Chapter 3 prologue gift

Justice Harry Blackmun left an extraordinary gift to this country. When he died in 1999, five years after his retirement from the Supreme Court.Before his death, he donated a large number of private documents and work records accumulated in his life to the Library of Congress. Five years later, on March 24, 2004, according to Blackmun's last wish, the library opened the above collection to the public: 500,000 documents, packed in 1,585 cardboard boxes, and filled a 600-foot long shelf.From these documents, the stories in this book are drawn, from which we can learn about Blackmun's life and his 24 years on the Supreme Court.

This is not a biography in the traditional sense, nor is it a fly-by-night description of someone's judicial career.I have not interviewed the subject's family or past clerks, and I have no intention of interpreting his opinion or comparing it with that of other justices.I have cited some secondary sources as little as possible, most of which are articles published in The New York Times during the 16 years from 1978 to 1994.During this period, my reporting on Supreme Court-related matters at The New York Times coincided with Blackmun's tenure.In fact, my purpose in doing this is to try to extract the essence from the vast amount of literature mentioned above, through Blackmun's childhood diaries, personal correspondence, internal Supreme Court memorandums, draft opinions, and a 38-hour dictation. The record, in as clear and coherent a way as possible, narrates his ordinary but great life.His life spanned most of the 20th century, leaving an indelible mark on American law and even the entire society.

This writing project started in January 2004, two months before all the documents were released to the public. Blackmun’s family wanted me to have early access to these documents in order to write a set of articles for The New York Times.The reason why they allowed me to take a sneak peek was that they were worried that on the day the document was opened, there would be a crowd of people in the reading room of the Manuscript Collection Department of the Library of Congress. Many readers, including journalists, were bound to be attracted by the first draft of "Roe v. Wade". Causing chaos on the scene.

Explanation: There are no annotations in the original book, and the footnotes in the text are all translator's notes. That being the case, it is better for me to sort out the clues and consult these vast, detailed and meticulously classified materials first. In March 2004, I completed the reporting task with three manuscripts.This book is a by-product of that writing project. In a short article published in The New York Times, I described the feeling of stepping into a reading room as falling down a rabbit hole, as if stepping into an isolated world.In real life, I have spent 25 years closely watching the day-to-day operations of the Supreme Court.But when I went back to the library and started writing this book, another image popped into my mind.It was as if I were in a huge mine, with precious metals strewn about in different directions.As for me, I am a miner who intends to collect all kinds of mineral deposits, but I can't cover them all. I can only choose the most precious ones and pursue them all the way.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade ruled that abortion was a constitutional right. Blackmun represented the majority opinion of Justice Fang and wrote the judgment in this case. In addition, he also participated in the trial 3,874 Supreme Court cases.He has written opinions in many important cases involving federal income tax law, Indian law, antitrust law, and controversies over forensic science evidence.Many scholars hope to interpret different fields of law with the help of various documents collected by Harry Blackmun.There are also attempts to study many issues in the history of the Supreme Court based on this.For example, the Buffalo Law Review published an article by Professor Nancy Stott of the University of Washington, who examined the way the Supreme Court screened federal tax law cases through Blackmun's literature.Lee Epstein, another professor at the University of Washington, developed a database of judge assistant case selection memos with funding from the National Science Foundation.I spent almost all of that summer in the library, and for one or two days I was even the only reader of the Blackmun papers.Later, the library staff told me that among the more than 11,000 collections of the Manuscript Collection, Blackmun documents are the most frequently consulted by the public.

Therefore, when I was working in this "mine", although there were many directions and priorities to choose from, I still chose those materials that shined with the light of my career and reflected Blackmun's great life journey as my first choice.My chosen mines are mostly abortion, the death penalty, sexism cases, and Blackmun's emotional entanglement in dealing with his close friend Warren Berger, who served as the The 15th Chief Justice of the United States.Berger's archives, housed at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, won't be declassified until 2026.For me and my descendants, the only way to understand Berger's life is to turn to the Blackmun literature.These documents include records of correspondence between Blackmun and Berg over 60 years.The complex relationship between the two is difficult to describe even in a novel.Those interested in the history of the Supreme Court in the late 20th century will also turn to the Blackmun collection, and they, like many future generations of visitors, are indebted to the gift left by Harry Blackmun.

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