Even before Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun announced his retirement last week, Bill Clinton was thinking about who would replace him. Not long after the start of the court's present term in October, Blackmun confided to the President that it would probably be his last. For those who did not get advance word, the imminent departure of the 85-year-old Justice was predictable from his passionate dissent on a death-penalty case in February. When he declared his categorical opposition to "the machinery of death," it was in the valedictory tone of a man writing with one eye on history and one foot...
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