Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter Dead at 85

MARY!

JESUS!

and JOSEPH!

So....gay, right?

Why no Cheeto Satan? The prayers, they no working.

Who was his bf?

At least he retired, unlike the other dopes on there.

[quote] At least he retired, unlike the other dopes on there.

And that was too bad. The man had some integrity.

He was furious over the Court's decision to stay the recount (not allow it) in Florida that gave Bush the win over Gore in the 2000 election. He stepped down shortly after that, denouncing the politicalization of the Supreme Court. He supported Roe vs Wade.

Clarence Thomas, it should've been you instead.

I worked with someone who interned with him. She said she once spent time chasing after ping pong balls he was dropping from a stairway. He was doing it to understand something about the way the balls moved that was pertinent to a case that had come before the court.

It was so different from what I would imagine people do when they work as Supreme Court interns, let alone how I imagine a Justice of the Court would behave, that I’ve never forgotten it and always kinda liked him because of it.

Souter was a great justice and an ever better man.

He loved hiking, reading (particularly Proust and Dickens), and classical music. He loved his home state of New Hampshire even more.

But his law clerks all adored him. After the difficult 2000-2001 term, several of his law clerks were goofing off and built a human pyramid in the court yard. Souter just happened to be walking by and caught them in the act. After they built the pyramid, they realized they did not have a camera. Souter rushed to his office, and took a photo.

He made copies for the clerks and framed that photo in his office.

At least Scalia's still dead.

Somebody needs to take Clarence Thomas on a hunting trip.

My brother knew him fairly well -- they had dinner several times a year. Said that Souter was one of the most interesting and intelligent guys he ever met; bookish, truly curious about the world, with an almost surreal love of justice and fairness. The one thing that my brother couldn't figure out -- whether or not he was gay.

Why is that fat 🐖 Clarence Thomas still with us?

Time for 'ol Clare to swim with the fishes! Like me!

Justice Souter had a jurisprudential mindset that compelled him to write a 32-page opinion-

as a dissent.

I would know because read it.

He was extraordinary, too good for the US Supreme Court.

[quote] Souter was a great justice and an ever better man.

Was he great and good independent of his views, or do people actually use a justice’s views as the measure and then label them great and good if the people agree with the views?

And yet J. Clarence Thomas still walks among us.

[quote] Was he great and good independent of his views

Yes, Rose. He had a great ass but he couldn't live forever.

Someone mistook him for Justice Breyer and asked, “ Justice Breyer, what’s the best thing about serving on the Supreme Court?” David replied, “Serving with Justice Souter!”

He believed in stare decisis (to uphold precedent) and be a true judicial conservative, much like John Marshall Harlan II. Believing in stare decisis means that sometimes you rule with "liberal" justices and other times you rule with "conservative" justice. Elena Kagan is the closest to that now.

Souter was not some DC partisan hack. In fact, he hated DC. He referred to being a Supreme Court Justice as "the world's best job in the world's worst city."

His life was being a Justice. When not working, he ran 6 miles at Fort McNair, read, hiked, and listened to classical music. He hated DC and the obvious politization of everything.

Sandra Day O'Connor set him up on a date with a woman once. The lady reported back that Souter was a complete gentleman, kind, smart, and a good listener, except at the end of the date he said "this was a lot of fun, we should do this again next year."

One Thanksgiving Ruth Bader Ginsburg invited him over to her home for dinner. He said was going up to New Hampshire to visit his mother. He told his mother that "Ruthie" (his nickname for RGB) invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner.

Months later he confessed to the women and said "sorry, but I'm a social minimalist."

R14 "bookish bachelor" is the phrase used in the CNBC story I just read, so apparently that adjective fits.

When I read that, I immediately thought of DL and the question "Who's had him?" rang in my ears. 🤣

Declining a reporter’s invitation to the glamorous White House Correspondents’ Association dinner one year, Souter wrote, “Whatever gene it takes to savor those sorts of dinners was left out of my double helix.”

He retired at the age of 69, at a time when he was still viewed as one of the court’s sharpest, most thoughtful questioners.

“A couple of weeks later I drove north from Washington with no regrets about the prior 19 years or about the decision to try living a more normal life for whatever time might remain,” the Souter wrote in a Harvard report marking the 50th reunion of his class.

This is a nice biographical article from when he was appointed on Court in 1990.

Clarence will have to be vanquished by the Power of Three.

Not Souter! Oh no!

Confirmed bachelor

I'm also a confirmed bachelor!

But Samuel Alito still lives!!!

Another point in his favor. Although nominated by a Republican president, he deferred his (early) retirement until after a Democratic president (Obama) was in office.

He was a really witty guy

Oh, those witty gay boys!

Did he go to the funerals of the last three SCOTUS justices (Scalia, RBG or O'Connor) to die? I don't recall that he did, leading me to wonder about his health this past decade.

RIP>

Perhaps he was asexual.

I used to see him at the supermarket all the time during the 90s. He was very unassuming going along with his day.

R37 Souter was at Scalia's funeral. There are photos of him in attendance at Getty Images. ScotusBlog says he was at RBG's memorial service. I've not seen a photo, but it was during COVID with lots of social distancing going on, limited seating with chairs very apart, and masks on. ScotusBlog says he was not in attendance at O'Connor's service.

R40

I saw him walking into Union Station once, about 30 years ago. Yep, just a normal guy - no security, no entourage, just himself.

NYT obit

[quote] There are no immediate survivors. Justice Souter’s father died in 1976. His mother, with whom he shared a home for years and whom he later visited regularly at her retirement home in Concord, lived long enough to see her only child reach the heights of the legal profession. She died in 1995 at the age of 87.

So who gets his stuff? And who gets to look at what's on his computer?

Thanks, R41. Here he is, with Sotomayor, at Scalia's funeral. But Souter was not at the most recent funeral of a Justice, that in Dec. 2023, for Sandra Day O'Connor (Anthony Kennedy being the only retired Justice reported to be in attendance).

#42, he was heading straight for the men's room.

His sexuality was always a mystery.

I do remember wondering when he got mugged one night when he had supposedly been out jogging whether he really had been out cruising. (Drug buy being the other common option, but he never seemed the type to be a secret addict.)

I guess we'll never know for certain unless some former lovers come out.

Was he "mugged" while walking his dog?

I had forgotten about the mugging. No wonder he hated D.C. On the other hand, is it smart to jog at night in any urban neighborhood?

R46 He used to jog Fort McNair every night.

I found this paragraph interesting from Amy Howe's In Memoriam over at ScotusBlog:

[quote] After he had announced his intent to retire but before he officially left the bench, Souter penned a dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a lawsuit brought by a conservative nonprofit prohibited from showing a movie that criticized then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Souter’s draft was sharply critical of the majority opinion, which would have gone well beyond what the challengers requested to instead invalidate two major campaign-finance decisions. Writing in the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin described Souter’s draft dissent as an “extraordinary, bridge-burning farewell to the Court” that Chief Justice John Roberts feared “could damage the Court’s credibility.” Instead of deciding the case then, Toobin reported, the court heard oral argument in the case again the following term, instructing both sides to the dispute to brief the broader questions.