Word: blackmun
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...only one who has expressed serious doubts about confirmation has been, surprisingly, the judge himself. He told TIME Correspondent Frank Merrick that he has "the utmost respect, almost a reverence," for the Supreme Court and that any man who sits on it, "ought to be without sin." What troubles Blackmun is that in searching back through the 900 cases he has handled as a federal judge since his appointment in 1959, he found three in which he had rendered decisions, although he held a small stock interest in companies involved in the litigation. Blackmun brought those cases to the attention...
...upheld a lower court decision dismissing a suit against Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., an A.T. & T. subsidiary, on grounds that the suit had been filed in the wrong court. After the senatorial criticism of Haynsworth's sitting on cases in which he might have had a financial interest, Blackmun last January excused himself from a Ford case to which he had been assigned. Blackmun says that now he feels he was wrong in taking those earlier cases, small as they were, but considers it hindsight. "In the more tense atmosphere of recent years, we don't do this...
...Merits. There is little likelihood that Blackmun will be criticized for his judicial philosophy or specific decisions. Liberals may wish that he had shown more willingness to break new judicial ground; he has tended to shy away from interpretations of law not already sanctioned by the Supreme Court. On the highest bench, there can be no passing the buck, and most observers expect Blackmun to prove a highly independent justice. The court has yet to pass upon one of his most significant decisions: his refusal in 1968 to overrule the death sentence of an Arkansas black convicted of raping...
...Blackmun is confirmed, it will be due mainly to his merits, rather than any lessons the Administration has learned in how to put a nominee across. Once again, the selection was almost solely the work of the President and his battered adviser, Attorney General John Mitchell. Nixon and Mitchell did not consult Senators or the American Bar Association in advance, although the selection was announced to a few key Senators shortly before the press was informed. But this time Nixon personally met the nominee and chatted with him for 45 minutes before deciding on him. Despite widespread criticism...
...choice of a Northerner prevents any immediate test of Nixon's claim that the Senate would not have accepted a Southerner who is a "strict constructionist." There seems little doubt that a Southerner of Blackmun's caliber and philosophy could be confirmed. Many Senators were still bitter last week about the President's charge that they had acted out of regional prejudice. The first evidence of the practical impact of these strained relations could possibly come when the Senate takes up Nixon's plan to expand the ABM program. The animosity...