Justice David Souter and the New Hampshire Historical Society: A Memories from a Long, Hard Journey to the Founding Father of the United States

The Chief Justice said that Justice David Souter served the court with distinction for nearly twenty years. He brought kindness and wisdom to public service.

When he told friends that he wanted to retire, he didn’t want to create a new hole for Bush to fill. He sent his letter to the president months after he took office.

As a retired justice, he sat for several weeks every year with his old court, the First Circuit in Boston. He kept chambers there and in Concord, N.H. He involved himself in New Hampshire life, serving on a state commission to improve civics education, a cause to which he had been recruited by his colleague, Justice O’Connor, whose retirement preceded his by three years. 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. He said that the idea of all of constitutional law in the constitution was simplistic and that the Constitution embodied a pantheon of values. He said that the approachdiminishes us.

A Conversation with John P. Souter after His First Two Decades in the High Courts: When he Left New Hampshire, he became a Surprise

He lived in a spartan apartment in the city that was close to the Supreme Court offices on Capitol Hill. He made a point of his preference for the pace of life in New Hampshire, despite spending nearly two decades on the high court.

Rather than fly home, Souter preferred to drive. 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 he left the court, Souter was 70 years old and nowhere near the oldest member of the court. He knew that he wanted to go back to New Hampshire when he decided to leave Washington.

Souter was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He also attended Magdalen College at Oxford University. But his academic pedigree was only one reason he had been regarded as a thinking man’s jurist and a highly thoughtful conservative prior to his elevation to the nation’s highest bench.

Once appointed and confirmed, he soon became a “surprise justice.” He did not join the court’s conservative wing because he was not aware of the fact that the Chief Justice William Rehnquist was appointed by President Richard Nixon and ascended to the chiefship by President Ronald Reagan.

The White House chief’s of staff, John Sununu, had known that souter was a conservative member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court when he was a Republican governor.

John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975, became a full member of the court’s liberal caucus.