Blackmun Delivers Verdict on High Court Colleagues

--Justice Harry A. Blackmun issued these opinions on some of his fellow members of the Supreme Court: Antonin Scalia “asks far too many questions. He takes over the case from counsel.” Sandra Day O’Connor also asks many questions, Blackmun said, but even she was “exasperated” with Scalia--the target of most of Blackmun’s criticism. Scalia’s opinions also are often “very difficult to read,” although they “generally make sense” and “he’s going to learn,” Blackmun said. As for others on the high court, he said, the writing of Justice Byron R. White is “hard to understand” and Thurgood Marshall listens objectively but can be “sullen and at times overbearing” to lawyers. Blackmun, appointed to the court in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon, made his remarks to the 8th Circuit Judicial Conference in St. Louis, and there were no counterarguments from the other justices. Blackmun also said he was disturbed that federal judges appointed by President Reagan were all “voting one way. When I started, we tried to just be good judges” without considering politics.

--A rare, signed edition of the early works of American poet Ezra Pound has surfaced in a box of books donated to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Librarian Charles McNamara found the 1908 edition, which Pound paid to have printed in Venice, Italy. Pound had given most of the 100 copies to friends, and this one was inscribed to Dr. Margaret E. Hennessey. The book was among about two dozen given to the library by alumnus Harry Brainard and his wife, Elizabeth, a grandniece of Hennessey. The Brainards declined to take the book back after McNamara told them it was appraised at $25,000. “We just thought it belonged in the university library,” said Harry Brainard, a Michigan State University professor emeritus. “Its main claim to fame is it is his very first published book,” McNamara said. “It represents the young Pound. His early poetry before he became famous. . . . “ Pound was born in Idaho in 1885 and died in Italy in 1972.

--Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) left the hospital in Jackson, Miss., with two new lungs and a new wife, in a car decorated with “just married” signs and balloons. Spence, 60, who was a widower, had suffered from severe emphysema, and he received the lungs of an 18-year-old accident victim May 6. Spence married Debbie Williams, 37, of Lexington, S.C., in his hospital room on July 3. He said he plans to work in Congress to encourage organ donations and raise public awareness on the issue.