David H. Souter, Republican judge, who connected the court’s liberal wing, dies at 85

Justice Souter inspired violent, almost protective, affection and loyalty from his friends and former employees. The academic reviews were less generous. His name was so few significant opinions and his profile at the court was so low that law essentially stopped paying him after his first years. This was most likely a source of relief for justice.

His career inspired a biography, “David Hackett Souter: Traditional Republican on the Rehnquist Court”.

If his footprints were not particularly obvious through the various doctrine fields of the court, there was no dispute that his voice was important. Even when the court became more conservative and polarized, the liberals, some important victories, managed to achieve some by votes from 5 to 4, which would not have been possible if it had turned out to be justice that many conservatives would be at the time of his nomination.

A famous line

David Hackett Souter was born on September 17, 1939 in Melrose, Massachusetts, where his father Joseph was an officer in a bank. When David was 11 years old, the family of Melrose, his father’s hometown, moved to the farmhouse in Weare, nh that his mother had inherited Helen Adams (hackett) from her parents.

David was the only child on his father’s side of Scottish mill workers and craftsmen who immigrated to the United States in the 1850s. On the side of his mother, he followed his descent to the Mayflower and shared the ancestors with several presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and the bushes. While he was known as a soutie for his classmates at the Concord High School, he emphasized his old new England roots in Harvard during his studies and sometimes called himself hacket.