arranged in five series:

• Pre-Judicial File, 1913-1996, n.d.
• United States Court of Appeals, 1934-1998, n.d.
• Supreme Court File, 1918-1999, n.d.
• Addition, 1959-2001
• Oversize, 1925-1977, n.d.

Description of Series

Container List