David Souter

David Souter

David Hackett Souter (born September 17, 1939 in Melrose , Middlesex County , Massachusetts ) is an American lawyer . He was from 1990 to 2009 Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States ( Supreme Court ). His successor is Sonia Sotomayor .

Career

Souter was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, the only child to Joseph A. Souter, an investment banker, and Helen Hackett Souter. He attended Concord High School and then studied philosophy at Harvard University . For his Bachelor of Arts he wrote a thesis on Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. , the famous judge at the Supreme Court . In 1961 he graduated from Harvard magna cum laude as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Association . As a recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship , he attended Magdalen College at Oxford University, Englandwhere he received his doctorate in law in 1963. Eventually he attended Harvard Law School , which he graduated in 1966.

After graduation, Souter worked from 1966 to 1968 as a lawyer with Orr and Reno in Concord , New Hampshire . In 1968, he began his civil service career as the Assistant District Attorney for New Hampshire State Crime. In 1971 he was appointed Assistant Attorney General Warren Rudman and succeeded him in 1976 as Attorney General of New Hampshire.

As early as 1978, Souter was appointed judge in the New Hampshire Superior Court , and five years later, in 1983, he was appointed Judge of the state's New Hampshire Supreme Court . US President George Bush appointed him on May 25, 1990 as a judge at the Federal Court of Appeals for the 1st district. After Judge William Joseph Brennan's resignation, President Bush nominated him as his successor to the United States Supreme Court that same year. The influence of his old friend Warren Rudman, now a US Senator , was decisive for both appointments . The Senate confirmed Souter with 90: 9 votes in office. He was referred to by the press as a “ stealth judge” ( stealth justice ) because his previous decisions had not sparked any major controversy.

In 1994 Souter was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1997 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Jurisprudence

David Souter at a panel discussion at Harvard University (2009)

In the first years at the Supreme Court, 1990-93, he showed himself to be the assurances of President Bush as a conservative judge, but more in the more conciliatory style of his colleague Anthony Kennedy in contrast to Antonin Scalia or William H. Rehnquist . From 1995 onwards, Souter's jurisprudence tended more towards the political center, and from 2000 onwards he increasingly joined the left-wing liberal voices at the Court of Justice. Most recently he was together with Ruth Bader Ginsburg , John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer as part of the left ("liberal") wing of the court. So he was z. B. in the case of Bush v. Gore , who helped to vote in favor of George W. Bush in the narrowly lost 2000 US presidential election, is in the minority. In the decision of Baze v. Rees advocated Souter, who is generally known as a critic of the death penalty, together with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the opinion that the lethal injection method used in Kentucky was unconstitutional.

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court declared the sodomy laws invalid by six votes to three . David Souter represented the majority opinion.

The example of Souters, whose gradual shift in point of view is similar to that of Judge Harry A. Blackmun 20 years earlier, has led to the fact that political interest groups are now much more focused on thoroughly documented positions when filling influential federal judicial offices in the USA (a track record ) of the candidates in order to avoid the danger of such changes of direction. His candidacy contributed to the fact that the confirmation of the federal judges, which was previously hardly controversial, was strongly politicized by the Senate.

Private life

Souter, a lifelong bachelor , recovers from mountaineering and jogging . In 2004, he was slightly injured in a robbery by four teenagers who attacked him while jogging. Thanks to Souter's strong resistance, the attack failed.

Quotes and opinions

Like former Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Breyer, Souter was considered a strong defender of the institutional independence of the Court. As a traditionalist, he refused to televise the public hearings of the Supreme Court; this will - according to Souter - "only happen over my corpse".

After he was sworn in as a judge, his words are well known: “The first lesson, as simple as it sounds, is: whatever we do at whatever court, in the end our actions affect people. A human life is changed by what we do. That is why it is up to us to use all the strength of our minds and hearts so that we come to the right result. "

literature

• Tinsley E. Yarbrought: David Hackett Souter - Traditional Republican on the Rehnquist Court . Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-515933-2 .

Web links

Commons : David Souter  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikisource: David Souter  - Sources and full texts (English)

• David Souter in the nndb (English)
• Biography at the Supreme Court (PDF), English (73 kB)