Souter, David H. (1939–)

• Author: David A. Strauss
• Pages: 2453-2455

Page 2453

David Hackett Souter, who became Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1990, was born on September 17, 1939, in Melrose, Massachusetts. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1961 and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. From 1961 to 1963 he studied at Oxford University. He then returned to Harvard for his legal education and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1966.

Following law school, Justice Souter practiced law at a private firm in Concord, New Hampshire, for two years. This is the only time that Justice Souter spent in the private sector. In 1968, he accepted a position as assistant attorney general for the State of New Hampshire. During the next ten years he rose to the top of the state attorney general's office, becoming deputy attorney general in 1971 and attorney general in 1976.

In 1978, Justice Souter was appointed to the Superior Court of New Hampshire. Five years later, he was elevated to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, where he served until 1990. In early 1990 he was appointed by president GEORGE BUSH to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He served on that court for only five months, participating in only one week of oral arguments and writing no opinions.

On July 20, 1990, Justice WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, JR. , resigned from the Supreme Court of the United States after thirty-four years of service. Five days later, President Bush nominated Justice Souter to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Justice Souter's nomination was perceived by both supporters and opponents to be historically significant. This was true for several reasons, few of them related to Justice Souter himself.

First, during Justice Brennan's long and distinguished tenure, Brennan became the leading symbol of the "liberal" approach identified with the Supreme Court under Chief Justice EARL WARREN?an approach concerned with promoting equality and protecting individual rights against the government. Supporters of that approach viewed with alarm the prospect that Justice Brennan would be replaced by the appointee of a Republican President who had made a campaign issue of Supreme Court decisions supported by the liberal wing of the Court.

Second, Justice Souter was the ninth consecutive Justice to have been appointed by a Republican President; no Democratic President had made an appointment to the Supreme Court for twenty-three years, since President LYNDON B. JOHNSON appointed Justice THURGOOD MARSHALL in 1967. While there had been comparable periods in history?Democratic Presidents FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT and HARRY S. TRUMAN, for example, appointed thirteen consecutive Justices?those were periods in which one party thoroughly dominated national politics. By contrast, Justice Souter was appointed at a time when Democrats held a majority in the Senate, as they had for all but six of the previous thirty-two years. This long-standing division of power in Washington, combined with the perception among Democratic senators that President Bush and President RONALD REAGAN consciously sought to make judicial appointments that would change the political orientation of the federal courts, made partisan controversy over Justice...