Justice Souter, who was appointed in 1990 by a Republican president, the first George Bush, but became one of the most reliable members of the court’s liberal wing, has grown increasingly sour on Washington and intends to return to his home state, New Hampshire, according to the people briefed on his plans. One official said the decision might be announced as early as Friday.
The departure will open the first seat for a Democratic president to fill in 15 years and could prove a test of Mr. Obama’s plans for reshaping the nation’s judiciary. Confirmation battles for the Supreme Court in recent years have proved to be intensely partisan and divisive moments in Washington, but Mr. Obama has more leeway than his predecessors because his party holds such a strong majority in the Senate.
So ends the strange, relatively short Supreme Court career of David Souter, yet another GOP "moderate" who did nothing to support the philosophy of governance to which he supposedly adhered. He was sold to the Right as a "principled conservative." As told in Jan Crawford Greenberg's "Supreme Conflict," Bush 41's vetters rejected the likes of Kenneth Starr and Orrin Hatch, so convinced were they that Souter was "one of them." How wrong they were. How an obscure, affectless man from rural New Hampshire could convince the Reagan/Bush-era conservative legal establishment of his bona fides was surely one of the wonders of the age.
Souter was a liberal vote, but he was not a liberal voice. Justice Breyer and even Justice O'Conner articulated liberal jurisprudence better than Souter did. He will not be missed.
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