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U.S.|David H. Souter, Republican Justice Who Allied With Court’s Liberal Wing, Dies at 85
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/david-souter-dead.html
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He left conservatives bitterly disappointed with his migration from right to left, leading to the cry of “no more Souters.”
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David H. Souter: The pillars of power and the pull of New Hampshire
Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for the Times, recalls how the justice openly despised the pomp of Washington and longed to return to his home. -
David Souter loved being a supreme court justice and hated Washington DC. He said best job in the world in the worst city in the world. He didn’t like the puffed up self importance of many Washingtonians. He didn’t go to dinner parties, he couldn’t wait to get back to his native New Hampshire. When he retired in 2009, he just wanted to go back to a life of contemplation and reading his history books. But he discovered that his house was sinking under the weight of all of his books and he needed to buy a new house.
Linda Greenhouse, the recipient of a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, reported on the Supreme Court for The Times from 1978 to 2008.
May 9, 2025Updated 9:29 a.m. ET
David H. Souter, a New Hampshire Republican who was named to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush and who over 19 years on that bench became a mainstay of the court’s shrinking liberal wing, died on Thursday at his home in Concord, N.H. He was 85.
His death was announced on Friday morning by the Supreme Court, which did not cite a cause, saying only that he had died “peacefully.”
A shy man who never married and who much preferred an evening alone with a good book to a night in the company of Washington insiders, Justice Souter retired at the unusually young age of 69 to return to his beloved home state. His retirement at the end of the court’s 2008-2009 term gave President Barack Obama a Supreme Court vacancy in the opening months of his presidency. The president named Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the seat.
By the end of his second year on the Supreme Court, Justice Souter had acquired the label that would stick for the remainder of his tenure. He was the justice who surprised the president who appointed him; who left conservative Republicans bitterly disappointed; whose migration on the bench from right to left led to the cry of “no more Souters” when another president named Bush, George W., had Supreme Court vacancies to fill.
Those who expressed such surprise, who either implicitly or directly accused Justice Souter of having portrayed himself one way and of turning out to be something else entirely, either failed to pay attention to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing in September 1990, or chose not to believe what they heard.
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