Dan Markel (Prawfsblawg) has some interesting (though I think not very severe) criticisms of the David Garrow piece. Here’s one point that I thought I’d mention, because it’s an important question — and a difficult one — regardless of how one comes out on the Justice Blackmun controversy:
[O]ne has to wonder whether clerks of that generation, or this one for that matter, expect their memos to become part of the public record, especially while in the midst of their careers. . . . [Supreme Court clerks] now have to worry that whatever they write for their SCOTUS bosses may be fodder for historians like Garrow during their active career. That might both chill the frank advice they give to the Justices and diminish the texture of the relationship between the clerks and judges. That might not be bad, but at least let’s recognize the consequences.
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