ABSTRACT
Harry A. Blackmun was born in Nashville, Illinois, in 1908, raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and subsequently earned his bachelor's and law degrees from Harvard University. President Richard M. Nixon nominated Blackmun to the US Supreme Court in 1980, and he served on the high court until 1995. Blackmun is best known for writing the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), in which he articulated women's constitutional right to abortion. He was not always that consistent throughout all his opinions, however; his judicial philosophy was a work in progress. Blackmun abhorred capital punishment but voted to uphold it as within the powers of the state, and he declared only as he was about to leave the Court that it was unconstitutional in Callins v. Collins (1994). Although Blackmun tended to be dismissive of the rights of accused criminals, he was generally supportive of the rights of people he considered disadvantaged.
