{"id":1529,"date":"2005-05-10T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2005-05-10T07:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/05\/10\/blackmun-ginsburg-and-roe-v-wade\/"},"modified":"2005-05-10T00:01:06","modified_gmt":"2005-05-10T07:01:06","slug":"blackmun-ginsburg-and-roe-v-wade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1529","title":{"rendered":"Blackmun, Ginsburg and Roe v Wade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Ann Althouse<\/a>, an interesting review in the Times <\/em>of Linda Greenhouse’s book Becoming Justice Blackmun<\/em>. The book focuses on the relationship between Justice Blackmun and Chief Justice Warren Burger, a friendship that wouldn’t seem plausible in fiction:<\/p>\n

Justice Blackmun’s 60-year relationship with Chief Justice Burger, as Ms. Greenhouse notes, “would seem unlikely if depicted in a novel.” The two met in kindergarten in St. Paul, remained friends until adulthood and were appointed to the Supreme Court within a year of each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What really caught my interest, however, was the discussion of Roe v Wade<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In her careful account of the decision, Ms. Greenhouse shows that after Justice Blackmun resolved to strike down restrictions on abortion in 1972, he spent the rest of his career in search of constitutional arguments that might justify the decision. His colleagues found the thin legal analysis in his original draft entirely inadequate. Because of his experience as former counsel to the Mayo Clinic, Justice Blackmun’s focus was always on the rights of doctors rather than the rights of women. But he never produced a convincing constitutional defense of either rationale.<\/p>\n

Justice Blackmun was no feminist, and he strenuously resisted claims involving women’s rights for most of his tenure on the court. He complained when the court voted before Sandra Day O’Connor’s arrival in 1980 to omit the traditional reference to “Mr. Justice.” He was impatient with the briefs that Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed as an advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of women’s rights, calling one of them “mildly offensive and arrogant,” and dismissing her as “too smart.” After Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the court in 1993, Justice Blackmun continued to resent the fact that she had criticized Roe <\/em>as too broad.<\/p>\n

By the 1990’s, however, constitutional scholars came to agree with Justice Ginsburg that women’s equality was a more plausible grounding for the right to choose than Justice Blackmun’s focus on medical privacy. On the day he resigned in April 1994, Justice Blackmun belatedly called Roe v. Wade “a step that had to be taken as we go down the road toward the full emancipation of women.” As Ms. Greenhouse notes, “On Harry Blackmun’s improbable journey, becoming a feminist icon was perhaps the most improbable destination of all.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Ann Althouse, an interesting review in the Times of Linda Greenhouse’s book Becoming Justice Blackmun. The book focuses on the relationship between Justice Blackmun and Chief Justice Warren Burger, a friendship that wouldn’t seem plausible in fiction: Justice Blackmun’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}