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It’s been said that there’s no time like the present. But where we are now is often the result of where we’ve been in the past. With that in mind, Briefly Legal invites you to travel back in time to take a look at what happened during this week in legal history:

Swing vote: Harry A. Blackmun received Senate confirmation to become an associate justice for the U.S. Supreme Court on May 12, 1970. Nominated by then-President Richard Nixon, Blackmun initially was considered one of the court鈥檚 most conservative members. In 1973 he wrote Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, and launched a series of opinions that favored civil liberties against government authority. Blackmun was considered one of the court鈥檚 most liberal members when he retired in 1994.

Can you hear them now?: Speaking of Richard Nixon, May 17, 1973, marked the beginning of the televised Watergate hearings. Over the next two months, the American public would learn of 鈥渨idespread evidence of political espionage by the Nixon re-election committee, illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens by the administration, and contributions to the Republican Party in return for political favors,鈥� as History.com sums it up. The hearings also revealed the existence of the Watergate tapes, and resulted in the indictments of several administration members and Nixon鈥檚 resignation on Aug. 9.

I do, they did: And on a completely non-Nixon topic, May 17 is the eighth anniversary of the nation鈥檚 first legal same-sex marriage. Marcia Kadish and Tanya McCloskey of Malden, Mass., married at the Cambridge City Hall. Another 77 same-sex couples married that day as well, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses.

Thanks to History.com for this week鈥檚 legal tidbits.