Transcript

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: This is the Justice Harry A. Blackmun oral history.

This is taping session number one, on July 6th, 1994.

I'm Harold Koh.

I'm a professor at Yale Law School, and I clerked for Justice Blackmun on October term, 1981.

I'll be the interviewer for these taping sessions.

We're in Justice Blackmun's chambers, in his personal office.

Mr. Justice, how long have you worked in this office?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, I think I've been in this office approximately twenty years.

I haven't checked the exact date.

This used to be the clerk's office, the clerk of court, and it's very different from other, regular, chambers because those are usually in dark oak paneling and the like; this is all bright.

And I can remember when the clerk himself sat before this window and held forth.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And do you sit before this window a lot?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: What do you usually do there?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Have lunch, when I'm alone and don't want to be with anybody else and would rather read the sport pages or something like that.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Well, that's a good segue.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: I can look outside, and see who's picketing us and what's going on out front.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Have they been picketing you?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, once in a while, yes.

I'm often the target of good picketing.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Well, Mr. Justice, this is a big-day because your twenty-fourth term ended about a week ago, and shortly you'll be moving from this building.

So we thought that in this first taping session we would go through the office and look in particular at some of the things on the wall and have you talk about them.

Just remember where you got them and what they mean to you and what you like to remember about them.

So why don't we start with this one over here?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: With the baseball bat?

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Right.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, a lot of these things have something to do with a day or an event or something.

But I wrote the so-called 407 U.S., where the issue was whether baseball was subject to the antitrust laws.

The Court twice had held, particularly in an opinion by Mr. Justice Holmes, that baseball was a game and not a business and hence was not subject to the antitrust laws.

And the issue was whether that would be overruled and we... well, the Court... made its ruling and followed Holmes.

But I embarked on a sentimental journey in the first part of that opinion.

I tried to set forth a history of baseball in the early days and to name some of the great figures in the game, not down to the present time but some of the great hall of famers and had a long list.

But, unfortunately, I left out the name of Mel Ott, the great Giants's outfielder.

One of my clerks, who is a baseball fanatic, at the time called this to my attention.

Of course I blamed my secretary and said that it was in the original list and she must have just missed it.

Anyway, that's a Mel Ott bat.

It's made by the Louisville Slugger Company, to his specifications, and up there at the top there's a little plaque that says, "I'll never forgive myself" for leaving the name of Mel Ott out of my list of baseball greats in those early days.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Did you actually say that, "I'll never forgive myself"?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, probably.

Probably.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Mr. Justice, we have a seal here from the Nashville, Illinois Police Department.

Can you tell us about it?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, that's just a shoulder patch.

The last time I was in Nashville, Illinois, the place where I was born, and gave a little talk down there, the police gave me that shoulder patch.

Just one of those things one picks up when he gives a speech here and there and the other place.

I was interested in having it.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Were you popular with them?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Was I what?

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Popular with the Nashville Police Department?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: The police were fine.

I wasn't particularly popular with some of the citizens because of certain issues that we decided, but then it's a fairly conservative area down there.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And how about in the cabinet?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, in there are just a couple of sentimental things.

There's a cane that was given by his children to my great-grandfather, I think on his seventieth birthday.

It just came into my possession, and I thought I'd preserve it that way.

The sword is my father's dress sword.

He was in the National Guard, Minnesota National Guard, for a number of years.

I just put them together.

This is my father here.

Just a way to display it is all.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Is that in his National Guard uniform?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes.

When they were federalized in 1941, before we entered the war, nearly all the guard units in the country were federalized.

That was as he went off to Riverside, California with his regiment at the time.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: You have another sword up there.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, that's a machete.

That comes from the Bahamas.

We spent a couple of Christmas holidays down there, and there were some youngsters that thought I did a favor for them; and they gave me that as we were leaving.

Everybody has a machete.

They use it to cut sugar corn, clean their fingernails, and everything else.

They gave that to me as we were leaving.

I had a terrible time getting it on the airplane, of course.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Now we have some prints here.

One says, St. Paul from Dayton's Bluff> ["] and then there are three that are not identified.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Mrs. Blackmun arranged this more or less chronologically in my life, and those happen to be etchings of St. Paul where I grew up.

I wasn't born there, but I certainly grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.

And others here have to do with the little German village where my maternal grandfather came from and the like.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: How old were you when you moved to St. Paul?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: About three days.

My father was on the road, and they were living, I'm sure, in a cold-water flat in Minneapolis.

Mother decided she didn't want to have me alone, so she went to her home, and I was born in the same room in the same house in which she was born, in Nashville, Illinois, a long time ago.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And now we have two other pictures here.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, this is my paternal grandfather.

He was a veteran of the War between the states.

That was taken on, they called it Decoration Day in those days, not Memorial Day.

He and some other old soldiers were reviewing the parade as they went by.

That's a newspaper picture, photograph, from the St. Paul Dispatch, I think it was, rather than the Pioneer Press, in those days.

I think it's a very handsome head.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: What did he do after he was in the service?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, he farmed a good bit in West Central Minnesota.

And then in the diphtheria epidemic, I think it was '81, they lost four children in the space of two months, and he couldn't take it anymore.

He sold the farm, went into the cities and did carpentry work largely.

He was a great guy.

I well remember him.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Right below?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, this ties into some musical aspects.

My mother's next oldest sibling was a pianist of some promise, and he studied in Berlin under this woman, she was a--

Brazilian, named Carreno.

He and she were about to embark on an Australian tour from Berlin when he contracted pneumonia and died within three days.

My mother never quite got over it.

But I remember one rather celebrated German--

pianist came to the door in my office, and saw this from a distance and she said, "Carreno, Carreno" !

She knew right away who it was.

But so it goes.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: There was a lot of music in your house when you were growing up?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, to a degree.

Mother was musical.

She wasn't as talented as her older brother was... after whom I was named; his name was Harry.

Yes, that affected her all her life.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Now we have the scales of justice.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Mrs. Blackmun bought that at a Mayo Clinic auction one time.

It's an old pharmacist's scale that they used before drugs, pharmaceuticals, were put up in little pellets or packages, so they did it on this kind of thing [demonstrating its use].

She thought it was representative of justice and the scales of justice and there it is.

Up above are the two medallions of the Mayo brothers, Dr. Will and Dr. Charlie.

I happen to have those and like it because I was with the Mayo organizations for about ten years and had one foot in medicine and one foot in law.

It turned out, I think, to be the happiest decade of my professional life.

If I had it to do over again, I'd probably go to medical school.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: I'm glad you didn't.

How about the squash racquet?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, that's an old squash racquet that I won a minor Massachusetts tournament, oh back in the late twenties, early thirties with.

I've always been kind of partial to it, and there it is.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: When you were at law school or college?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, if it was in the thirties, it was in law school, and I've forgotten exactly.

I think it was 1930, probably.

Up in Boston.

It didn't amount to anything, just a minor tournament.

But I liked squash; it was good to me.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Well, we can't leave this area without looking at some of the books behind your desk.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, those are miscellaneous volumes that I use.

Of course, what stands out is a baseball encyclopedia.

These are photographic and biographical material volumes of all the federal judges.

That's Dorland's Medical Dictionary which is-it's an old edition-but it's a specially used tool, I think, in the medical profession.

Down there in that kind of a messy pile are the sentencing guidelines, and other things of miscellaneous use, Congressional Record and the like, that I use a lot.

And then a certain number of standard texts to which I have occasion fairly frequently to refer.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: I won't make you bend down, but I see there's some hats down there.

What are those?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: In getting ready to move out, we uncovered the issue that they give to the justices of the Court.

It's kind of a little French skullcap that supposedly we wear on cold days, I'll reach down and get it.

I've never really worn it.

Byron White and I refuse to wear them, but supposedly it keeps our bald heads covered.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: It looks great.

It reminds me of the time you wore the Mao cap to the conference.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, yes.

That was on a dare from one of the clerks.

They're always daring me to do something foolish.

So it is.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Now here's a big picture of, what looks like the White House.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, it is at the White House.

I was in the Harvard Glee Club for six years, not my freshman year, but all the years after that.

And that was taken of the full club in Boston Symphony Hall back in those days.

This is a certificate.

But this was the spring trip in 1929.

We had been up in Syracuse the night before in a snowstorm and sang.

You could see all the heavy suits and the hats.

Then came down and sang at the White House.

That was my first time in Washington, actually.

But there was no air-conditioning in the White House; you can tell by the windows being open.

It was a hundred degrees in early April, cherry blossom time, and it just happened we sang for the president, President Hoover.

He came out and had this photograph taken with us.

In those days, the president was inaugurated on the fourth day of March, not the twentieth day of January, That change was initiated by FDR and goes back historically a long way.

Just one of those photographs.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Was that the last time you were at the White House before you met President Nixon?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: I'm not sure I can answer that question.

Probably so, probably so.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Did any of your Glee Club classmates go on to fame and fortune?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, some of them have done pretty well, I suppose.

Of course, nearly all of them are gone now.

One of them over here was my roommate during my law school days, became head of the math department of Michigan State University in Lansing, and a couple of them did pretty good work in music and the like.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: What voice did you sing?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Baritone, and I got in with the lowest possible quartet grade.

Doc Davidson, the director, I'm sure regretted all his life because I wasn't any good.

We come along here to my Mayo days, largely.

Well, actually some of my days in the Dorsey offices.

This happened to be a time when one of the partners left the firm and went as general counsel for Greyhound.

Greyhound was an early client.

He took along a couple of the cubs and non-partners with him and this was a dinner party we had for them.

Among others here is William L. Prosser, of torts fame.

We used to have dinners, have a lot of fun with him.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Is that everybody in the firm at the time?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh no, those were just the cubs, the cubs, the associates.

No partner was there.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: When you arrived, how many lawyers were at the firm?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: It seemed to me about fifteen.

When I left, there were thirty-two, and we thought it was much too large, Now they're well over 300, 400 or so.

This is Harry Harwick, who was the man that lured me to go to Mayos.

He was the lay administrator of the Mayo organizations, one of the most able people I've ever known.

Chuck Mayo.

That's Dr. Balfour, one of Mayo's leading surgeons.

Dr. Samuel F. Haines, who occupied a similar position.

That happens to be William Mitchell, former attorney general, who came from St. Paul, my hometown, and I think was a good attorney general.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Right; there's a law school now named after him.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, indeed, there is.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And what was Chuck Mayo's relationship to the original Mayo brothers?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: I should correct that last statement.

William Mitchell was named after his father, who was on the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Chuck, Charles W. Mayo, was the son of Charles H. Mayo, which is the younger of the two Mayo brothers, and was a surgeon on the staff and a good friend.

One thing that he did, he'd stop by at the end of the day once in a while at our home when our three daughters were little and entertain them by standing on his head.

That put me in difficulty.

"Daddy, why can't you do that? "

you know, that sort of thing.

He loved to show me up.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: How many lawyers at the firm did work for the Mayo Clinic?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: It started off... I well remember the day that somebody came up with a gift tax problem from Mayos.

We had not represented them before.

Looking back it was, I think, a test case, because of the tax matter.

Our tax partner was ill at the time so he landed at my desk.

We took it from there, and eventually they became a very valued client, and through that, I eventually went down to Mayos.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Now we have some nature shots here.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, that's a, I think it's a lovely photograph of a lake up in northwestern Wisconsin called Spider Lake where Mrs. Blackmun... Dottie... and I try to get to in late July every year and get our batteries recharged.

That's rather typical of that lake.

It's a beautiful place.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Have you been going there since you were at the Dorsey firm?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, no, maybe the last eight or nine years or so.

We are always able to get a cabin up there and enjoy it.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And this picture?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, this is Aspen, Colorado, where I've been fortunate enough to have a seminar out there for a number of years.

The three of us there, that's professor Norval Morris, of the University of Chicago Law School.

He and I conduct the seminar and the third person is the late Robert McKay, of NYU Law School, who was the director of that particular seminar.

We're just walking up from what's called Aspen Meadows to the seminar room.

It's one of the most beautiful short walks I've ever known.

This is Aspen Mountain in the background.

Of course, this is the summertime but one can see [pointing to photograph] where the ski slopes are as they come down.

Some people have said that that run is among the most challenging and beautiful in the world.

I'm not a skier, so I can't attest to that.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: We're hiding something back here.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Oh, that was my tax partner in the Dorsey office, who taught me a lot, generally.

This little arrangement of stones is in the form of the Big Dipper, and of course there's another rock down here, outside the photograph, which is the North Star.

A lot of things at Aspen like that, you know.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And here, is this the Dorsey firm?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Those are the partners in the Dorsey firm, taken shortly after I left.

A lot of them are gone now.

It wasn't a very large firm at the time.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Mr. Justice, this is sort of the Eighth Circuit area.

Can you tell us about the Sanborns and yourself?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, as you point out, this is essentially the Eighth Circuit.

This is the original Eighth Circuit panel taken in the old courthouse in St. Louis, which is still standing.

That was the court in 1891 when the Court of Appeals was created.

Judge Caldwell, of Arkansas, in the middle, and the first Sanborn, Walter H. Sanborn, and then Judge Brewer of Missouri.

These others are largely photographs of the Eighth Circuit at various times.

These are some of the judges on the court that were friends of mine.

This one, of Judge Gunnar H. Nordbye, is a district judge that I admired very much.

Those are two non judges.

That's it, largely.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And Judge Sanborn, when you clerked for him, how long had he been on the court?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: He was appointed as a federal district judge in 1925 and was elevated in '32, because he had just gone on the court of appeals when I was able to get a clerkship with him.

I was his first clerk.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: This is a great picture.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: That photograph was taken when I was sworn in as a federal judge on November 4, 1959.

That's in a building now called the Landmark Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Judge Sanborn's chambers.

I succeeded him, and he swore me in.

That's our family there, Mrs. Blackmun and our three daughters; and my then secretary [Geraldine Cronin] and some friends are in the background.

That's a long time ago.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And then you sat with him that same day?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, we went to St. Louis about a week later and sat in St. Louis.

I was on the panel, sitting with him my first day on the court.

It happened to be my birthday, I think, November 12, that year.

Yes, he was a good friend and a great mentor, and I learned a lot from him, generally.

These other things here are just little tokens of some awards and some other stuff that conies along.

This happens to be the place where the bullet that came through our window in the apartment landed in the chair; the tear is there.

Dottie thought it would be well to keep it, so there it is.

That was about five or six years ago.

These, of course, are photographs of the Supreme Court, largely, at one time or another.

These are just Viking footballs that the past clerks have given me at one time or another.

We get over here into... well, Abraham Lincoln is one of my favorites,--

This was in Judge Sanborn's chambers, and I always admired it, and he gave it to me.

That [referring to a second portrait of Lincoln] one is, the wood around it, comes from the old courthouse in Sangamon County, Illinois.

I think it's an excellent portrayal of the president at that time.

This is the courthouse.

There's a photograph of the court out in front of this building, waiting for the casket of the chief justice, Earl Warren, to be brought in.

We're all lined up in protocol order.

A number of those are gone since then.

You asked about this thing in the blue.

Well, I have more things in front of it.

That's a bill of sale, 1857 in South Carolina, for a young man, age 12, "warranted sound".

But I point it out to children, when they visit the chambers, that in those days we were selling people just as we would sell property at the time.

This is a favorite quote from Lincoln that I like, when the criticism gets going rather heavily, it's worth reading, generally.

It has taken on some... there we are.

This stand-up desk I brought with me from the Eighth Circuit; I like it and work on it once in a while.

It tends to keep me more brief in my writing than if I were sitting down, generally.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: But you do most of your opinion work in the justices' library?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, nearly all of it up there.

Down here it's largely correcting things and the like.

Well, trinkets generally--

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Would you say that Lincoln was your hero?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: --Well, he comes close to it, certainly.

He's my favorite president.

I think he had a terrible time in which to try to be president.

Yes, I would say he comes close to being a hero.

Over there are a couple of, for me, interesting photographs.

One is taken by LBJ's official photographer, Okamoto.

I like it.

He followed me around the building.

I used to walk around the block in those days.

I think it's a good photo.

The other one, the clerks and the secretaries in that day formed an H-A-B out in front.

They got up at half-past-seven in the morning.

The one clerk, the one on whose back my secretary is perched in forming the H-A-B says that his back still hurts.

And that's a long time ago.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Did you take a walk around the Court most everyday?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: I did at that time.

I don't do it so much anymore.

Everyday when the weather was acceptable.

Not only the one block but sometimes more than that.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Today is July 6, 1994.

This is the Harry A. Blackmun oral history.

My name is Harold Hongju Koh.

I'm a professor at Yale Law School and a former law clerk to Justice Blackmun, and I'm interviewer for this project.

Justice Blackmun and I are sitting in the courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Mr. Justice, do you remember the first time you ever came into this courtroom?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, I do, of course.

It was just as a cub on a case that our firm, our Minneapolis office, had.

I had written the brief and was allowed to come down and sit at the counsel table.

I did not argue the case.

But I remember how impressed I was with this very impressive courtroom.

It certainly is different from what I had anticipated.

But the more I've sat here, the more I appreciate the configuration and the special character of the courtroom.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: If someone had told you then that you would be sitting on the Court for twenty-four years, how would you have responded?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: I would have laughed about it.

That would be impossible.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Who was on the Court in that case?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: It seems to me, I should have looked this up, but I think Chief Justice Hughes was presiding, and those that were with him in the mid-thirties, this would be.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Now if we roll the clock forward to 1970, when you first took your seat on the Court, do you remember what that day was like and what happened?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, I remember it very vividly.

I think anyone who joins the Court always remembers that particular day.

There are a couple of oaths to take, of course, the judicial and the constitutional oaths, one of which is given usually in the courtroom, the other one in the robing room.

And then the nominee always has to sit in the John Marshall chair, which is a chair that goes back to days of Chief Justice Marshall.

Then he's called from there to take the oath here and to be robed and to take his seat, which is always at the extreme right as one looks at the Court; that's where the junior sits.

The habit in American courts as in the British courts is for the presiding justice in our system, the chief justice, has the center chair and then on his right, to the left for the audience, is the senior associate.

The next senior is on the other side and so it goes, back and forth until the two juniors are at the ends.

I guess I've sat on every chair here except the one on the extreme right and the reason I never occupied that one, if my recollection is correct, is because there were two vacancies simultaneously created when Justice Black and Justice Harlan retired in the fall of 1971.

So those two were filled simultaneously by Justice Powell and Justice Rehnquist and I just moved over one chair on this side of the room.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And do you remember your feelings when you--

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: When I first came here?

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: --When you were sitting in the John Marshall Chair and being robed for the first time as a Supreme Court justice?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, of course.

I don't know how it affects other people but I think there is a feeling of almost desperate... well, I'm groping for a word, wondering whether one is qualified to be here.

After all, this is the end of the line.

I well remember beforehand going into the robing room and the then justices were lined up, and there were Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas and William J. Brennan, Jr. and John Harlan, and as I've said publicly, I asked myself, "What am I doing here"?

But that comes to everybody unless he is a person of great arrogant confidence in himself, I think.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Was there a period when you began to feel comfortable sitting in this room?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, yes; it took a while.

But this has been true with me all through my lifetime with any job.

But it always takes me from three to five years to feel comfortable.

This was true when I started practice, it was true when I went to Mayos, when I was on the court of appeals.

Each job is new, and one has to learn it.

And feelings of comfort, if that's the right word, for me, come only after three to five years of experience.

I'm sure it's shorter for other people and maybe still others don't even think about it.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: I know there are many electric moments in this courtroom.

Can you remember any that particularly stick in your mind?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, yes.

Of course, we haven't had any severe disagreements and arguments among the members of the bench in the time I've been here.

We can disagree without being disagreeable.

But that has not always been true.

There have been times when one justice wouldn't speak to another or wouldn't shake hands or that kind of thing.

But every now and then, perhaps every term, there's a case or a moment which is outstanding.

I look back, of course, on the arguments, in Roe against Wade.

The case was argued twice, the two cases, which meant four counsel, three of whom were women... and how that very provocative issue was presented.

The Pentagon Papers case.

And I'll never forget one time when Justice Black, who was sitting immediately to the right of the chief justice, that is, to the left as we look at the Court, was rocking back and forth and the very eminent Erwin N. Griswold was solicitor general, former dean of Harvard Law School, and it had to do with the First Amendment.

And Black, in his canny way, stopped the SG and said,

"Mr. Solicitor General, I don't believe you have read the First Amendment. "

"Let me read it to you. "

And so he read it.

"It says that 'Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. "

"' He said. "

Doesn't that mean what it says?

"And I, sitting over in the junior chair, wondered what Mr. Griswold would say. "

"And I'll remember to this day, he said. "

Oh, Mr. Justice, you know as well as I know that the words 'Congress shall make no law' mean 'Congress may make some law, ' I was ready to head for the hills.

I wondered what I had gotten into down here when words that seemed so plain were interpreted with an opposite meaning.

But there was a lot of humor in it, and, of course, Justice Black had nothing more to say.

I thought it was an excellent response to a very difficult question.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: When you were listening to the argument in Roe versus Wade, did you think you might catch the case?

Did you ever have any inkling of what kind of impact it would have on your life and career?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: During the oral arguments, that is, during the first one anyway, I didn't have any inkling that I would catch the case.

In my seminar out in Aspen, Colorado, I spent part of a morning giving what I call the anatomy of Roe against Wade, which is speculation as to why I got the case.

I've never done this publicly except there and once in France when I was abroad.

There were a number of reasons.

It's pure speculation on my part, but I caught it.

Somebody has to write those cases; we can't all duck them.

I wasn't too enthusiastic about it because we knew it was an emotional, divisive kind of case.

But one does a job; he's assigned these cases, and you do the best you can.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Can you think of a few advocates who you thought were really the best you saw in twenty-four years?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, yes.

They're rare, the good ones; they're rare.

Those who've had long experience here are usually the best.

They know their way around, and it's a joy to listen to them.

I'm not going to name many because I'll insult others by not naming them.

Erwin Griswold of course was always a good one.

I have named him before, and as SG he was here frequently.

But he was always prepared, never exceeded his time, hit the issues, and retired.

Archibald Cox was another good one.

I think I'll stop at that point.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Mr. Justice, last week was the close of this term, which was your last term on the court.

Could you tell us about the last day and what happened?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, I think the last three weeks here were certainly the most emotional I've ever gone through here and perhaps the most difficult.

The end of a term is always difficult.

The cases that aren't down yet are usually the tough ones where we divide five to four or six to three or something.

They get stacked up.

We have those.

I have always found the end of the term to be a hard period, from an intellectual, judicial point of view.

And then of course it was the realization that this was my last term, and people were extraordinarily nice.

A lot of things happened in those closing weeks.

I had to go up to Harvard for commencement for one thing, and some of the other things that seemed to pile on top of each other almost every day made it rather difficult.

Then, of course, I brought down my dissent on the death penalty case, which I didn't think would stir up anything, but to my amazement it stirred up a lot, which, as far as I'm concerned, is fine.

The more that people talk about the death penalty, the better, because I think it deserves discussion and consideration, even though the present flow in popularity in this country is in favor of the death penalty.

But those were all mixed up in this final term, final days of this term.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: When did you write your farewell letter?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: The Court has a tradition that a letter is written by the court to the departing justice, whoever he may be.

They're all published in the United States Reports, various volumes, and usually the chief justice compiles that letter and the other justices sign it.

And usually on the last day of the term that letter is read and then the retiring justice writes a response and reads it and that brings his period of service more or less to a close.

As I recall, the chief justice's letter was written on June 20th and my response the following day.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Do you remember the main thing you wanted to tell your brethren and sistern... I don't know if that's the right word.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Do I remember what?

What I wanted to tell them?

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: What you wanted to tell them?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: To thank them for their compassion and sympathy and encouragement and all the good things.

I didn't try to bring in the bad things that happen here and there.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: But your main memories are of good things in this room.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Yes, I think so.

Of course these cases, the vast majority of them, despite a 9-0 vote, the vast majority usually are close; they are controversial.

In the majority of those issues, the lower courts have divided.

And it isn't easy because this is the end of the line.

There isn't any other place to go from here except in criminal cases where a defendant probably can seek executive clemency.

But one has to be careful in whatever he writes in not establishing a precedent that can be embarrassing down the line.

Because so often we're not deciding just the particular issue in the particular case.

We're establishing a principle that will have a lot of effect on similar cases in the years to come.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: And the last time you rose from the bench, how did you feel?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Not very different from any other time because my retirement isn't yet effective.

But I knew it was the last time I'd sit on a bench as a, on this bench anyway, as a federal judge.

And it was kind of a sad parting in a way.

I was speaking to Justice O'Connor this morning, and each of us agreed that we never feel very old in this job.

We feel as though we've just come on the court a year or so ago.

And I think that's a good way to feel because it means that one is still a little concerned about his ability to produce and to produce properly.

It was the end of the line, of course.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Last question.

If you were speaking to a young cub lawyer sitting up here thinking about a legal career, after this perspective that you have had, what would you say?

JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Well, the law is a great profession.

It's not for everybody.

As you know as a professor of law, it's a profession of controversy.

Its role, at least in the litigation area, is to resolve cases, to resolve controversies, get them behind us and settled between the parties.

In great contrast is the profession of medicine, where for the most part physicians work for a common goal, namely the cure of the patient and the alleviation of pain and the like.

But we need both.

I think one probably, a young person should not go into law if controversy is alien to him, if he can't, if it's foreign to him, if he can't stand it, unless he wants to become a recluse or something and sit in the corner and think long thoughts but not get in the actual practice.

It's a great profession.

I'm not sure if I had to do it over again I'd go into law.

I've often thought of medicine, which is a rather favorite pastime of mine.

But I'd be a poor physician, probably.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH: Thank you very much, Mr. Justice.