Abstract
At present, 108 Justices have served on the United States Supreme Court. Some have clearly been successes as judges, while a few have clearly not, and a large number are cast into that middle, "satisfactory" or "average," category. The purpose of this paper is to propose, examine, and evaluate specific factors as determinants of judicial success, and then to consider Justice Harry Blackmun's place on a continuum of successes and failures. The paper is divided into three sections. First, it reviews several ideal qualities and examines the results of several surveys of experts, which classify the Justices into categories based on their relative degree of success. Second, this article considers whether success can be predicted, and in answering this question offers several case histories illustrating examples of when judicial success could not be predicted. Finally, because the purpose of this symposium is to commemorate the release of Justice Blackmun's papers, this article evaluates Justice Blackmun on the success-failure continuum. Because of his shift in position during his 24 years on the Court, Justice Blackmun is especially of interest. This article further analyzes and proposes explanations for his shift.
Recommended Citation
Lawrence S. Wrightsman and Justin R. La Mort,
Why Do Supreme Court Justices Succeed or Fail - Harry Blackmun as an Example,
70 Mo. L. Rev.
(2005)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol70/iss4/13