Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter has died at the age of 85, multiple reports have confirmed.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. released the following statement following Souter’s passing:
Justice David Souter served our Court with great distinction for nearly twenty years. He 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.
Former President George H.W. Bush nominated Souter, a former New Hampshire Attorney General, to serve on the Supreme Court in 1990, believing that he would be a reliable conservative vote on the Court despite his limited record as a federal judge on key issues. White House officials had assured Bush that Souter would be a “home run” pick.
Moreover, then-Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH) told Bush Sr. that Souter would be easily confirmed while guaranteeing that Souter “has no skeletons in his closet, and he’s one of the most extraordinary human beings I’ve ever known.”
Rudman, though, knew of Souter’s liberal tendencies. In his memoir, he wrote that he “suspected all along” that Souter would not “overturn activist liberal precedents.”
“In spite of it all, he’s a good friend,” Rudman wrote. “But I’ve always known that he was more liberal than he liked the world to think he was.”
Indeed, Souter became one of the most left-wing justices in American history. Two of his most infamous decisions were casting the key vote upholding Roe v. Wade, which set a constitutional ‘right’ to abortion, and dissenting in the 2000 ruling that gave the presidency to George W. Bush.
Souter ruled in Al Gore’s favor despite the obvious attempts of the then-Vice President’s team to steal the election and the Democrat-controlled Florida Supreme Court’s shenanigans.
The liberal Souter also voted in favor of affirmative action, against the death penalty, and ruled in favor of the so-called ‘legal rights’ of terror suspects detained by the George W. Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay.
Souter retired in 2009, just months after Barack Obama’s election as the 44th President. He was later replaced by Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to become a Supreme Court justice.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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