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Briefly Blackmun

As a second-year associate with Minnesota law firm Junell, Driscoll, Fletcher, Dorsey & Barker, future Justice Harry A. Blackmun first contributed to a Supreme Court case in 1935. Initially placed in the firm’s tax department, one of his early assignments was to write a Supreme Court brief in an alimony and trust tax law case. On behalf of the petitioner in Douglas v. Willcuts (1935), this brief became part of the first case argued in the newly finished Supreme Court Building on October 14, 1935. Blackmun continued to work for the firm for 16 years before joining one of the firm’s clients, the Mayo Clinic, as their first resident counsel in 1950. President Richard Nixon appointed Blackmun as an Associate Justice in 1970 and he served on the Supreme Court until 1994.