By MARK SHERMAN, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retired Supreme Court docket Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who turned a favourite of liberals throughout his almost 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85.
Souter died Thursday at his dwelling in New Hampshire, the courtroom mentioned in a press release Friday.
He retired from the courtroom in June 2009, giving President Barack Obama his first Supreme Court docket emptiness to fill. Obama, a Democrat, selected Sonia Sotomayor, the courtroom’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 courtroom.
Whereas liberals had been delighted with a justice they initially feared, conservatives turned Souter’s appointment right into a rallying cry, “No more Souters,” that fueled their profitable drive to maneuver the courtroom extra firmly to the proper.
In retirement, Souter warned that ignorance of how authorities works may undermine American democracy.
“What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough … some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell,” Souter mentioned in a 2012 interview.
FILE – On this Sept. 16, 2009 file photograph, retired Supreme Court docket Justice David Souter works together with his group to advertise civics schooling in New Hampshire colleges throughout a gathering in Harmony, N.H. (AP Photograph/Jim Cole, FILE)
FILE – On this July 9, 2008 file photograph, Supreme Court docket Justice David Souter, reacts after talking at a dedication ceremony on the State Supreme Courthouse in Harmony, N.H. (AP Photograph/Jim Cole, File)
FILE – President George H.W. Bush talks with Supreme Court docket nominee Decide David Souter within the Oval Workplace of the White Home, Sept. 13, 1990. (AP Photograph/Charles Tasnadi, File)
FILE – New Hampshire Legal professional Common David Souter is seen on this undated photograph in Harmony, N.H. (Ken Williams/The Harmony Monitor through AP)
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FILE – On this Sept. 16, 2009 file photograph, retired Supreme Court docket Justice David Souter works together with his group to advertise civics schooling in New Hampshire colleges throughout a gathering in Harmony, N.H. (AP Photograph/Jim Cole, FILE)
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His way of life 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 depart city in early summer time. As quickly because the courtroom 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, courtroom staff and associates. He was a famous storyteller and beneficiant together with his time.
“Justice David Souter served our Court with great distinction for nearly twenty years. He brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service,” Chief Justice John Roberts mentioned. Souter continued listening to circumstances on the first U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals for greater than a decade after he left the excessive courtroom, Roberts mentioned.
Sotomayor recalled the kindness of the person she succeeded on the Supreme Court docket. “When I arrived at the court, no one was more welcoming to me than David,” she mentioned in a press release. “After his retirement, he periodically sent me notes, which I will forever treasure for their insightfulness and beautiful turns of phrase.”
When Bush plucked Souter from obscurity in 1990, liberal curiosity teams feared he can be the vote that may undo the courtroom’s Roe v. Wade ruling in favor of abortion rights. He was known 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 known as a reasonable conservative.
However he quickly joined in a ruling reaffirming ladies’s proper to an abortion, a call from 1992 that’s his most famous work on the courtroom. Thirty years later, a extra conservative courtroom 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 Court docket advocate Carter Phillips mentioned.
Souter was historical past’s a hundred and fifth Supreme Court docket justice and solely its sixth bachelor.
Though hailed by The Washington Put up 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 personal Souter instructed an acquaintance.
He labored seven days per week via many of the courtroom’s time period from October to early summer time, staying at his Supreme Court docket workplace for greater than 12 hours a day. He mentioned 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 house a couple of miles from the courtroom and jogged alone at Fort McNair, an Military set up close to his house 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 time 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 resolution on eminent area permitting a Connecticut metropolis to take a number of waterfront properties for a personal growth, a gaggle angered by the choice tried to make use of it to evict him from his Weare farmhouse to make approach 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 dwelling in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. It was reported, although maybe it was simply a part of Souter’s lore, that he apprehensive that the muse of the home in Weare would give approach underneath 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 courtroom. 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 had 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 courtroom’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 common for 2 years. He labored on the lawyer common’s workers for the earlier eight years, after a quick stint in personal apply.
Souter earned his undergraduate and legislation levels from Harvard College, and a grasp’s diploma from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.
Related Press author Kathy McCormack contributed to this report from Harmony, New Hampshire.
Initially Printed: Might 9, 2025 at 9:23 AM EDT
