My new Confirmation Tales post looks at the biggest mistake of George H.W. Bush’s presidency—his appointment of David Souter to the Supreme Court—and how that played out 19 years later. You might find this excerpt amusing (but please read the whole post):
Souter had a curious mix of qualities and quirks. He was deeply intelligent and learned but wrote turgid and byzantine prose. Legal journalist Jeffrey Rosen described him as “an unapologetically 18th-century character.” One of his law clerks marveled that he “does not use a computer or even a typewriter.” He was amusingly frugal: His standard lunch was a cup of yogurt and an apple; he would eat the entire apple, including its core. When a clerk gave him some Christmas cookies in a plastic sandwich bag, he returned the bag to her along with his note of thanks.
The bachelor Souter lived a very solitary life, but he was also friendly. The year that I clerked for Justice Scalia—the year of Casey—he would routinely greet me by name and make small talk. (His chambers was next to Scalia’s.) When the draft joint opinion in Casey was circulated around the Court, I was appalled. That very morning, we happened to pass in the corridor, and he greeted me with “Good morning, Ed. How are you?” I decided to seize the opportunity: “Well, Justice, since you ask ….” I (perhaps imprudently) proceeded to tell him why I thought that the draft opinion was an abomination, and he graciously listened to me for a few minutes.
Souter was admirably modest as a person. He had no interest in the D.C. power scene, and intensely disliked life in the city long before he was mugged in 2004. He returned to his native New Hampshire each summer as quickly as he could.
Scalia very much liked Souter and even set him up on a blind date. “I miss David,” he mused to me some years after Souter retired.
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