U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun was an accidental feminist. After writing the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion, he first resisted and even resented the fame and notoriety the ruling thrust upon him. But over time, as the political winds of the Reagan and Bush years forced him to defend the decision again and again, he came to embrace and even relish his fate as Roe's author.

Roe was the central plot of Blackmun's 24 years on the Supreme Court. Among the subplots were a series of gender-bias cases, some of which seemed wearyingly petty. These cases opened Blackmun's eyes and helped him develop a judicial philosophy that was - and is -both revered and vilified.

He wrote a terse expression of that philosophy in a memo on an Idaho law that gave men automatic preference over women as executors of estates, one of a string of archaic statutes that the court overturned in the 1970s and '80s.

The crux of the case was the 14th Amendment's assertion that a state could not "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" or deny any citizen "the equal protection of the laws." Had the court been reviewing the case in 1890, Blackmun wrote, it would not have found grounds in the 14th Amendment to overturn the Idaho law.

"On the other hand," he wrote, "my own feeling is that these constitutional provisions must have some flexibility and expansiveness in them as, in theory, we ourselves progress and expand in our concepts of equality."

This philosophy created challenges for Blackmun both inside and outside the court. Perhaps no one is better suited than Linda Greenhouse to chronicle how he met those challenges.

Greenhouse, a New York Timesreporter who has covered the court for 27 years, was among the first to gain access to Blackmun's voluminous papers. From those papers she has produced Becoming Justice Blackmun, a tight narrative woven from three threads of the late justice's career: the evolution of abortion rights, the court's struggle with the death penalty and Blackmun's near-lifelong association with Warren Burger, the chief justice during most of Blackmun's tenure.

One virtue of Greenhouse's book is that it is so current. Supreme Court justices generally close off public access to their papers until many years after their deaths, sometimes until the last justice with whom they served has died. Blackmun allowed his to be opened five years to the day after his death.

The papers, and hence Greenhouse's book, shed light on several current justices through their interactions with Blackmun. The vignettes she chooses illuminate the humanity of the players, the workings of the court and the slow changes wrought by time.

Before becoming a justice herself, Ruth Bader Ginsburg often argued before the court, usually seeking to overturn laws based on gender bias. Blackmun graded her performances on an A-F scale, as he did those of other lawyers. Once, during a 1976 appearance, he wrote of her in the margin of his case argument, "In red & red ribbon today." A tough grader, he generally gave her Bs for her arguments.

In the cloistered life of the court, the ability to find common personal ground with ideological opposites made Blackmun's life easier. He was quick to extend a welcoming hand to Clarence Thomas after Thomas's brutal confirmation hearings. Even though William Rehnquist wrote that Roe was "in error"and that women had no constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, Blackmun liked Rehnquist personally and later appreciated his efficiency as chief justice.

Antonin Scalia became Blackmun's foil on many issues, but they happily crusaded together for precise writing. Blackmun was the court's irrepressible editor, driven to correct any and all errors in grammar, spelling and usage. Since word-smithing is at the heart of a justice's job, this was no minor matter.

Kindred spirit

As detailed by reporter Lisa Wangsness's stories in the Concord Monitor last year and by Greenhouse in her book, Blackmun had a special friendship with Justice David Souter, who came to the court in 1990. Blackmun recognized him as a kindred spirit. They were both Harvard men and hard workers, and both had left behind places they loved to join the court. (next page »)