The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Retiring Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, reflecting on nearly a quarter century on the Supreme Court bench, chose to focus on the value of his experience rather than the vagaries of law.

"'Enjoy' is the wrong word, but it is an intimate, fantastic experience," the 85-year-old jurist told reporters gathered at the high court Wednesday.

"I've been privileged to be here," he said. "I think, sitting with 15 members of the court. That's a fair number out of the 110 I think it is that have served here since 1790."

News conferences are rare occurrences for Supreme Court justices. While they often give public speeches and sometimes appear in intriguing public settings, such as Justice Anthony Kennedy's presiding over a mock trial of Hamlet recently, they rarely are available for questioning by reporters.

When the time came for him to field a few questions, Blackmun seemed to have difficulty hearing. Twice he ventured from the lectern in the ornate conference room into the throng of reporters to hear the question.

Blackmun seemed to relish the opportunity, but in so doing, he said virtually nothing about his own legacy, the landmark decision he authored in Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion in this country in 1973.

Blackmun did say he had been glad to at last clear the air of any doubts about his opinion of capital punishment. He doesn't like it, and said Wednesday that he only recently made that clear in connection with a death sentence case because he thought it the right case.

He referred obliquely to a rivalry among the justices, saying at one point: "We haven't had any of the disputes that you used to have on the bench and off the bench."

"There have been moments of tension, of course," Blackmun added. "The nine of us come from different backgrounds _ But I think that is what the court is all about. The tension gets built up, but it gets dispelled now and then."

He said the late Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall had been adept at relieving tensions during chamber arguments with his jokes and anecdotes.

"He always had some story _ and that took the tension off," Blackmun said of Marshall.

Blackmun also said that he had often joked with Justice John Paul Stevens about the notion that the pair of them had been disappointments to the conservative presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon who appointed them.

He said he hoped President Clinton would appoint a good person to replace him and said he had no interest in setting some sort of record for longevity.

"It's been a long time on the federal bench for me, _ close on to 35 years, counting the court of appeals," Blackmun said. "My goodness, it seems like a long time."

"I don't want to set any records. _ I am fully aware of the numbers in terms of age _ My goodness, 85 is old." Read Next Article