Post-Supreme Court
Blackmun announced his retirement from the Supreme Court in April 1994, four months before he officially left the bench. By then, he had become the court's most liberal justice. In his place, President Bill Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer who was confirmed by the Senate 87-9.
In 1997, Blackmun portrayed Justice Joseph Story in the Steven Spielberg film Amistad, making him the only Supreme Court justice to have played a judge in a motion picture.
On February 22, 1999, Blackmun fell in his home and broke his hip. The next day, he underwent hip replacement surgery at Arlington Hospital in Arlington, Virginia, but he never fully recovered. Ten days later, on March 4, at the age of 90, he died at 1 am from complications following the procedure. He was buried five days later at Arlington National Cemetery. His wife died seven years later on July 13, 2006, at the age of 95, and was buried next to him.
In 2004 the Library of Congress released his voluminous files. Blackmun had kept all the documents from every case, notes the Justices passed between themselves, 10 percent of the mail he received, and numerous other documents. After Blackmun announced his retirement from the Court, he recorded a 38-hour oral history with one of his former law clerks, former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, which was also released. In it, he discusses his thoughts on everything from his important Court cases to the Supreme Court piano, though some Supreme Court experts such as David Garrow have cast doubt on the accuracy of some of Blackmun's recollections, especially his thoughts on the Court's deliberations on Roe v. Wade.
Based on these papers, Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times wrote Becoming Justice Blackmun. Jan Crawford's Supreme Justice also draws heavily from the papers.
Read more about this topic: Harry Blackmun
Famous quotes containing the word court:
“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)