Souter, John Roberts, is a man who doesn’t live in a prisoner’s nanny state. He lived in Concord, N.H. and served on the New Hampshire Historical Society
“Justice David Souter served our Court with great distinction for nearly twenty years,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in the statement from the court. He brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to the public service.
He told friends over the years that he wanted to retire but didn’t want another President Bush to take his place. The new president received the retirement letter on May 1, 2009.
He sat for a few weeks every year on the First Circuit in Boston as a retired justice. He had chambers in Concord, N.H. He had been recruited by his colleague, Justice O’Connor who retired three years after he finished serving on the New Hampshire commission to improve civics education. But he made his desire for privacy unarguably clear by giving his papers to the New Hampshire Historical Society with the stipulation that they remain closed for 50 years after his death.
When he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, Harvard, his speech was a sober and obviously heartfelt lesson in constitutional interpretation. The Constitution embodied not just one idea but a “pantheon of values,” he said, and “the notion that all of constitutional law lies there in the Constitution waiting for a judge to read it” was “simplistic.” Such an interpretive approach “diminishes us,” he said.
A Conversation With David Souter About the New Hampshire Supreme Court: He Served in the Democratic Caucus for 20 Years and a Half of his Life
He was never a creature of the capital city’s social scene, living in a spartan apartment in the city not far from the Supreme Court offices on Capitol Hill. Although he was on the high court, he still preferred the lifestyle of his native New Hampshire.
Souter preferred to drive, not fly home. He also resisted other forms of contemporary technology and convenience, holding out against the cellphone and email and continuing to write his opinions and dissents in longhand, using a fountain pen.
At the time of his retirement from the court, Souter was 69 and nowhere near the oldest member of the court. He told his friends at the time that he wanted to leave Washington and return to his native New Hampshire.
Souter was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He was attending Magdalen College when he was at Oxford University. He had been regarded as a thinker, a conservative and even a justice before he was made to the nation’s highest bench.
He became a surprise justice when he was appointed and confirmed. The expectation was that he would join the court’s conservative wing, but he did not. He was appointed to the court by President Richard Nixon and elevated to chief by President Ronald Reagan.
John Sununu, White House chief of staff, knew that So David was a conservative member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court and assured the president that he had the credentials to be named to the court.
Later on, Souter became a full-fledged member of the court’s unabashedly liberal caucus, featuring yet another Republican, John Paul Stevens (appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975).
