Retired Supreme Courtroom Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who grew to become a darling of liberals throughout his practically 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85.
Souter died Thursday at his house in New Hampshire, the court docket stated in a press release Friday.
He retired from the court docket in June 2009, giving President Barack Obama his first Supreme Courtroom emptiness to fill. Obama, a Democrat, selected Sonia Sotomayor, the court docket’s first Latina justice.
Souter was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990. He was a reliably liberal vote on abortion, church-state relations, freedom of expression and the accessibility of federal courts. Souter additionally dissented from the choice in Bush v. Gore in 2000, which successfully handed the presidency to George W. Bush, the son of the person who put him on the excessive court docket.
In retirement, Souter warned that ignorance of how authorities works may undermine American democracy.
“What I fear about is that when issues are usually not addressed, folks won’t know who’s accountable. And when the issues get dangerous sufficient … some one particular person will come ahead and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That’s how the Roman republic fell,” Souter stated in a 2012 interview.
His life-style was spare — yogurt and an apple, consumed at his desk, was a typical lunch — and he shunned Washington’s social scene. He couldn’t wait to go away city in early summer season. As quickly because the court docket completed its work in late June, he climbed into his Volkswagen Jetta for the drive again to the worn farmhouse the place his household moved when he was 11.
But for all his reserve, Souter was beloved by colleagues, court docket staff and buddies. He was a famous storyteller and beneficiant together with his time.
“Justice David Souter served our Courtroom with nice distinction for practically twenty years. He introduced unusual knowledge and kindness to a lifetime of public service,” Chief Justice John Roberts stated. Souter continued listening to circumstances on the first U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals for greater than a decade after he left the excessive court docket, Roberts stated.
When Bush plucked Souter from obscurity in 1990, liberal curiosity teams feared he could be the vote that will undo the court docket’s Roe v. Wade ruling in favor of abortion rights. He was referred to as a stealth nominee by some.
Bush White Home aide John Sununu, the previous conservative governor of New Hampshire, hailed his selection as a “home run.” And early in his time in Washington, Souter was referred to as a average conservative.
However he quickly joined in a ruling reaffirming girl’s proper to an abortion, a choice from 1992 that’s his most famous work on the court docket. Thirty years later, a extra conservative court docket overturned that call and the constitutional proper to abortion.
Souter requested exact questions throughout argument periods, typically with a fierceness that belied his low-key method. “He had an unerring knack of finding the weakest link in your argument,” veteran Supreme Courtroom advocate Carter Phillips stated.
Souter was historical past’s one hundred and fifth Supreme Courtroom justice and solely its sixth bachelor.
Though hailed by The Washington Submit because the capital metropolis’s most prominently eligible single man when he moved from New Hampshire, Souter resolutely resisted the social whirl.
“I wasn’t that kind of person before I moved to Washington, and, at this age, I don’t see any reason to change,” the intensely non-public Souter informed an acquaintance.
He labored seven days every week via many of the court docket’s time period from October to early summer season, staying at his Supreme Courtroom workplace for greater than 12 hours a day. He stated he underwent an annual “intellectual lobotomy” initially of every time period as a result of he had so little time to learn for pleasure.
Souter rented an condo a couple of miles from the court docket and jogged alone at Fort McNair, an Military set up close to his condo constructing. He was as soon as mugged whereas on a run, an apparently random act.
Souter returned to his well-worn home in Weare, New Hampshire, for a couple of months every summer season and was given the usage of an workplace in a Harmony courthouse.
An avid hiker, Souter spent a lot of his time away from work trekking via the New Hampshire mountains.
When Souter in 2005 joined an unpopular 5-4 determination on eminent area permitting a Connecticut metropolis to take a number of waterfront properties for a non-public improvement, a bunch angered by the choice tried to make use of it to evict him from his Weare farmhouse to make means for the “Lost Liberty Hotel.” However Weare residents rejected the proposal.
Shortly after his retirement, Souter purchased a 3,500-square-foot Cape Cod-style house in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. It was reported, although maybe it was simply a part of Souter’s lore, that he anxious that the inspiration of the home in Weare would give means beneath the burden of all of the books he owned.
Souter had been a federal appellate choose for simply over 4 months when picked for the excessive court docket. He had heard however one case as a federal choose, and as a state choose beforehand had little likelihood to rule on constitutional points.
Although liberals have been initially cautious of his appointment, it was political conservatives who felt betrayed when in two 1992 rulings Souter helped forge a moderate-liberal coalition that reaffirmed the constitutional proper of abortion and the court docket’s longtime ban on formally sponsored prayers in public colleges.
But as Souter biographer Tinsley Yarbrough famous, the justice didn’t take “extreme positions.”
Certainly, in June 2008, Souter sided with Exxon Mobil Corp. and broke together with his liberal colleagues in slashing the punitive damages the corporate owed Alaskan victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Earlier than serving as a New Hampshire choose, Souter was his state’s lawyer normal for 2 years. He labored on the lawyer normal’s workers the eight earlier years, after a quick stint in non-public follow.
Souter earned his undergraduate and legislation levels from Harvard College, and a grasp’s diploma from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar Washington, D.C.
