Correspondence, appointment books, memoranda, case files, legal papers, subject files, speeches, and writings chiefly documenting Blackmun's career as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1970-1994) and as judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals (8th Circuit). Also includes material relating to his boyhood in Saint Paul, Minn., his undergraduate and law school studies at Harvard University, his private law practice in Minneapolis, Minn., his work as counsel for the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Association, and his association with the Advisory Committee on Judicial Activities for the Judicial Conference of the United States, Aspen Institute, and the United Methodist Church.

U.S. Court of Appeals case topics include taxation, civil rights, and labor, administrative, constitutional, and criminal law. Documents Blackmun's decision to declare the use of corporal punishment in prisons unconstitutional.

Subjects in the Supreme Court files include abortion rights, adoption, research use of fetal tissues, reverse discrimination, and legal issues stemming from the Watergate affair.

Correspondents include Robert A. Bezoier, Myron H. Bright, Warren E. Burger, Daniel C. Connolly, James Russell Eckman, Felix Frankfurter, Erwin N. Griswold, Henry Earnest Halladay, Russell C. Jewell, A. M. Keith, Robert E. Merry, Roy M. Mersky, Norval Morris, John Bell Sanborn, James F. Simon, Scott Turow, and Charles Alan Wright.