David Souter facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
David Souter
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Official portrait, 1990
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| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
| In office October 9, 1990 – June 29, 2009 |
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| Nominated by | George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | William J. Brennan Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Sonia Sotomayor |
| Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit | |
| In office May 25, 1990 – October 9, 1990 |
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| Nominated by | George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Hugh H. Bownes |
| Succeeded by | Norman H. Stahl |
| Associate Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court | |
| In office 1983–1990 |
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| Nominated by | John Sununu |
| Preceded by | Maurice Bois |
| Succeeded by | Sherman Horton |
| Associate Justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court | |
| In office 1978–1983 |
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| 20th Attorney General of New Hampshire | |
| In office July 17, 1976 – September 19, 1978 |
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| Governor | Meldrim Thomson Jr. |
| Preceded by | Warren Rudman |
| Succeeded by | Thomas D. Rath |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
David Hackett Souter
September 17, 1939 Melrose, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Education | Harvard University (AB, LLB) Magdalen College, Oxford (MA) |
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David Hackett Souter ( SOO-tər; born September 17, 1939) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat that had been vacated by William J. Brennan Jr., Souter sat on both the Rehnquist and the 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 (1966–1968) in the New Hampshire Attorney General's office (1968–1976), as the attorney general of New Hampshire (1976–1978), as an associate justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire (1978–1983), as an associate justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court (1983–1990), and briefly as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1990).
Souter was nominated to the Supreme Court without a significant "paper trail" but was expected to be a conservative justice. Within a few years of his appointment, Souter moved towards the ideological center. He eventually came to vote reliably with the Court's liberal wing. In mid-2009, after Democrat Barack Obama took office as U.S. president, Souter announced his retirement from the Court; he was succeeded by Sonia Sotomayor. Souter has continued to hear cases by designation at the circuit court level.
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Early life and education
Souter was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1939, the only child of Joseph Alexander Souter (1904–1976) and Helen Adams (Hackett) Souter (1907–1995). 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 an A.B., 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 (later promoted to a Master of Arts degree, as per tradition) 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 realized he disliked private practice and began his career in public service by accepting a position as an Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire. As Assistant Attorney General he prosecuted criminal cases in the courts. In 1971, Warren Rudman, then the Attorney General of New Hampshire, selected Souter to be the Deputy Attorney General. Souter succeeded Rudman as New Hampshire Attorney General in 1976.
In 1978, with the support of his friend Rudman, Souter was named an associate justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire. As a judge on the Superior Court he heard cases in two counties and was noted for his tough sentencing. 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 for 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 originally 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 New Hampshire Governor 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.
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 nominated Souter on July 25, 1990.
Senate confirmation hearings were held beginning on September 13, 1990. Souter's 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, and the Senate confirmed the nomination by a vote of 90–9; Souter was sworn into office shortly thereafter, on October 9, 1990.
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.
U.S. Supreme Court
Souter opposed having cameras in the Supreme Court during oral arguments because he said questions would be taken out of context by the media and the proceedings would be politicized.
He 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.
International recognition
Even though Souter had never traveled outside the United States during his years with the Supreme Court, he still gained significant recognition abroad. In 1995, a series of articles based on his written opinions and titled "Souter Court" was published by a Moscow legal journal, The Russian Justice. Those were followed by a book, written in Russian and bearing Souter's name in the title. Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Yury Danilov, reviewing the 2nd edition of the book in a Moscow English-language daily, made the following remark on Souter's position in Bush v. Gore: "In a most critical and delicate situation, David Souter had maintained the independence of his position and in this respect had become a symbol of the independence of the judiciary."
Retirement
Long before the election of President Obama, Souter had expressed a desire to leave Washington, D.C., and return to New Hampshire. The election of a Democratic president in 2008 may have made Souter more inclined to retire, but he did not want to create a situation in which there would be multiple vacancies at once. Souter apparently became satisfied that no other justices planned to retire at the end of the Supreme Court's term in June 2009. As a result, in mid-April 2009 he privately notified the White House of his intent to retire at the conclusion of that term. Souter sent Obama a retirement letter on May 1, effective at the start of the Supreme Court's 2009 summer recess. Later that day Obama made an unscheduled appearance during the daily White House press briefing to announce Souter's retirement. On May 26, 2009, Obama announced his nomination of federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 6.
On June 29, 2009, the last day of the Court's 2008–2009 term, Chief Justice Roberts read a letter to Souter that had been signed by all eight of his colleagues as well as retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, thanking him for his service, and Souter read a letter to his colleagues reciprocating their good wishes.
Souter's papers have been donated to the New Hampshire Historical Society and will not be made public until at least 50 years after his death.
Post-Supreme Court career
As a Supreme Court justice with retired status, Souter remains a judge and is entitled to sit by designation on lower courts. After his retirement from the Supreme Court and until 2020, he regularly sat by designation on panels of the First Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston and covering Maine, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, and his adopted home state of New Hampshire, generally in February or March of each year, but he did not do so in 2021 or 2022.
Souter has maintained a low public profile since retiring from the Supreme Court.
Personal life
Once named by The Washington Post as one of Washington's 10 Most Eligible Bachelors, Souter has never married, though he was once engaged. He is an Episcopalian.
Souter was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1994, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.
In 2004, Souter was mugged while jogging between his home and the Fort Lesley J. McNair Army Base in Washington, DC. He suffered minor injuries from the event, visiting the MedStar Washington Hospital Center for treatment. The problem led to public questioning of the Supreme Court Police's security detail, which was not present at the time.
According to Jeffrey Toobin's 2007 book The Nine, Souter has a decidedly low-tech lifestyle: He writes with a fountain pen, does not use email, and has no cellphone or answering machine. While serving on the Supreme Court, he preferred to drive back to New Hampshire for the summer, where he enjoyed mountain climbing. Souter has also done his own home repairs and is known for his daily lunch of an apple and unflavored yogurt.
Former Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse wrote of Souter: "to focus on his eccentricities—his daily lunch of yogurt and an apple, core and all; the absence of a computer in his personal office—is to miss the essence of a man who in fact is perfectly suited to his job, just not to its trappings. His polite but persistent questioning of lawyers who appear before the court displays his meticulous preparation and his mastery of the case at hand and the cases relevant to it. Far from being out of touch with the modern world, he has simply refused to surrender to it control over aspects of his own life that give him deep contentment: hiking, sailing, time with old friends, reading history."
In early August 2009, Souter moved from his family farmhouse in Weare to a Cape Cod-style single-floor home in nearby Hopkinton, New Hampshire, a town in Merrimack County northeast of Weare and immediately west of the state capital of Concord. Souter told a disappointed Weare neighbor that the two-story family farmhouse was not structurally sound enough to support the thousands of books he owns and that he wished to live on one level.
Over the years, Souter has served on hospital boards and civic committees. He is a former honorary co-chair of the We the People National Advisory Committee.
See also
In Spanish: David Souter para niños
