Former Supreme Court justice David Souter has died

86 pointsposted 3 days ago
by danso
(npr.org)

47 Comments

delichon

2 days ago

Supreme Court justices are famous but not well known. Their names are familiar but not their faces. For this reason, David Souter and Stephen Breyer were frequently mistaken for each other. Once during his tenure on the court, Souter was driving from Washington to his home in New Hampshire, and he stopped in a little restaurant to get something to eat. A couple came up to him, and the man asked him a question.

"You're on the Supreme Court, right?" Souter nodded. "You're Stephen Breyer, right?"

Souter didn't want to embarrass the fellow in front of his wife, so he said yes, he was Breyer. They chatted for a little while, and the fellow asked, "Justice Breyer, what's the best thing about being on the Supreme Court?"

After a pause, the justice answered, "I'd have to say it was the privilege of serving with David Souter."

https://x.com/WakeUp2Politics/status/1920887550496927899

tjalfi

2 days ago

That reminds me of Isaac Asimov's[0] story in Asimov Laughs Again about being confused with Arthur C. Clarke[1]. They had similar writing styles, so it was quite common for Isaac's books to be attributed to Arthur and vice versa. Childhood's End[2] was Arthur's most popular and well-known novel at the time.

At a science fiction convention, a woman said to me, "Dr. Asimov, I have just finished your book Childhood's End. I liked it, but I didn't think it was as good as your other books."

Maintaining a straight and solemn face (with an enormous effort), I said, "Yes, ma'am. I was frightfully disappointed in that book, which I thought was quite inferior. I therefore insisted it appear under the pseudonym of Arthur C. Clarke, Jr."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood%27s_End

freedomben

2 days ago

Hah! What an amazing story. I don't want to read too much into it, but generally speaking I think you have to have some genuine humility to do such a thing :-)

pyrophane

2 days ago

I was active in history and civics events in high school and I remember going to DC for a civics competition, and Justice David Souter spoke at it.

I was a teenager at the time, it was the 90s, and I don't think I took much of anything too seriously, but I remember being kind of in awe of him. He talked about the importance of civic education which to this day that remains one of my core beliefs as an American.

A lot has changed for the worse since then, and it feels like we've only gotten further from the idea that the purpose of education is, more than anything else, to teach us to be better citizens and participants in our democracy.

devwastaken

2 days ago

what you see is a reflection of socioeconomics caused by regulatory buyout and political nepotism. “better citizens” and “civic duty” may have been optimal a generation ago and are now a losing strategy. remove the systems that created corps like Rockefeller and you fix this problem.

treetalker

2 days ago

I met him at the Court once during law school.

He came across as the most even-keeled person in the world.

I asked him how he thought he had changed, if at all, throughout his years on the Court. He said, "We never see ourselves as others see us." I'll never forget it.

He'll be missed; sorry to hear that his papers won't be released for 50 years.

WalterGR

2 days ago

> sorry to hear that his papers won't be released for 50 years.

Are they subject to Freedom of Information requests?

WalterGR

2 days ago

If not, that seems ... shocking.

Edit: I was not aware of this, somehow, lo these many years. Per Google, emphasis mine:

$FOIA grants the public the right to request records from the executive branch of the U.S. Government. However, it specifically excludes the Legislative and Judicial branches, including the Supreme Court.$

delichon

2 days ago

Four justices are now older than Souter was when he retired at age 69. Thomas and Alito, 75, Sotomayor and Roberts, 70. Souter appeared to be in good health at retirement. I admire him for not clinging to power.

Izikiel43

2 days ago

All charges should have an age limit, like 70 for Supreme Court, and 65 for president/legislative.

Stop making the government a geriatric

edmundsauto

2 days ago

This is fair if there are minimum age requirements like for the presidency.

lovich

2 days ago

Not that I necessarily agree with the OP’s opinion, but who cares about fair when it comes to running the government? It should be about being effective.

edmundsauto

a day ago

How would you measure effective? I’m not sure we have any way of measuring anything other than “effective at getting elected”.

detourdog

2 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0

Here he is discussing the dangers of the erosion of civic knowledge.

karaterobot

2 days ago

> 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—as they might do for example with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown—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: Augustus became emperor not because he arrested the Roman Senate, he became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved.

> If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from those responsible. If we don't know, we will stay away from the polls, we will not demand it, and the day will come when somebody will come forward, and we and the government will, in effect, say 'take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.' That is the way democracy dies, and if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night.

Amezarak

2 days ago

This is a big problem. Democracies throughout the west are refusing to do anything about big problems that have populist support. This is enabling authoritarianism because the authoritarians present an alternative vision and promise to actually do something. If mainstream parties would just take real action on issues like immigration or crime it would suck all the oxygen away from authoritarians.

surgical_fire

2 days ago

> refusing to do anything about big problems that have populist support

In most countries I lived in, "big problems that have populist support" are completely manufactured bullshit. Crime may actually be down and populists will be screaming a out it, because in politics perception matters more than actual numbers.

ls612

2 days ago

Why solve the problems when you can just outlaw populist parties instead? /s

stevenae

2 days ago

How accurate is his claim that Augustus became emperor through (my paraphrasing) democratic means and promises to fix real problems for Romans?

StopDisinfo910

2 days ago

Well, first, you have to consider that the Roman republic was never really democratic but was at the hand of a small aristocracy which had sometimes but rarely the interest of the Romans at all, let alone the non citizen inhabitants.

But even, then it is definitely not accurate. Augustus gained powers through the numerous conflicts which followed Caesar murder at a time when the Republic was already challenged thanks to legions he more or less inherited (oversimplification) from Caesar. He was given powers by the Senate through what we would call rubber stamping only after his military power was inescapable.

roguecoder

2 days ago

I recommend "Augustus: First Emperor of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy.

Given that "democratic" didn't mean the same thing then it does now (with suffrage limited to a small group of the uber-rich), and that some of the problems he was fixing was "the threat of this army I happen to have" and "this war I actively participated in", I don't think it is wrong. He wasn't in Rome when the Senate awarded him power and the Vestal Virgins drank in his name, which isn't something that would be commanded.

After decades of war and strife and food shortages, peace under one warlord looked more appealing than having three who would likely eventually be at each other's throats.

neilv

2 days ago

He sure called it.

senderista

2 days ago

I remember him being derided as "the stealth nominee" because he didn't have much of a paper trail that could be used against him in confirmation hearings. (This was of course before confirmation hearings became rubber-stamps when the President's party held the Senate.)

rufus_foreman

2 days ago

>> This was of course before confirmation hearings became rubber-stamps when the President's party held the Senate

Souter was nominated in 1990. The President's party held the Senate in 2005 when Harriet Miers nomination didn't even make it out of committee.

If you're talking about an actual vote for a nominee, looks like there were only four rejected candidates in the entire 1900's and 2000's so far (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsuccessful_nominations_to_th...), and only one of those was when the President's party held the Senate. That was in 1930. Things don't seem to have changed much.

senderista

2 days ago

I wasn't referring exclusively to SCOTUS nominees. You think RFK could have been confirmed 10 years ago even if the President's party held the Senate?

rufus_foreman

2 days ago

In the past one hundred years, only 2 cabinet position nominations have been rejected by a vote in the Senate, and neither occurrence was when the President's party held the Senate.

If you look at nominations that were withdrawn rather than going to a vote and being rejected, President Trump has had 5 withdrawn so far which is the most of any President in US history.

I see no evidence that the process is becoming more of a rubber-stamp than it was previously. If you've got some, I'd like to see it.

danso

3 days ago

Maybe the first Supreme Court justice I knew by name as a child: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekpUyxovK7k

aaronbrethorst

2 days ago

it's a testament to the ubiquity of The Simpsons for millennial Americans that I knew exactly what this was a link to before I even clicked on it. And then I did and still laughed at it.

quantumfissure

2 days ago

First thing I thought of too when I saw he died.

Homer's random knowledge of Supreme Court Justices mentioned throughout the years never ceases to amaze me.

rhd1729

2 days ago

Radiolab made a podcast on him, detailing about how he rose above partisanship. We need more people like him in the courts.

Episode link: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/epi...

Hilift

2 days ago

The Gingrich Revolution happened shortly after Souter arrived. Republicans corrected all the previous mistakes and succeeded in stacking the court after that.

shrubble

2 days ago

He lived in New Hampshire and after the Kelo decision which allowed eminent domain on a property, which he was a deciding vote on, some local NH politicians tried to use Kelo to seize his property, which caused a kerfluffle in the Libertarian side; if it happened today I would guess it would go farther, given wider divisions in politics.

ggreer

2 days ago

In Kelo v. City of New London[1], Souter sided with the majority in ruling that it was constitutional for the government to use eminent domain to take property from a private owner and give it to another private owner. In response, some people started a voter initiative to take Souter's property and give it to a private developer to turn into a hotel.[2] The vast majority of voters were against it, and the politicians who backed it were voted out in the next election.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Liberty_Hotel

baruz

2 days ago

I remember that decision and am still indignant about it. Why should the government give private land to a different private party? If the government is going to take it for public use, I can see the reasoning, but using eminent domain to transfer to private owners is fraught.

alabastervlog

2 days ago

It was a terrible decision.

Not that those are rare.

[EDIT] To make this a little more substantive, on an issue where they extremely plausibly could have decided otherwise, they elected to go for the option that is plainly, guaranteed to be less-just. There is no universe in which anyone with a brain could believe the overwhelming result of this decision wouldn't be to benefit people with power and money at the expense of those without power and money.

RajT88

2 days ago

> the city's use of eminent domain was permissible under the Takings Clause, because the general benefits the community would enjoy from economic growth qualified as "public use"

Subjective decisions are bad, like we're seeing in other areas. "General benefits" can mean anything if you've got cooperative judges you crammed the courts with.

> Not that those are rare.

Heller comes to mind, even as a 2a supporter.

ggreer

2 days ago

What did Heller get wrong? In the majority opinion[1] they do a pretty good job of explaining why they think the right to bear arms applies to the people, not just the militia, and how the amendment enshrines an individual right, not a collective one. In contrast, the dissenting justices can't seem to agree on why the second amendment doesn't apply. Stevens argues that the right to bear arms and other rights (the right to assemble, the right to petition the government) are collective, not individual. He also claims that the second amendment only applies to the militia, but he ignores that the historical sources he cites define the militia as all people capable of bearing arms. Breyer's dissent defines the militia differently, and Breyer spends most of his time arguing that the government can restrict the rights of law-abiding people if the government thinks that doing so will serve its interests (in this case, fighting urban crime). Breyer applies this argument selectively, since if he evaluated other constitutional rights in the same way, it would gut all of them.

Banning law-abiding individuals from possessing firearms may or may not be good policy, but it's hard to see how it's constitutional. If people want to change that policy, they'll need to amend the constitution.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20100531191739/http://www.suprem...

arp242

a day ago

> If people want to change that policy, they'll need to amend the constitution.

Herein lies the problem: it's just too hard to amend the constitution. Here in Ireland it's just a referendum. Some pass, some don't. It's a living document that changes (slowly) over time.

Heller was a 5/4 decision and a number of lower courts ruled different from the Supreme Court. It's not as clear-cut as you're making it out. The US constitution is vague enough that in many cases you can give several different reasonable interpretations. Endless discussion over what a comma written 250 years ago may or may not mean is quite frankly deeply and profoundly idiotic way of governing a country.

user

2 days ago

[deleted]