Harold Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994.

After the defeat of two previous nominees, President Nixon successfully nominated Blackmun to the Supreme Court to replace Associate Justice Abe Fortas.

He wrote dissenting opinions in notable cases such as Furman v. Georgia, Bowers v. Hardwick, and DeShaney v. Winnebago County.

[5] Blackmun grew up in Dayton's Bluff, a working-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where his father owned a small store.

Blackmun's practice as an attorney at the law firm now known as Dorsey & Whitney focused in its early years on taxation, trusts and estates, and civil litigation.

Motivated by his initial passion for medicine, Blackmun accepted a position as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester from 1950 to 1959.

After much urging by Sanborn and Burger, Blackmun agreed to accept the nomination, duly offered by Eisenhower and members of the Justice Department.

[9] On August 18, 1959, Eisenhower nominated Blackmun to the seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated by Sanborn.

The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary gave Blackmun a rating of "exceptionally well qualified".

President Richard Nixon nominated Blackmun as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court on April 15, 1970, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him on May 12, by a 94–0 vote.

Indeed, Blackmun voted with Burger in 87.5% of the closely divided cases during his first five terms (1970 to 1975), and with William J. Brennan, the Court's leading liberal, in only 13%.

[13] Shortly after Blackmun dissented in Rizzo v. Goode (1976), William Kunstler embraced him and "welcom[ed] him to the company of the 'liberals and the enlightened.

[13] In 1973, Blackmun authored the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, invalidating a Texas statute that banned abortion except when a pregnant woman's life was in danger.

[19] Blackmun's opinion in Roe made him a target for criticism by opponents of abortion, and he received voluminous negative mail and death threats because of it.

A woman's right to make that choice freely is fundamental ...[22]Blackmun filed separate opinions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), warning that Roe was in jeopardy: "I am 83 years old.

After Roe, Blackmun began to drift away from Burger's influence to increasingly side with Brennan in finding constitutional protection for unenumerated individual rights.

Burger's opinion in Bowers read: "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching."

In his dissent, Blackmun responded by quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "[i]t is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.

I have tried to put myself in your shoes and write a dissent that would reflect the wisdom you have gained, and the frustration you have endured, as a result of twenty years of enforcing the death penalty on this Court.

I can only hope that here, too, the Court soon will reconsider its analysis and conclude that depriving individuals of the right to choose for themselves how to conduct their intimate relationships poses a far greater threat to the values most deeply rooted in our Nation’s history than tolerance of nonconformity could ever do.

In his dissent in Herrera v. Collins (1993), where the Court refused to find a constitutional right for convicted prisoners to introduce new evidence of "actual innocence" for purposes of obtaining federal relief, Blackmun argued in a section joined by no other justice that "The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder."

If a specified age of minority is required for the boy in order to assure him parental support while he attains his education and training, so, too, is it for the girl.

Blackmun also revealed in a 1995 oral history with Harold Koh that his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick was written by a clerk, Pam Karlan.

[36] When Blackmun's papers were released at the Library of Congress, his sometimes negative notations regarding fellow Justice Clarence Thomas came to light.

He lay in repose in the Great Hall of the United States Supreme Court Building, and was buried five days later at Arlington National Cemetery.