Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter died at age 85, the high court confirmed in a statement on Friday.
The retired justice “died peacefully yesterday at home in New Hampshire,” the Supreme Court statement said. “He was 85 years old. Justice Souter was appointed to the Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, and retired in 2009, after serving more than 19 years on the Court.”
The court did not provide his cause of death.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts released a statement on Souter, saying that he “served our Court with great distinction for nearly twenty years” and “brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service.”
“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,” Roberts added.
Souter, born in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard University and was a Rhodes Scholar at England’s Oxford University. He later graduated from Harvard Law School and became an assistant attorney general in New Hampshire before ultimately becoming the state’s attorney general.
After that, he served as a judge on the New Hampshire Superior Court and later as a New Hampshire Supreme Court justice, according to a court statement. Later, he became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1990.
Souter had been a federal appellate judge for just over four months when he was picked by Bush for the high court. He had heard but one case as a federal judge, and as a state judge previously had little chance to rule on constitutional issues.
As a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Souter perhaps most notably co-authored a 1992 opinion with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy that reaffirmed the Roe v. Wade decision, which had allowed for expanded abortion access.
“To overrule under fire, in the absence of the most compelling reason to re-examine a watershed decision, would subvert the Court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question,” Souter and the two other justices wrote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the 1992 decision.
Both Roe v. Wade and the 1992 Planned Parenthood case were overturned in June 2022 by the Supreme Court in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That decision ultimately returned the authority to ban abortion to states rather than vesting the power in the federal government, which both the Planned Parenthood and Roe v. Wade court decisions had upheld.
Souter also dissented in the 2000 landmark decision in Bush v. Gore that ended contested ballot recount efforts in Florida following the presidential race between candidates George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore. Bush ultimately won that contest.
“To recount these manually would be a tall order, but before this Court stayed the effort to do that the courts of Florida were ready to do their best to get that job done,” Souter wrote in his opinion. “There is no justification for denying the State the opportunity to try to count all disputed ballots now. I respectfully dissent.”
When he stepped down at the relatively young age of 69, then-President Barack Obama appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor to replace him.
Following his retirement, Souter, who was never married or had children, took part in civics education curriculum reform in New Hampshire, the court said.
In retirement, Souter warned that ignorance of how government works could undermine the American republic.
“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 ... 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,” Souter said in a 2012 interview.
Souter was history’s 105th Supreme Court justice and only its sixth bachelor.
