The Annotated Bobblehead Justice Harry A. Blackmun

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Harry A. Blackmun, 1970-1994

Harry Blackmun was born in 1908 in Nashville, Illinois, and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. Blackmun's father owned a grocery and hardware store, his mother was a musician and one of his close friends growing up was Warren Burger. He was later best man at Burger's wedding and a colleague on the Supreme Court. He majored in mathematics at Harvard and graduated summa cum laude in 1929. He received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1932 where he had Felix Frankfurter for a professor. He clerked for the U.S. circuit court, practiced privately, and was the first resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic before being appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959. He was President Nixon's third choice to fill Abe Fortas's seat. Naming himself "Old No. 3," Blackmun was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1970.