Word: blackmun
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...cities much of the power that it has acquired since the New Deal. The new federalists' position got a major boost in 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had only a limited right to interfere with "traditional" functions of local governments. But one Justice, Harry Blackmun, was a reluctant member of the shaky 5-4 majority in that case. Later Blackmun sided against states when they tried to use the 1976 ruling to challenge federal power. Last week the Justice abandoned his earlier vote completely and led a new 5-4 majority in overturning the 1976 decision...
...Supreme Court's vacillation can be seen in the various votes of Justice Harry Blackmun. In 1983 he cast the swing vote, agreeing with the majority to stay Stephens' execution. Then he reversed himself three weeks ago, voting with the new majority to lift the stay. Then, just hours before Stephens was executed last week, Blackmun reversed himself once again, voting that a stay should be reimposed because of the unresolved question of systematic racial bias...
...Government professors are all reluctant to peer into the crystal ball and predict just how many appointment Reagan will get to make, but it doesn't take an actuarial table to realize that the ideological balance of power in the Court is at stake. Of the nine justices five-Blackmun, Brennan Burger, Marshall and Powell-are 75 years or older and of these, everyone except Burger comes form the moderate and liberal faction of the court. Should the President get to make two appointments, a reasonable estimate, the Court's teeem drift to the right could become a stampede...
Still, there are ways to trim back Roe without reversing it. Blackmun's majority opinion in Roe ruled that while women a right to "personal liber ty," the fetus has no rights its own until it can live outside the womb. The decision relied heavily on medical evidence that the fetus was not viable until about the seventh month of pregnancy, the third trimester. But recent advances in in fant care challenge that decade-old assumption. "It is certainly reasonable to believe that fetal viability in the first trimester of pregnancy may be possible in the not too distant...
...regardless of whether they have been personally discriminated against. The rationale is that drastic steps are needed to overcome centuries of racial bias. If the court follows its own reasoning in future cases, sweeping affirmative-action plans could be struck down. As a result of the Memphis case, said Blackmun in his Cosmos Club talk, "affirmative action was pretty well interred...