The steady hand of Justice Blackmun.

• Author: Clinton, Bill
• Position: Includes two testimonials for retiring US Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun

Just before the Court's summer recess, we sent a letter of appreciation to Justice Blackmun, whose answer will never be far from my reach. He quotes Justice White's remark that "the Court is a very small organization for the weight it carries," the weight of consequences in people's lives and in the minds of those who make the decisions. Justice Blackmun might have added that the load does not always seem evenly placed among the nine Justices, as he has reason to know after bearing a uniquely heavy share of the Court's felt burden. While Roe is only one case out of more than a thousand in which the Justice wrote an opinion in his twenty-four years on the Court, it has drawn a more concentrated attack than any decision since Brown, and has been a point of division within the Court as sharp as any since at least the 1930's. Although the Justices divided seven-to-two, the other members of the majority seem almost forgotten, and for over twenty years Roe's center of gravity has been found squarely over Justice Blackmun's shoulders.

There would have been no surprise if Roe's aftermath had driven a quiet man like Justice Blackmun to seek stoic comfort in separation from the turmoil outside, in a place apart even from Justices blessed with greater distance from the tumult. He certainly had a haven for retreat, for life with Dottie Blackmun would have been rich in any circumstances, and, indeed, over the years some people may have sensed withdrawal in the Justice's courtroom silence, and detachment from his colleagues in his preference for lunch alone on conference and argument days. The weight of the evidence is, however, very much the other way.

Justice Blackmun, I'm told, has read every critical letter to reach his chambers, though he could have ignored them easily, and since I've known him, at least, he has chosen to sally out to deliver probably more speeches than any of his colleagues. Tourists of a mind to get in early enough have seen him virtually every weekday morning having breakfast with his clerks in public in the Court's cafeteria (albeit with a police officer at the next table, just in case). And I learned early on at the Court that Justice Blackmun's acts of solitude didn't extend to blocking the rest of us out of his thoughts. Over the years, he has addressed the state of our...