Linda Greenhouse spoke to a large crowd on Sunday afternoon. She spoke mostly about the research process that led to her three-article New York Times series. That series eventually led to her 2005 book, Becoming Justice Blackmun. As Ms. Greenhouse pointed out, the book was unusual for a biography of a contemporary person in that it was based almost completely on library research.
Harry Blackmun had specified that his papers should be made public five years after his death, an unusually short time. As the time approached for the release of his papers, the Blackmun family was concerned that initial consideration of his papers be methodically journalistic. They arranged for Linda Greenhouse to have access to them at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress two months before their official release, with the condition that nothing was to be revealed until the official release date.
Ms. Greenhouse and her research assistant spent approximately six weeks at the Library of Congress conducting research in Justice Blackmun's papers. Her initial project was limited to the series of articles for the New York Times. The articles were to be focused on the Supreme Court during Justice Blackmun's tenure, and covered the abortion cases, the death penalty cases, and Justice Blackmun's relationship with Justice Burger.
Shortly after the articles were released, Ms. Greenhouse agreed to write a book about Justice Blackmun. It was to be the story of his life, as told by his papers. She returned to the Library of Congress to explore sections of the papers that she had not been able to review during her initial six weeks.
Even researching her book, Ms. Greenhouse could not review all of the 1,585 boxes of books that make up the Harry Blackmun collection. She began with promising areas of investigation, such as the Burger correspondence, cases about women’s rights, and the memos Blackmun prepared for himself for each oral argument. She spoke about the “serendipity of following threads that lead in unexpected directions” and provided a deeper understanding of Justice Blackmun's career and how he “became” Justice Blackmun.