Former Supreme Court justice David Souter has died

Summary

Justice David Souter, who served on the Supreme Court for nearly two decades, died Thursday. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Hulton Archive/Getty Images Former Justice David Souter, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 but surprised Republicans by joining the court's more liberal wing, has died in his home in New Hampshire, the court announced Friday. He was 85. "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 a lifetime of public service." At the time of his retirement from the court, Souter was 69 and nowhere near the oldest member of the court. But he had made clear to friends at the time that he wanted to leave Washington, a city he never liked, and return to his native New Hampshire. 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 bucked the expectation that he would join the court's conservative wing — then led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was appointed to the court by President Richard Nixon and elevated to chief by President Ronald Reagan, and featuring Reagan appointees Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. The appointing president had been assured of Souter's credentials by the White House chief of staff, John Sununu, who had known Souter as a conservative member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court when Sununu was that state's Republican governor. But when confronted by the ideological debates and partisan landscape of Washington, Souter surprised both Sununu and Bush by aligning himself with the court's more mode...