This Day in History, 1970: Blackmun Confirmed to Supreme Court

On May 12, 1970, thirty-five years ago today, the Senate confirmed President Richard M. Nixon's nomination of Federal Circuit Judge Harry A. Blackmun to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Blackmun, born in Nashville, Illinois, in 1908, was regarded as a staunch conservative when he joined the nation's highest court as an associate justice in 1970. Widely praised for his scholarly and carefully drafted opinions, Blackmun was initially allied with other Republican appointees on the court, but all that changed in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision. Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in America, was authored by Blackmun and thus made him one of the most vilified Supreme Court members in U.S. history.

During the 1980s, he became a champion of maintaining a strict separation between church and state and often cast liberal votes in cases pitting individual liberties against governmental authority. By the time he retired in 1994, he was considered the high court's most liberal justice; although he often claimed that the court's politics had changed more than his own. He died in 1999 at the age of 90.

(Note that the Wikipedia entry says that the Senate confimed Blackmun on May 17, but This Day in History claimed May 12. Anyone know which is correct?)

PSA: "Tales of the Sausage Factory" Syndicated

For those of you who have been reading wetmachine primarily for the articles of Harold Feld, I've just syndicated his blog on LJ. The people behind http://www.wetmachine.com gave it a separate RSS feed. So, if you want to read "Tales of the Sausage Factory," you can find them on LJ under the feed hfeld_blog.

For those of you who are asking, "Who is Harold Feld?" the answers are twofold:

1. gnomi's brother-in-law.

2. "Harold Feld, MAP's Senior Vice President, joined MAP in August 1999 after practicing communications, Internet, and energy law at Covington & Burling. Mr. Feld served as co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association's Online Committee, and has written numerous articles on Internet law and communications policy for trade publications and legal journals. Mr. Feld won the 2000 Burton Award for excellence in writing by a nonacademic. Mr. Feld graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1989, and magna cum laude from Boston University Law School in 1993. Mr. Feld clerked for the Hon. John M. Ferren of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals." (From http://www.mediaaccess.org/about/people/index.html)