Word: blackmun
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...base the decision on a broad constitutional right to privacy. Burger preferred a more narrowly drawn opinion, one that would invite the states to replace rigid with less restrictive abortion laws. As a furious Douglas accused Burger of abusing the assigning power, the Chief gave the opinion to Blackmun, a Justice who had voted so often with Burger that he was nicknamed "Hip Pocket Harry'' by the clerks; indeed, Burger and Blackmun, former schoolmates...
...Burger had three more Nixon appointees as colleagues on the court: Harry A Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell Jr and William H. Rehnquist. Liberals warned of "an emerging Nixon majority"; indeed, in the early to mid-'70s, the Burger Court, with the Nixon appointees often voting as a group, began chipping away at Warren Court precedents such as Miranda and the rule excluding illegally obtained evidence. But then the bloc of Nixon appointees began to break up. In 1972-73 the quartet voted together three out of four times. By 1977-78 they were all of the same mind...
...woman and her doctor, not the state, to decide. That was hardly the reasoning Burger had hoped for. The Chief eventually added a cryptic concurring opinion arguing that the court's decision did not sanction ''abortion on demand''-though that was precisely what Blackmun meant...
...court's rush to dispose of its case load before the summer recess. Though it is unusual for Supreme Court Justices to explain their judicial opinions publicly, so far four have. Burger told reporters last month that the Gannett decision is limited to pretrial hearings. Justice Harry Blackmun, who dissented in the case, told a group of federal judges that "despite what my colleague, the Chief Justice, has said," the opinion allows the closing of full trials as well. Justice Lewis Powell told a panel at the American Bar Association convention that it "would be a bit premature...
...court's uncertain course depends largely on how five moderate Justices-Potter Stewart, John Paul Stevens, Byron White, Blackmun and Powell -cast their votes. They are known as the "fluid five" or the "floating center." Explains University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone: "The Justices in the middle are not 'principle' Justices, which is not to say they are unprincipled -just unpredictable." The only real ideologues on the high bench are Rehnquist on the right and William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall on the left. Brennan, often a dissenter in the past, found himself in the majority...