#justice david souter

[10bmnews]

Why was Washington's most eligible bachelor, Judge David H. Souter, unmarried? - Times of India

FILE – David Souter, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, is shown, Dec. 1993. (AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander, File) Judge David H Souter died at 85 in his beloved New Hampshire. Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, he was expected to be a conservative stalwart but often sided with the court’s liberal bloc.A lifelong bachelor, Souter preferred quiet solitude, shunned the…

[saywhat-politics]

Souter, known for his simple tastes and love of New Hampshire, became a reliable liberal vote in his 19 years on the court.

May 9, 2025, 6:17 AM MST / Updated May 9, 2025, 11:29 AM MST

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON — Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a lifelong bachelor who was renowned for his love of a simple life in New Hampshire and dislike of Washington, died at home on Thursday at the age of 85, the court said in a statement.

Plucked from relative obscurity to serve on the Supreme Court, Souter gravely disappointed conservatives whose hopes that he would be a reliable conservative vote were quickly dashed as he aligned with more liberal justices on issues like abortion.

[mariacallous]

Let’s just get this out of the way: you do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Barrett, after all, was installed on the Supreme Court for the sole purpose of helping overturn Roe v. Wade — a smug little move that ensured a female justice joined the men in eradicating bodily autonomy for women. Lately, however, she’s broken with the MAGA majority on some things that are making her once-fervent backers furious.

Is Amy Coney Barrett our new David Souter, a Republican appointee who turned out to be a progressive jurist who routinely upheld liberal values? Or perhaps our new Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote in 5-4 disputes, a theoretical median justice who could be persuaded to side with liberals if he got the spotlight? Or maybe she’s more like Chief Justice John Roberts, occasionally flipping sides to burnish her legacy?

Barrett is not really any of those. She likely aspires to be like her mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked. Scalia was a reliably hard-right conservative who was very occasionally a champion for good things like robust Fourth Amendment protections. Scalia sided with the liberal justices on three key cases that restricted the ability of police to perform warrantless searches, writing the majority opinion in each. When Barrett was on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, she sided with law enforcement nearly nine times out of ten, but she has joined the Court’s liberals on some Fourth Amendment cases.

What Barrett is not, most definitely, is a justice in the behavioral mode of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. She hasn’t adopted their trollish, pugnacious vibe and doesn’t quite seem to be taking her cues from the pages of the Daily Caller or the Federalist. Nor has she adopted Scalia’s habit of caustic mockery, but that might only be the case because while Scalia was lauded for that, women simply aren’t as free to behave that way. Instead, Barrett joined Justice Sonia Sotomayor for a public appearance where they insisted the Court is just chock full of collegial camaraderie.

“She checked identity politics boxes”

Right now, conservatives are mad because Barrett sided with Roberts and the Court’s liberals in the 5-4 decision requiring the administration to pay close to $2 billion owed to USAID contractors for work they had already completed.

Terminally online bottom feeders like Jack Posobiec, Laura Loomer, and Mike Cernovich smeared her as a “DEI hire.” Loomer even posted a picture of Barrett’s family, which includes two adopted Black children, just to make sure that everyone understood the DEI slam was not just misogynistic but also racist. Josh Blackman, a conservative law professor and commentator who enthusiastically backed Barrett’s nomination, now whines that she “had no business being appointed to the Supreme Court” and also that maybe she wasn’t even qualified for her seat on the Seventh Circuit.

Notably, Roberts doesn’t face as much ire as Barrett despite also occasionally siding with the liberals for rulings that infuriate conservatives, including in the USAID case. There are probably two reasons for this. First, Roberts is a white straight man, so he can never be tarred with the DEI brush or be told that he only got the job because he “checked identity politics boxes,” as Cernovich said about Barrett. As important, though, is that Roberts is not a Trump appointee, and therefore is not expected to show the same level of personal mob-style fealty required of Barrett.

Hence Blackman’s complaint that not only is Barrett not intellectually qualified to be on the Court but that he is “fairly confident she does not like President Trump.” The framing here is that Barrett owes her position to Trump and therefore owes him love, devotion, and voting in lockstep in return. It’s part of the right’s profound disregard for the separation of powers. They have no interest in a judiciary that is independent from Trump’s wishes.

It isn’t just the USAID case that has MAGA types calling for Barrett’s head. Internet randos were incandescent with rage that she didn’t vote to block Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush money criminal case earlier this year. In 2024, when she joined the liberals in dissenting on a voting rights case, MAGA luminary Cat Turd called her “Amy Commie Barrett.”

While the more low-rent MAGA commentators like Posobiec and Cernovich might be furious with Barrett, she hasn’t lost the support of the person who really matters. No, not Donald Trump, though he vaguely defended her, calling her a “very good woman” after the USAID decision. Leonard Leo, chair of the Federalist Society and the person who arguably has been the most instrumental in ensuring the Court’s lurch to the right, still thinks Barrett is doing swell, saying she is “in the vanguard of conservative jurisprudence on abortion, racial preferences, the administrative state, religious freedom, Trump immunity, guns and the Second Amendment” even after her vote on the USAID case. Ed Whelan, another former Scalia clerk best known for his unceasing devotion to smearing Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, is also still a big fan.

One thing right-wingers are correct about is that it is difficult to parse Barrett’s overall judicial philosophy. She definitely fancies herself as an originalist, the conservative legal philosophy that says the Constitution must be frozen in amber, interpreted only as it was at the time of its ratification. But she doesn’t love the Clarence Thomas approach to originalism, which cherry-picks the historical record to get a preferred result.

When it comes to reproductive health or LGBTQ cases, Barrett is a true blue hard-right conservative, refusing ever to recognize that denying people bodily autonomy is inherently bad. In the oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe, she blithely mused that since all states now have safe haven laws where people can surrender an infant without being prosecuted, was abortion really necessary? In 2023, she joined the rightwing majority in holding that a Christian website designer could discriminate against same-sex couples and refuse to work with them. She’s so far afield on trans issues that in a recent oral argument she seemed completely surprised that there is a long and vicious history of discrimination against trans people.

In contrast to voting in lockstep on those issues, Barrett has broken with the MAGA majority on two recent Environmental Protection Agency cases. She wrote the dissenting opinions, joined by the Court’s three liberal justices, in Ohio v. EPA and San Francisco v. EPA. But dissenting cost Barrett nothing. In both cases, there were already five votes from the Court’s other right-wingers, ensuring that the EPA’s ability to regulate smog and water quality was gutted even without her help.

That’s also the case with her dissent in Fischer v. United States. There, the majority narrowed the scope of the federal obstruction law used to charge many of the January 6 rioters. In dissenting, Barrett said that the rioters were undoubtedly blocking an official proceeding by, well, rioting. The next day, however, she turned around and joined the right-wingers in giving Trump sweeping presidential immunity for actions that incited that very riot, albeit favoring a slightly narrower approach.

As much as Trump supporters are currently howling about Barrett being a secret Democrat or whatever, the idea that Barrett is a reliable vote for liberals is just not accurate. In the 2023 term, she joined Alito and Thomas, the Court’s most conservative jurists, more than 80 percent of the time. She’s been a reliable conservative vote for ending abortion, ending affirmative action, and ending most regulations on guns.

All of this makes it difficult to guess whether Barrett will help serve as a bulwark against Trump’s worst excesses. She’s slightly more hawkish than her conservative colleagues on procedural issues, meaning she’s not always as ready to intervene to grant emergency relief without full litigation. However, just because she prefers that the Court take cases where a record has been developed at the lower court stage rather than ruling on them on the shadow docket doesn’t mean she won’t ultimately side with conservatives. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the plaintiff was initially handed a procedural loss, but ultimately Barrett joined the right-wingers, upending the First Amendment by basically legalizing coerced Christian prayers in public schools.

A very slender reed of hope

Barrett could emerge as the median justice, the one representing the center of the Court’s ideology, a position that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has recently occupied. But that’s actually part of the problem.

The Court has lurched so far rightward that Barrett’s views are sometimes moderate in comparison to her more hardline colleagues, but that doesn’t mean she’s liberal or that she will consistently work to stop Trump’s worst excesses. It likely does mean, though, that she represents the best possibility for liberal outcomes at the Court and that litigants will need to court her as a possible swing vote the way they once did Anthony Kennedy.

Unfortunately, Kennedy was a swing vote on a Court otherwise split ideologically down the middle, meaning each side needed him for that critical fifth vote. Conservatives can lose Barrett and still have five votes. Barrett knows this, which makes her principled dissents ring a bit hollow.

Barrett can afford to make herself look moderate if doing so doesn’t result in Trump’s desires being thwarted. It’s not incorrect to say she might be the best hope for liberals, but that hope is a pretty slender reed.

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

I keep finding myself thinking of David Souter and Thomas Becket. Both men appointed by those who thought they would serve those benefactors' interests rather than their consciences. Both who did the exact opposite.

Now George HW Bush was NOT Donald Trump. He wasn't even Henry II. But he did appoint justices of the most conservative bent, with little regard for decency -- just look at another pick, Clarence Thomas.

Souter had been a Republican. He towed the correct line of "my decision on an issue would depend on the case before me" that is the ONLY right answer for a potential Justice to give. But there was every reason to believe he'd give the conservatives a firmer grip on the Court, leading to rulings evangelicals and corporations heavily wanted.

He did not. From the time of his appointment he became an absolute champion for the broad interpretation of the Constitution to protect more human beings and more human rights, to regulate corporate behavior, and to deny any religious influence. He was one of the most loyal liberal voices on the Court. He ruled according to his conscience and understanding of the law, and nothing else.

Thomas Becket is probably a less known example but similar. He was Henry II's Chancellor and close friend. As Chancellor he had done everything he could to give Henry everything he wanted, and joined him in his indulgences. Henry, therefore, believed him to be the perfect man to help him seize authority over the Church and named him Archbishop of Canterbury.

Except he too resisted. For whatever reasons, Becket took his new position seriously, striving for piety and faith, taking on protecting the authority of the Chirch as a sacred duty. He was so devoted to this, contrary to Henry's wishes or intent, that Becket had to flee to France. Upon his return, he continued his work including excommunicating three clergymen who were in Henry's corner. He opposed Henry's attempts to seize total control by seizing the authority of the Church as well as holding the monarchy so much that 4 knights attempted to "arrest" him in the church in front of congregants, ending in his death when he refused their claims of authority while on church grounds.

He stood for his conscience -- regardless of the sins of the Church at the time, it hardly would have been better to give that authority to the monarch, when the only checks and balances under a strong monarch was in fact the Church -- despite all evidence of years that he would be Henry's loyal man all the way.

I keep looking for any sign that we may see that in the Republican party today. I know that sentiment will be met with derision at my being hopelessly naive at best. (And I am fully aware that it will not be coming from Trump.)

But the thought of where either Souter or Becket would stand would have been seen the same way at the moments they were placed in their positions.

I don't see it. I don't even have an inkling of it. I can't imagine Matt Gaetz will find a conscience or RFK Jr will suddenly learn to understand science.

But maybe. Maybe there will be someone or a couple someone's in the right place with the right amount of power to at least help.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Richard Luscombe at The Guardian:

Retired supreme court Justice David H Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a darling of liberals during his nearly 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85. Souter died on Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement Friday. John Roberts, the chief justice, said Souter, who retired from the court in 2009, “brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service”. Souter’s retirement gave Barack Obama his first supreme court vacancy to fill. Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice. Souter was appointed by George HW Bush in 1990, and quickly dashed the expectations of the conservative right that had cheered his elevation. He was a reliably liberal vote on abortion, church-state relations, freedom of expression and the accessibility of federal courts. In 1992, he joined Justices Anthony M Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor, also appointed by Republican presidents, in a three-member affirmation of women’s federally protected right to abortion.

Reversing the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, Souter wrote, would be a “surrender to political pressure. To overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to re-examine a watershed decision would subvert the court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question.” A subsequent conservative supreme court majority, including three Donald Trump picks, overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Souter was the 105th supreme court justice, and only its sixth bachelor. In retirement, Souter warned that ignorance of how government works could undermine American democracy, words that appear almost prescient today following Trump’s accession to the White House and attacks on the judicial system.

“What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough … some one person will come forward and say: ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell,” Souter said in a 2012 interview. His lifestyle was simple and frugal. His lunch, eaten at his desk, was typically a yogurt and apple. He distanced himself from Washington DC’s social scene, and every June, as soon as supreme court work was finished, he drove his Volkswagen Jetta back to the aged farmhouse in Weare, New Hampshire, where his family moved when he was 11.

[...] When Bush plucked Souter from obscurity in 1990, liberal interest groups feared he would be the pivotal vote that would undo Roe v Wade, with some observers calling him a stealth nominee, and the White House aide John Sununu, the former conservative governor of New Hampshire, calling the choice a “home run”. Souter’s conservatism, however, was moderate, and hardliners were dismayed by his 1992 Roe v Wade affirmation. According to the Washington Post, conservatives who were disappointed in his performance looked at subsequent supreme court vacancies with an attitude of “no more Souters”. He asked precise questions during argument sessions, sometimes with a fierceness that belied his low-key manner. “He had an unerring knack of finding the weakest link in your argument,” the veteran supreme court advocate Carter Phillips said. Although he became to be seen as a liberal justice, some of Souter’s rulings were not. In 2008 he sided with Exxon Mobil Corp in slashing the punitive damages the company owed Alaskan victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Former SCOTUS Justice David Souter died at 85. Souter was appointed by the late George H.W. Bush and retired in 2009 under Barack Obama.

He was initially seen as a conservative; however, he quickly became a left-leaning moderate justice. Souter’s shift infuriated the conservative legal establishment, and thus made them more cognizant of assuring future nominees that they have strong conservative bona fides.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, A Republican Who Became A Liberal Darling, Has Died

[tomorrowusa]

Sandra Day O'Connor died Friday at the age of 93. She was the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court. Although she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, her approach was more centrist than his and she was often the swing vote on the court.

After her retirement from SCOTUS in 2006, President George W. Bush appointed the hard right Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor. In 2022 Alito was the driving force behind the dismantling of Roe v. Wade.

Justice O’Connor joined the controlling opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that, to the surprise of many, reaffirmed the core of the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. To overrule Roe “under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to re-examine a watershed decision,” she wrote in a joint opinion with Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter, “would subvert the court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question.” Last year, the court did overrule Roe, casting aside Justice O’Connor’s concern for precedent and the court’s public standing. In his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Alito wrote that Roe and Casey had “enflamed debate and deepened division.” Justice O’Connor also wrote the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 decision upholding race-conscious admissions decisions at public universities, suggesting that they would not longer be needed in a quarter-century. In striking down affirmative action programs in higher education in June, the Supreme Court beat her deadline by five years. [ ... ] Justice O’Connor was also an author of a key campaign finance opinion, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission in 2003. A few years after Justice Alito replaced her, the Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 vote in 2010, overruled a central portion of that decision in the Citizens United case.nge? A few days later, at a law school conference, Justice O’Connor reflected on the development. “Gosh,” she said, “I step away for a couple of years and there’s no telling what’s going to happen.” [ ... ] She held the crucial vote in many of the court’s most polarizing cases, and her vision shaped American life for her quarter century on the court. Political scientists stood in awe at the power she wielded. “On virtually all conceptual and empirical definitions, O’Connor is the court’s center — the median, the key, the critical and the swing justice,” Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn and Lee Epstein and two colleagues wrote in a study published in 2005 in The North Carolina Law Review shortly before Justice O’Connor’s retirement.

Let this be a reminder that the direction of the Supreme Court depends on the President who appoints its members and the Senate which confirms them.

While we may not have warm and fuzzy feelings about Ronald Reagan, two of his three† appointments to SCOTUS were centrists. Of the six current justices appointed to the court by Republican presidents, one is a conservative and the other five are hardline reactionaries.

When voting for president or senator, we are indirectly also voting for SCOTUS justices who could be on the court for decades. We ought to keep that in mind when we hear people suggesting that we should cast "protest votes" for impotent third parties which have no chance of getting elected.

Remember that no 2024 Republican presidential candidate will nominate to the court somebody as relatively moderate as Sandra Day O'Connor.

† I count Rehnquist, who Reagan elevated from Associate to Chief Justice, as a Nixon appointee.

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 9.17

Beer Birthdays

John Fitzgerald (1838)

John Ewald Siebel (1845)

Theodore R. Helb (1851)

Stan Hieronymus (1948)

George Hummel (1954)

Gayle Goschie (1955)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Warren Burger; U.S. Supreme Court chief justice (1907)

Ken Kesey; writer (1935)

Baz Luhrmann; Australian film director (1962)

Bryan Singer; film director (1965)

William Carlos Williams; poet (1883)

Famous Birthdays

Anne Bancroft; actor (1931)

George Blanda; Oakland Raiders QB, K (1927)

Orlando Cepeda; San Francisco Giants 1B (1937)

Kyle Chandler; actor (1965)

Elizabeth Coblentz; Amish Cookbook author (1936)

Jerry Colonna; comedian (1904)

Pat Crowley; actor (1929)

Phil Jackson; Chicago Bulls/L.A. Lakers coach (1945)

Hope Larsen; comic book artist (1982)

J.W. Marriott; hotel magnate (1900)

Jeff MacNelly; cartoonist (1947)

Roddy McDowall; actor (1928)

Frank O'Connor; Irish writer (1903)

Robert B. Parker; writer (1932)

Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson; actor (1951)

John Ritter; actor (1948)

Rita Rudner; comedian (1955)

Daniella Rush; porn actor (1976)

John Rutledge; U.S. Supreme Court chief justice (1939)

David H. Souter; U.S. Supreme Court justice (1939)

Thomas Stafford; astronaut (1930)

Mary Stewart; writer (1916)

Fee Waybill; rock singer (1950)

Hank Williams, Sr.; singer, songwriter (1923)

[newssphere0]

Noteworthy and influential people who've died this year

May saw the death of a retired U.S. Supreme Court justice who came the high court as a Republican but became a favorite among liberals during his time on the bench. David H. Souter was was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990. But he offered a reliably liberal vote on issues such as abortion and freedom of expression. Souter retired from the court in 2009. The month also saw…

[saywhat-politics]

More than any decision he authored, the justice’s legacy was how he surprised legal conservatives, galvanizing a movement to prevent the nomination of federal jurists like him.

[grapesodadarkchocolate]

On My Mind- Snake in the slough

Mother’s Day walk in the Big Woods. Sweet grandbaby’s first visit. Greeted by some new additions from the week before— wild ginger, trillium, Canadian lousewort, wild blue phlox. Love the hunt. 

Dear Mr. President, 

This week’s question: 

Kristen Welker (NBC): “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” 

You: “I don’t know.” 

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY): “Following the Constitution is not a suggestion. It is a guiding force for all of us who work on behalf of the American people. Do you agree?“ 

Mr. P?     

Resource: Letters from an American May 12, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson, May 13, 2025 📝

Sincerely, 

A disheartened American 

P.S. Thinking of you. Nature365: Surveillance: Watch (to the end), May 8, 2025 🦆🦆

This Week: 

“My job is to make sure that I take care of my square, that I change my square, and that my square changes their squares.” — Jason Reynolds

“We need to sit with the fact that we are all interrelated and we affect each other.” — Kessley Janvier

Resource: On Being podcast with Jason Reynolds and Kessley Janvier: Listen, May 8, 2025 🎙️

“What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough ... some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell,” — Justice David Souter (2012 interview)

Resource: Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a Republican who became a liberal favorite, dies at 85 APNews by Mark Sherman, Read, May 9, 2025  📰

Down the Mine: Original 1983 pilot fully restored Thomas and Friends: Watch 🚂

Resource: Rediscovered Thomas and friends pilot episode to be released: Read, May 9, 2025

Woodcock dances to Stayin’ Alive: Watch (just cuz’) 🐦‍⬛

[buzznovahub]

A Warning From Justice Souter: Democracy Is in Peril

Justice David H. Souter, who died last week at age 85, made few public appearances after he retired from the Supreme Court in 2009. When he did, he stayed away from politics. But a seemingly bland question from an audience member at a New Hampshire arts center in 2012 provoked an impassioned response from the justice, who was the opposite of excitable. He said he was worried that public ignorance…

[truthsandnews]

Former Justice David Souter passed away at 85, leaving behind nearly two decades on the U.S. Supreme Court and a reputation as a thoughtful centrist. President George H.W. Bush nominated Souter in 1990 to fill the seat of liberal stalwart William Brennan. He served until 2009, then continued judicial duties on the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

#SupremeCourt #davidsouter #justicedavidsouter #USSupremeCourt #PoliticalNews #USNews #TrumpSpeech #TrumpNews #dailynews #trending #NewsUpdate #news #TNN