Supreme Court · Associate Justice
Harry Blackmun
Republican appointee: Appointed by Richard M. Nixon (R)
Served 1970–1994 · 25 terms
Confirmed 94–0
Biography
Harold Andrew Blackmun was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by President Richard Nixon, Blackmun ultimately became one of the most liberal justices on the Court. He is best known as the author of the Court's opinion in Roe v.
Source: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Ideology over time
Blackmun and the 17 justices who overlapped with Blackmun, 1969–1993
- Harry Blackmun
- 95% credible interval
- Peer, appointed by a Democrat
- Peer, appointed by a Republican
- Court median
How to read this
Martin–Quinn scores place each justice on a single liberal–conservative dimension, estimated from their votes across terms, with scores allowed to shift from one term to the next. Higher is more conservative. The shaded band is the credible interval: wider when the record is thin, especially in a justice’s first terms, and narrower as votes accumulate.
Where Blackmun sits among all justices
Career average, every justice in the data set
Blackmun’s range across terms
Served alongside Blackmun
17 justicesClosest career average first. Filled dot: the peer. Ring: Blackmun.
How Blackmun voted
Every argued case Blackmun took part in, newest first, with how Blackmun voted in each: with the majority, in dissent, or in an equally divided Court. A Liberal or Conservative tag is the Supreme Court Database’s coding of who prevailed in the case, not a rating of the justices.
Data notes
The Decisions page’s argued cases with this justice’s vote from the Supreme Court Database. “Majority” includes a concurrence; a vote that dissented in part is coded by the side the justice took overall. Cases the justice sat out and equally divided cases are left out of the percentages. “Wrote” means authored an opinion. Source: Supreme Court Database (Spaeth et al.).