David Souter
David Hackett Souter was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1990 to 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat that had been vacated by William J. Brennan Jr., Souter was a member of both the Rehnquist and Roberts courts.
Raised in New England, Souter attended Harvard College; Magdalen College, Oxford; and Harvard Law School. After briefly working in private practice, he moved to public service. He served as a prosecutor in the office of the Attorney General of New Hampshire ; as attorney general of New Hampshire ; as an associate justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court ; as an associate justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court ; and as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
In mid-2009, after Barack Obama took office as U.S. president, Souter announced his retirement from the Court; he was succeeded by Sonia Sotomayor. Souter continued to hear cases by designation at the circuit court level.
Early life and education
Souter was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1939, the only child of Joseph Alexander Souter and Helen Adams Souter. His father was of Scottish ancestry and his mother of English ancestry. At age 11, he moved with his family to their farm in Weare, New Hampshire.Souter graduated second in his class from Concord High School in 1957. He then attended Harvard University, graduating in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in philosophy and writing a senior thesis on the legal positivism of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. While at Harvard, Souter was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Jurisprudence from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1963. He graduated in 1966 with a Bachelor of Laws degree from Harvard Law School.
Early career
In 1968, after two years as an associate at the law firm of Orr & Reno in Concord, New Hampshire, Souter began his career in public service by accepting a position as an assistant attorney general of New Hampshire. In 1971, Warren Rudman, then the attorney general of New Hampshire, selected Souter as deputy attorney general. Souter succeeded Rudman as New Hampshire attorney general in 1976.In 1978, Souter was named an associate justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court. With four years of trial court experience, Souter was appointed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1983.
Shortly after George H. W. Bush was sworn in as president, he nominated Souter to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Souter had had seven years of judicial experience at the appellate level, four years at the trial court level, and ten years with the attorney general's office. He was confirmed by unanimous consent of the Senate on April 27, 1990.
U.S. Supreme Court appointment
President George H. W. Bush initially considered nominating Clarence Thomas to Brennan's seat, but he and his advisers decided that Thomas did not yet have enough experience as a judge. Warren Rudman, who had since been elected to the U.S. Senate, and former Governor of New Hampshire John H. Sununu, then Bush's chief of staff, suggested Souter, and were instrumental in his nomination and confirmation. Bush was reportedly "highly impressed by Souter's intellectual seriousness" and Souter's intellect, "particularly impressive in one-on-one meetings", was reported to have been a persuasive factor in his nomination. At the time, few observers outside New Hampshire knew who Souter was, although he had reportedly been on Reagan's short list of nominees for the Supreme Court seat held by Lewis F. Powell Jr. that eventually went to Anthony Kennedy.Souter was seen as a "stealth justice" whose professional record in the state courts provoked no real controversy and provided a minimal "paper trail" on issues of U.S. Constitutional law. Bush saw the lack of a paper trail as an asset, because the Senate had rejected one of President Reagan's nominees, Robert Bork, partially because of his extensive written opinions on controversial issues. Bush nominated Souter on July 25, 1990, saying that he did not know Souter's stances on abortion, affirmative action, or other issues.
Senate confirmation hearings began on September 13, 1990. The National Organization for Women opposed Souter's nomination and held a rally outside the Senate during the hearings. The 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 them to oppose the nomination. In Souter's opening statement before the Judiciary Committee, he summed up the lessons he had learned as a judge of the New Hampshire courts:
Some have pointed to Souter's confirmation hearings as showing the first signs of the liberal bent of his legal principles. He surprised many conservatives when, prompted by Senator Chuck Grassley to describe his views on "judicial activism" and "government by the judiciary", he responded, "Courts must accept their own responsibility for making a just society." He added that the court was obligated to respond to pressing social concerns that were addressed by the Constitution but which other branches of government had failed to take up.
Despite organized opposition by numerous civil society groups, Souter won confirmation easily, with all votes in opposition coming from Democrats. His performance at the confirmation hearings ensured his approval by the Senate; Walter Dellinger, a liberal Democrat and an adviser to the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Souter "the most intellectually impressive nominee I've ever seen". The Senate Judiciary Committee reported out the nomination by a vote of 13–1, with Ted Kennedy the lone dissenter. The full Senate confirmed the nomination on October 2, 1990, by a vote of 90–9. Souter was sworn into office seven days after his confirmation.
Nine senators voted against Souter: Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts; Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey; Brock Adams of Washington; Daniel Akaka of Hawaii; Quentin Burdick of North Dakota; Alan Cranston of California; and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. They painted Souter as a right-winger in the mold of Robert Bork.
U.S. Supreme Court
Souter opposed having cameras in the Supreme Court during oral arguments, saying the media would take questions out of context and the proceedings would be politicized.Souter served as the Court's designated representative to Congress on at least one occasion, testifying before committees about the Court's needs for additional funding to refurbish its building and for other projects.
Judicial philosophy
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 was thought by conservatives to be a strict constructionist on constitutional matters, but he portrayed himself as an incrementalist who disliked drastic change and attached a high importance to precedent. In the state attorney general's office and as a state Supreme Court judge, he had never been tested on matters of federal law.After the appointment of Clarence Thomas, Souter moved toward the ideological middle. In the 1992 case Lee v. Weisman, Souter voted with the liberal wing and against allowing prayer at a high school graduation ceremony.
In the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Souter voted with the moderate wing in a plurality decision in which the Court reaffirmed the essential holding in Roe v. Wade but narrowed its scope. Justice Anthony Kennedy had considered overturning Roe and upholding all the restrictions at issue in Casey. Souter considered upholding all the restrictions but was uneasy about overturning Roe. After consulting with O'Connor, the three developed a joint opinion that upheld all the restrictions in Casey except the mandatory notification of a husband while asserting the essential holding of Roe, that the Constitution protects the right to an abortion.
By the late 1990s, Souter began to align himself more with Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, although as of 1995, he sided on more occasions with the more liberal justice John Paul Stevens than with either Breyer or Ginsburg, both Clinton appointees. On death penalty cases, workers' rights cases, defendants' rights cases, and other issues, Souter began increasingly voting with the Court's liberals, and later came to be considered part of the Court's liberal wing. Because of this, many conservatives view Souter's appointment as an error of the Bush presidency. For example, after widespread speculation that President George W. Bush intended to appoint Alberto Gonzales—whose perceived views on affirmative action and abortion drew criticism—to the Court, some conservative Senate staffers popularized the slogan "Gonzales is Spanish for Souter". Conversely, Ted Kennedy, one of nine senators to have voted against Souter's confirmation, later expressed regret about his vote.
A Wall Street Journal opinion piece ten years after Souter's nomination called Souter a "liberal jurist" and said that Rudman 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" in Souter's positions on the Court and would have preferred him to be more like Antonin Scalia. In contrast, President Bush said several years after Souter's appointment that he was proud of Souter's "outstanding" service and "outstanding intellect" and that Souter would "serve for years on the Court, and he will serve with honor always and with brilliance".