Harry Blackmun Video | Speeches and Interviews

Harold Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade. Harry Blackmun was born in Nashville, Illinois, and grew up in Dayton's Bluff, a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He attended the same grade school as future Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, with whom he eventually served on the Supreme Court for some sixteen years. He attended Harvard College on scholarship, earning an A.B. summa cum laude in mathematics and graduating Phi... MORE

Harold Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade. Harry Blackmun was born in Nashville, Illinois, and grew up in Dayton's Bluff, a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He attended the same grade school as future Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, with whom he eventually served on the Supreme Court for some sixteen years. He attended Harvard College on scholarship, earning an A.B. summa cum laude in mathematics and graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1929. While at Harvard, Blackmun joined Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity and sang with the Harvard Glee Club (with whom he performed for President Herbert Hoover in 1929, Blackmun's first visit to Washington). He attended Harvard Law School (among his professors there was Felix Frankfurter), graduating in 1932. He served in a variety of positions including private counsel, law clerk, and adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School and William Mitchell College of Law (then the St. Paul College of Law). Blackmun's practice as an attorney at the law firm now known as Dorsey & LESS