Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Was 85

David Souter, the former associate justice appointed by George H.W. Bush who sat on the U.S. Supreme Court for 19 years, has died at the age of 85.

The Supreme Court confirmed the news, revealing that the liberal Republican jurist “died peacefully” on Thursday, May 8, at his New Hampshire home.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement after Souter’s death that the late justice “served our Court with great distinction for nearly twenty years.”

“He brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service,” Roberts said. “After retiring to his beloved New Hampshire in 2009, he continued to render significant service to our branch by sitting regularly on the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for more than a decade. He will be greatly missed.”

Born in Melrose, Mass., on Sept. 17, 1939, Souter grew up as an only child of Helen and Joseph Souter in the New England area before attending Harvard College, graduating with a degree in philosophy and earning additional degrees both at Magdalen College, Oxford and Harvard Law School. Though Souter was engaged once, according to Orlando Sentinel, he never married.

After being an associate at a private law firm for two years, he became an assistant attorney general of New Hampshire in 1968, followed by deputy attorney general in 1971. He then moved up from sitting on the Superior Court of New Hampshire in 1978 to serving the state’s Supreme Court in 1983 to being nominated by President H.W. Bush to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1990.

Working for the First Circuit for less than a year, Souter was appointed by the 41st President to fill Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr.’s seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, confirmed by the Senate in a 90–9 vote and sworn into office on Oct. 9, 1990.

“The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we are in, whatever we are doing, whether we are on a trial court or an appellate court, at the end of our task, some human being is going to be affected,” Souter said during the first Senate session on his nomination in September 1990. “Some human life is going to be changed in some way by what we do.”

During his time on both the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, Souter sat through several notable decisions — and despite Republicans expecting him to be a “home run” for conservatism at the time of his appointment, Souter’s unforeseen ideology earned him a place on the court’s liberal wing.

He reaffirmed the court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and — though he was in the minority — voted to let Florida’s presidential recount continue in 2000’s Bush v. Gore (the majority opinion, to stop the recount, led to George W. Bush winning the election).

At age 69, Souter made the decision to retire once Barack Obama was elected into office and no other justice had plans to resign their seat that year, NPR reported at the time.

After leaving his position on June 29, 2009, Souter was replaced by Obama’s appointee Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic person and the third woman justice to serve on the Supreme Court.

During an appearance at Washington University in St. Louis in April 2022, Justice Sotomayor revealed a piece of advice Souter gave her, saying, “When he realized all of his colleagues, particularly the ones he disagreed with, were people who believed as passionately as he did in the Constitution and our system of government and the laws of our country, it became easier for him to not get so angry at them, to let it go.”

Following his retirement, Souter moved back to New Hampshire and remained a judge, sitting on panels of the First Circuit Court of Appeals until 2020.

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Though he kept a relatively low profile post-Supreme Court, Souter did make comments about “pervasive civic ignorance” in September 2012, which recirculated in the media amid the 2016 election.

“What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible … some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem,’” Souter told Margaret Warner on PBS News Hour. “That is how the Roman Republic fell … That is the way democracy dies.”