Daily Inspiration Quote by Harry A. Blackmun

A judge’s robe is supposed to signal continuity, but Blackmun punctures that comfort with a deceptively plain question: why should the past get to boss the present around just because it arrived first? The line is structured like a courtroom cross-examination. “Who is to say” isn’t humility; it’s a challenge to the audience’s automatic deference to precedent. By reducing judicial authority to “5 men” and shrinking the stakes to “10 years ago” and “looking the other direction today,” he strips away the mystique of the Court and exposes its core reality: interpretation is contingent, and majorities are human.

The subtext is a rebuke to the idea that legal correctness can be read off a calendar. Blackmun is pointing at the Court’s 5-4 machinery and asking why a one-vote swing should be treated as destiny. “Looking the other direction” is doing heavy work: it suggests that the Court doesn’t merely discover law, it chooses where to direct its attention - what harms it sees, what rights it enlarges, what history it privileges. That phrase also needles the pretense of neutrality; judges “look” and therefore select.

Contextually, this reads as an argument against rigid stare decisis when the prior decision is unpersuasive or ethically cramped. Coming from Blackmun - who evolved notably over his tenure, and who wrote with increasing moral urgency late in life - it doubles as self-portrait. He’s validating doctrinal change not as fickleness, but as the Court finally turning its gaze toward what it previously refused to see.