Word: blackmun
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...confirmed, Rehnquist and Powell will join the President's two other appointees, Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Harry Blackmun. The Old liberal, activist Warren majority has now shrunk to three: Justices William Brennan Jr., 65: Thurgood Marshall, 63; and William O. Douglas, 73. Holding four seats, the conservative Nixon Justices will also be a minority, with the balance of power exercised in the middle by Potter Stewart, 56, and Byron White, 54. But the bench will have been heavily tipped to the right by the Nixon bloc. It is now virtually a Nixon Court...
...Only two or three women were on it. Many judges were excluded on grounds of age (65 or older) or ideology (too liberal and activist). Kleindienst pared the prospects down to 30, then, with Mitchell, reduced it to five. From that list, Nixon selected Burger and Haynsworth. Carswell and Blackmun were taken from the list of 30. In replacing Earl Warren, the President encountered no difficulty when he appointed Burger, a solid and magisterial Minnesotan. It was when he moved to fill Abe Fortas' seat with a Southern conservative that Nixon embarked on two of the nastiest fights...
...sharply away from the activist, innovative role as practiced under Chief Justice Earl Warren and toward a limited and cautious translation of the Constitution. That trend already had been evident since the departure of Warren and the arrival of two Nixon appointees, Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Harry Blackmun. There is even the possibility that some of the Warren Court decisions that broadened the protection of minority groups in civil rights cases and of defendants facing criminal prosecution could be modified or reversed. Nixon has claimed that some of those decisions "tipped the balance against the peace forces...
...Nixon court apparently will thus line up with Burger, Blackmun and the two new appointees in an almost automatically conservative group on which Nixon can count; Douglas and Marshall will be isolated on the left, frequently joined by Brennan; Stewart and White will be in the center, devoid of Harlan's influence and even more unpredictable than before...
...holdovers from the Warren Court, how has the turnabout taken place? The obvious answer is that the old court was so sharply divided (5-to-4 votes were common) that a minor change has produced a major shift. With the appointments of Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Harry Blackmun, both the vote and the psychological advantage have shifted to the side of restraint. Explains one close court observer: "The substitution of X for Y in the makeup of the court changes the personality of the entire group. Somebody who was affirmative because he was sure he represented the majority...