By David G. Savage|May 04, 2009
Reporting from Washington — Justice David H. Souter is a conservative man in the old-fashioned sense of the term. A frugal New Englander, he sat in his court office with the lights turned off, writing long-hand on a yellow legal pad. Those who knew him said he hated to waste electricity.
He wore the same gray suit year after year. He worked long hours, including weekends, and ate lunch at his desk: a cup of yogurt and a piece of fruit. He collected old books and revered precedents in the law. He would not watch television or use a computer. He avoided Washington parties. Instead, in the evenings, he jogged several miles near his small apartment. His summers were spent hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
It turned out, however, that this modest, reserved jurist -- who announced last week that he was retiring from the bench -- was not a true conservative by contemporary political standards.
He may not have signed onto the original Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion had he been on the court in 1973, but he was unwilling to vote to overturn it after its nearly 20 years as a precedent. He believed in the strict separation of church and state, in limits on the president's power, in protecting the environment and in criminal laws that were firm but fair.
"Justice Souter was a judicial version of a disappearing phenomenon: the moderate New England Republican," said Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan. "He was not a true liberal, and he would not have been a liberal on the court of the 1960s or 1970s. But he believed in privacy and civil rights and precedents. That made him a liberal on the court today."
Oliver Wendell Holmes once called life at the Supreme Court "the quiet of a storm center," and that description fit no justice better than Souter. He was far removed from the ideological crusades that swirled around the court. He arrived with no agenda, and he never set out an overreaching judicial philosophy.
"Justice Souter fits the independent Yankee mold," said fellow New Englander Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "Throughout his career, he has been committed to the law and not to ideology."
Nonetheless, Souter had a major impact on the law.
President Reagan had set the stage for transforming what was a liberal-leaning court when in the 1980s he appointed three conservative justices and elevated William H. Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee, to be chief justice.
