Word: blackmun
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Easy Out. An odd snarl forced the court to ignore those issues. The decision had been postponed for more than a year because there were only eight Justices sitting, and their opinions were split. Ironically, Justice-designate Harry Blackmun, who will be sworn in this week, would have disqualified himself because he had ruled against Maxwell while serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit...
Even so, the high court simultaneously agreed to review two more capital cases next fall, when Blackmun can participate. Both cases raise the same issues as Maxwell. Pending those decisions, the nation's 510 condemned prisoners are likely to be kept alive. Because of state abolition, appeals, pardons and commutations, the U.S. has not staged a single execution in three years...
...impressiveness, Amsterdam's argument may be just a warmup. Observers of the court believe it to be so closely divided on the capital-punishment issue that it will decide the Maxwell case on a technicality and wait for Justice Blackmun before tackling the constitutionality of the death penalty itself. In that event, Amsterdam almost certainly will be back on behalf of another condemned...
Remembering how Clement Hayns worth Jr.'s candidacy foundered on allegations of conflict of interest, the com mittee delved deeply into Blackmun's financial record. The Senators noted that in his eleven years on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Blackmun heard 900 cases and participated in only four suits where he had even a remote financial interest in one of the litigants. The committee backed the American Bar Association's finding that "his stockholdings are so small that, in our opinion, he violated no statute or canon...
Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh, leader of the successful opposition to both Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, implicitly contrasted Blackmun to Carswell, who was criticized for insensitivity toward racial issues. Though Blackmun has been labeled a conservative, the lib eral Bayh said: "There is every indication that Judge Blackmun is aware of the crucial questions of civil rights and human rights facing our nation - and is equipped to deal with them with sensitivity, understanding and intelligence...