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David Souter
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- For the Australian artist, see David Henry Souter.
David Hackett Souter (; born September 17, 1939) has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1990. He filled the seat vacated by William J. Brennan.
Appointed to the Court by Republican President George H. W. Bush, he usually votes with the liberal wing, though not as consistently as his predecessor. He currently ranks fourth in seniority among the Associate Justices.
er was born in Melrose, Massachusetts.
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Encyclopedia
- For the Australian artist, see David Henry Souter.
David Hackett Souter (; born September 17, 1939) has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1990. He filled the seat vacated by William J. Brennan.
Appointed to the Court by Republican President George H. W. Bush, he usually votes with the liberal wing, though not as consistently as his predecessor. He currently ranks fourth in seniority among the Associate Justices.
Early life and education
Souter was born in Melrose, Massachusetts. He is the only child of Joseph Alexander Souter and Helen Hackett Souter. His father, Joseph Souter, a banker, died in 1976. After moving from Melrose at the age of 11, he spent most of his childhood and adolescence at his family's farm in Weare, New Hampshire. He attended Concord High School in New Hampshire.
He went on to Harvard College, from which he received his A.B., concentrating in philosophy and writing a senior thesis on the legal positivism of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the famous Supreme Court justice. In 1961 he graduated from Harvard magna cum laude as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned an M.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1963. He then entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1966.
Souter worked as an associate at Orr & Reno in Concord, New Hampshire from 1966 to 1968; he disliked private practice. He accepted a position as an Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire in 1968, beginning his lifelong career in public service. As Assistant Attorney General he worked in the criminal division, prosecuting cases in the courts. In 1971, Warren Rudman, then the Attorney General of New Hampshire, selected him to be the Deputy Attorney General.
Rudman resigned to enter private practice in 1976, and Souter succeeded him as the Attorney General of New Hampshire. In 1978, he was named an Associate Justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire at the urging of his friend Warren Rudman. As a judge on the Superior Court hearing cases in two counties, Souter was noted for the way he treated juries and defendants, for sometimes sketching witnesses from behind the bench, and for tough sentencing.
He was appointed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court as an Associate Justice in 1983. Passed over for an appointment as Chief Justice by New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu in favor of a longer-serving associate justice, Souter considered leaving the Court.
David Souter became a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on May 25, 1990, having been nominated January 24, 1990.
Supreme Court appointment
Souter's old friend Warren Rudman (who had since been elected a Senator) and former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu — then chief of staff to President George H. W. Bush — were instrumental in both his nomination and his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Prior to Sununu's recommendation, few observers outside of New Hampshire knew who Souter was, although he had been mentioned by The New York Times as one of Reagan's four top nominees for the Supreme Court slot that eventually went to Anthony Kennedy. Rudman had recommended Souter to Reagan's chief of staff Howard Baker for both a federal judgeship and the Supreme Court.
Bush originally wanted to appoint Clarence Thomas to Brennan's seat, but ultimately decided that Thomas had not yet had enough experience as a federal judge and decided to recommend Souter for the post instead.
President Bush nominated Souter as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on July 25, 1990, and Souter took his seat on October 9, 1990, shortly after the United States Senate confirmed him by a vote of 90-9 after the Senate Judiciary Committee reported out the nomination by a vote of 14-3.
The nine senators voting against Souter included Ted Kennedy and John Kerry from Souter's neighboring state of Massachusetts. These senators, along with seven others, painted Souter as a right-winger in the mold of Robert Bork. They based their claim on the fact that Souter had friendships with many conservative politicians in New Hampshire. Their allegations failed to influence the other 90 senators due to the fact that the press called him the "stealth justice" and showed that his professional record provoked little real controversy and provided very little paper trail. Lack of a paper trail was seen by President Bush as a positive for Souter, because one of President Reagan's nominees, Bork, had recently been rejected by the Senate due in part to the availability of his extensive written opinions on issues. Bush claimed that he didn't know Souter's stances on abortion, affirmative action, or other issues. The National Organization for Women opposed Souter's nomination and held a rally outside the hearings to oppose his selection. The then-president of NOW, Molly Yard, testified that Souter would "end... freedom for women in this country." Souter was also opposed by the NAACP, which urged its 500,000 members to write letters to their Senators asking for Souter's defeat. Despite this opposition and largely due to his lack of a paper trail, Souter won an easy confirmation compared to later Republican appointees.
Souter spoke of his admiration for the conservative Justice John Marshall Harlan II of the Warren Court during his confirmation hearings. The Wall Street Journal described the events leading up to the appointment of the "liberal jurist" in a 2000 editorial, saying Rudman in his "Yankee Republican liberalism" took "pride in recounting how he sold Mr. Souter to gullible White House chief of staff John Sununu as a confirmable conservative. Then they both sold the judge to President Bush, who wanted above all else to avoid a confirmation battle." Rudman wrote in his memoir that he had "suspected all along" that Souter would not "overturn activist liberal precedents." Sununu later said that he had "a lot of disappointment" about Souter's positions on the Court and would have preferred him to be more similar to Justice Antonin Scalia.
After Souter was sworn in, he said: "The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right."
US Supreme Court career
Souter, along with former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Stephen Breyer, has a reputation for being a strong guardian of the Court's institutional integrity. A traditionalist in this regard, he stated in response to proposals to videotape oral arguments before the Supreme Court: "I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body."
He has also served as the Court's designated representative to Congress on at least one occasion, testifying before committees of that body about the Court's needs for additional funding to refurbish its building and for other projects. Souter is said to work 12-hour days, seven days a week when the Supreme Court is in session.
Expected conservatism
At the time of Souter's appointment, John Sununu assured President Bush and conservatives that Souter would be a "home run" for conservatism. In his testimony before the Senate, Souter espoused the concepts of originalism (as Bork had) and was thus thought by conservatives to be a strict constructionist on Constitutional matters. However, as a state's attorney and state Supreme Court judge, he had never been tested on matters of federal law.
Initially, from 1990 to 1993, Souter tended to be a conservative-leaning Justice, although more in the mold of the way Sam Alito is today and Anthony Kennedy was then rather than Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, or even William Rehnquist. In Souter's first year, Souter and Scalia voted alike close to 85 percent of the time; Souter voted with Kennedy and O'Connor about 97 percent of the time. The symbolic turning point came in two cases in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court reaffirmed the essential holding in Roe v. Wade, and Lee v. Weisman, in which Souter voted against allowing prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Anthony Kennedy considered overturning Roe and upholding all the restrictions at issue in Casey. Souter considered upholding all the restrictions but still was uneasy about overturning Roe. After consulting with O'Connor, however, the three (who came to be known as the "troika") developed a joint opinion that upheld all the restrictions in the Casey case except for the mandatory notification of a husband while asserting the essential holding of Roe, that a right to an abortion is protected by the Constitution. Casey was decided by a 5 to 4 vote.
After Bush left office and Bill Clinton became president, Souter moved to the middle. By the late 1990s, Souter began to align himself more with Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on rulings, although as of 1995, he sided on more occasions with the most liberal justice, John Paul Stevens, than either Breyer and Ginsburg, both Clinton appointees. O'Connor began to move to the center. On the abortion issue, Souter began to vote to override restrictions he believed in back in 1992. On death penalty cases, worker rights cases, criminal rights cases, and other issues, Souter began voting with the liberals in the court. So while appointed by a Republican president and thus expected to be conservative, Souter is now considered part of the liberal wing of the Court.
Constitution
According to The New York Times, Souter has "put himself in the camp of jurists who view the Constitution as a flexible set of principles that can evolve." However, Souter often employs originalist analysis in his opinions; though he often reaches very different conclusions than the Court's conservative wing.
Decisions
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
In 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Souter wrote that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned because it would be "a surrender to political pressure... So to overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to re-examine a watershed decision would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question." Justice Scalia dissented, writing that "The Imperial Judiciary lives."
Bush v. Gore
In 2000, Souter voted and dissented along with the three other justices in Bush vs. Gore to allow the presidential election recount to continue while the majority voted to end the recount based on the rule of law, making Bush the president.
Jeffrey Toobin wrote in his 2007 book The Nine of Souter's reaction following Bush v. Gore: "Toughened, or coarsened, by the their worldly lives, the other dissenters could shrug and move on, but Souter couldn’t. His whole life was being a judge. He came from a tradition where the independence of the judiciary was the foundation of the rule of law. And Souter believed Bush v. Gore mocked that tradition. His colleagues’ actions were so transparently, so crudely partisan that Souter thought he might not be able to serve with them anymore.
Souter seriously considered resigning. For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice. That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same. There were times when David Souter thought of Bush v. Gore and wept."
Relationship with other justices
Souter worked well with Sandra Day O'Connor and was close to both her and her husband during her days on the court. He generally has a good working relationship with each justice on the court, but he is particularly fond of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and he considers John Paul Stevens to be the "smartest" Justice.
Personal life
Souter enjoys mountain climbing in New Hampshire during the judicial off-season; he waits until only a few days before the Supreme Court's session begins to return to Washington, where he lived for years in a spartan apartment. Souter was attacked by two youths in what appeared to be a random incident when jogging home at night in 2004.
He is co-chair of the We the People National Advisory Committee.
Once named by The Washington Post as one of DC's 10 Most Eligible Bachelors, Justice Souter has never married, though he was once engaged.
Because he joined the Court's decision in Kelo v. New London, some New Hampshire residents, backed primarily by the Free State Project, attempted to secure an eminent domain seizure of Souter's personal residence for the Lost Liberty Hotel with a dining room called the Just Desserts Cafe. Souter is one of the Supreme Court's millionaires.
According to Jeffrey Toobin's book The Nine, Souter has a decidedly low-tech lifestyle. He writes with a fountain pen and does not use email. According to Toobin, Souter has no cell phone, no answering machine, and no television. He prefers to drive back to New Hampshire for the summer.
See also
Further reading
- Abraham, Henry J., Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
- Cushman, Clare, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789-1995 (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.
- Frank, John P., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions (Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, editors) (Chelsea House Publishers, 1995) ISBN 0791013774, ISBN 978-0791013779.
- Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.,ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352.
- Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography, (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.
- Urofsky, Melvin I., The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.
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