Information about David Souter

David Hackett Souter
David Hackett Souter
Nominated by	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Religion	Episcopalian

David Hackett Souter (born September 17, 1939) has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1990. He filled the seat vacated by William J. Brennan. On the Court he usually votes with the liberal wing, though not as consistently as his predecessor. He currently ranks fourth in seniority among the Associate Justices.

Early life and education

Souter was born in Melrose, Massachusetts. He is the only child of Joseph Alexander Souter and Helen Hackett Souter. His father, a banker, died in 1976. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence at his family's farm in Weare, New Hampshire. He attended Concord High School in New Hampshire.

He went on to Harvard College, from which he received his A.B., concentrating in philosophy and writing a senior thesis on the legal positivism of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the famous Supreme Court justice. In 1961 he graduated from Harvard magna cum laude as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and chose to attend Magdalen College, Oxford, where he received a B.A. in Jurisprudence from Oxford University and an M.A. in 1963. He then entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1966.

New Hampshire politics

After law school he worked as an associate at Orr & Reno in Concord, New Hampshire from 1966 to 1968. But he accepted a position as an Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire in 1968, beginning a lifelong career in public service. As Assistant Attorney General he worked in the criminal division as a prosecutor. In 1971 Warren Rudman, then the Attorney General of New Hampshire, selected him to be the Deputy Attorney General.

In 1976, Rudman resigned to enter private practice and Souter succeeded him as the Attorney General of New Hampshire. In 1978, he was named an Associate Justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire, and was appointed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court as an Associate Justice in 1983.

U.S. Supreme Court

David Souter became a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on May 25, 1990, having been nominated January 24, 1990. His old friend Warren Rudman (who had since been elected a Senator) and former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu - then chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush - were instrumental in both his nomination and his confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Later that year, President Bush nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on July 25, 1990, (see [1]), and he took his seat on October 9, 1990, shortly after the United States Senate confirmed him by a vote of 90 to 9 after the Senate Judiciary Committee reported out the nomination by a vote of 14-3. The press called him the "stealth justice" since his professional record provoked no real controversy, and provided very little paper trail.

Souter, along with former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Stephen Breyer, has a reputation for being a strong guardian of the Court's institutional integrity. A traditionalist in this regard, he famously stated, in response to proposals to videotape oral arguments before the Supreme Court, "I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body". He has 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.

Initially, from 1990-93, he tended to be a conservative-leaning Justice, although more in the mold of Anthony Kennedy than Antonin Scalia or William Rehnquist. In Souter's first year, Souter and Scalia voted alike close to 85 percent of the time; Souter voted with Kennedy and O'Connor about 97 percent of the time. The symbolic turning point came in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court reaffirmed the essential holding in Roe v. Wade. Souter and Anthony Kennedy each considered overturning Roe and upholding all the restrictions at issue in Casey. After consulting with O'Connor, however, the three (who came to be known as the "troika") developed a joint opinion which upheld all the restrictions in the Casey case except for the mandatory notification of a husband while asserting the essential holding of Roe, that a right to an abortion is protected by the Constitution. Roe was decided by a 7 to 2 vote, though Casey was 5 to 4.

Although appointed by a Republican president, and thus expected to be conservative (see Segal-Cover score), he is usually associated with the liberal wing of the Court.

After he was sworn in he said, "The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right."

Personal

Souter enjoys mountain climbing in New Hampshire during the judicial off-season. He is co-chair of the We the People National Advisory Committee. Justice Souter is not married, though he was once engaged.

Because he joined the Court's decision in Kelo v. New London, some New Hampshire residents attempted to secure an eminent domain seizure of Souter's personal residence for the Lost Liberty Hotel.

External links

• Supreme court official bio (PDF)
• Project Vote Smart - Associate Justice David Hackett Souter profile

Preceded by Hugh Henry Bownes	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit 1990	Succeeded by Norman H. Stahl
Preceded by William J. Brennan	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States October 9, 1990| – present	Incumbent
Preceded by Anthony Kennedy	United States order of precedence as of 2007	Succeeded by Clarence Thomas

Judicial opinions of David Souter
New Hampshire Supreme Court (1983 - 1990)
(organized by calendar year)
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1990)
(organized by calendar year)
1990
Supreme Court of the United States (August 3, 1994 - present)
(organized by term)
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

The Rehnquist| Court
William Hubbs Rehnquist (1986–2005|)
1990–1991:	B. White | T. Marshall | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter|
1991–1993:	B. White | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas|
1993–1994:	H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg|
1994–2005:	J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer|
The Roberts| Court
John Glover Roberts, Jr. (2005|)
2005–2006:	J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer
2006–present:	J.P. Stevens | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer | S. Alito|