David Souter died at the age of 85
Justice David Souter “Shaped” by the Dust of a Judge’s Encounter with a Supreme Court Justice. He Embedded in Bush v. Gore
But beneath that controlled surface, Justice Souter was “shattered,” Jeffrey Toobin wrote in his book on the court, “The Nine,” published in 2007. Mr. Toobin reported that the justice could not put his troubles behind him, as the other dissenters did. He seriously considered leaving the court. Persuaded by his friends to stay, Mr. Toobin wrote, Justice Souter never felt the same about the court or his job there. Mr. Toobin wrote that there were times David Souter cried when thinking of Bush v. Gore.
He told friends he wanted to retire but he didn’t want to fill the President’s empty seat. He sent his retirement letter to Obama on May 1, 2009, months after the new president was inaugurated.
A Conversation with David A. Souter: A First Circuit Circuit Judge and a New Yorker Before he Got His Appointment to the High Court
As a retired justice, he sat for several weeks every year with his old court, the First Circuit in Boston. There were chambers in Concord, N.H. He involved himself in New Hampshire life, serving on a state commission to improve civics education, a cause to which he had been recruited by his colleague, Justice O’Connor, whose retirement preceded his by three years. He gave his papers to the New Hampshire Historical Society to keep them out of the public eye, for 50 years after his death.
When he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, Harvard, his speech was a sober and obviously heartfelt lesson in constitutional interpretation. He said that the idea of the Constitution being a pantheon of values and waiting for a judge to read it was simplistic. He said that the interpretive approachdiminishes us.
He lived in a spartan apartment in the city not far from the Supreme Court offices, and he was never in the capital city’s social scene. Although he served nearly two decades on the high court, he made no secret of his preference for the lifestyle and pace of his native rural New Hampshire.
Souter wanted to drive rather than fly home. He resisted all forms of contemporary technology, using a fountain pen to write his opinions and dissents, and holding out against the cellphone and email.
Souter was not typical of what other people were doing. He had relocated to Washington to attend court sessions, but still returned to New Hampshire for the court’s long summer hiatus.
Souter was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He is a student at Oxford University. He was regarded as a thinker man’s judge and a highly thoughtful conservative before he was elevated to the nation’s highest bench.
Once appointed and confirmed, he soon became a “surprise justice.” He didn’t join the court’s conservative wing because he was not interested in joining a court led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist who was appointed to the court by Richard Nixon and elevated to chief by Ronald Reagan.
The appointing president had been assured of Souter’s credentials by the White House chief of staff, John Sununu, who had known Souter as a conservative member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court when Sununu was that state’s Republican governor.
In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed John Paul Stevens to the court, which made him a member of the court’s liberal caucus.
Former US Supreme Court Justice David Souter was “shattered” by the “dust of a judge’s encounter with a Supreme Court Justice”, Jeffrey Toobin wrote in his book on the court. “There were times David Souter cried when thinking about Bush v. Souter,” he added. Justice Souter served on the Supreme Court from 1991 to 2009.