Souter notifies White House of retirement plans

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Justice David Souter announced Friday that he will retire from the Supreme Court after informing the White House of his plans.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is "a judge's judge," says a former Souter law clerk.

In a brief letter to President Obama, Souter said, "When the Supreme Court rises for the summer recess this year, I intend to retire from active service as a justice."

The current term is expected to end in June.

Obama -- breaking into the daily White House news briefing -- thanked Souter for his service and said he will choose as his replacement someone who understands "the realities" people go through every day and someone who understands "the rule of law."

The president said he also will seek someone with a "sharp, independent mind" who has integrity and strives for excellence. Watch as Obama pays tribute to Souter »

He described Souter as "not only a good judge but a good person," adding, "I'm incredibly grateful for his good service."

"I wish him safe travels on his journey home and on the road ahead," the president said.

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Filling Souter's seat would be Obama's first Supreme Court appointment -- and the first since President Bush picked Samuel Alito in 2006 and Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005.

Souter's departure will leave the two oldest justices -- and the most liberal -- still on the bench. Retirements for John Paul Stevens, 89, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 76, have been rumored for years, with many expecting that one or the other would be the first to give the new Democratic president a Supreme Court vacancy.

Souter was seen at the opera recently with Ginsburg. Sources said he quietly reached out to her around that time, gauging whether her pancreatic cancer would precipitate her leaving the bench this year.

The sources said that Ginsburg assured him she was not leaving, but still Souter gave no direct indication at the time to her or other colleagues that he was thinking of retiring.

Souter reportedly has long wanted to leave Washington for his home in rural New Hampshire, and friends said he has never felt a desire to spend the rest of his life on the bench despite having a lifetime appointment.

President George H.W. Bush nominated Souter for the high court in 1990. The justice disappointed many conservatives when he turned out to be a typical old-fashioned, Yankee Republican, a moderate with an independent, even quirky streak.

David Hackett Souter had been on the federal appeals court bench for a few months when he was tapped to replace liberal lion William Brennan, a choice many Republicans hoped would move the Supreme Court rightward and reshape American law.

Souter has had a long career in public service. He was New Hampshire's attorney general and a trial judge who later sat on that state's Supreme Court.

Senate confirmation hearings to the U.S. high court were a breeze, because his federal experience was brief and his public stance on hot-button issues such as abortion remained fuzzy.

"I have not got any agenda on what should be done with Roe v. Wade if that case were brought before me," he told senators at the time. "I will listen to both sides of that case. I have not made up my mind."

One of the first surprises for conservatives came in 1992 when the Supreme Court reaffirmed the fundamental right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Souter was part of a three-justice coalition that ultimately decided the case. In doing so, the "no undue burden" legal test was established when states were considering limiting a woman's access to abortion.

Souter's personality has made him stand out on the Supreme Court despite efforts to avoid the spotlight. A lifelong bachelor, he has lived alone in a tiny Washington apartment, escaping often to his family farm in New Hampshire.

He has kept comfortably to routine, bringing a daily lunch of an apple and yogurt in a plastic grocery bag, eating alone in his chambers. Friends have said his favorite pastimes are reading, jogging and hiking in the New Hampshire mountains, activities he almost always does by himself.

Colleagues dismiss reports Souter was ready to quit the court after the 2000 Florida ballot disputes handed the presidency to George W. Bush. But they privately confirmed what a personal blow the rulings had on the integrity of the court he loved.

"He was very aggrieved by December 12, 2000," said Ralph Neas, former director of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. "He believed it was the ultimate politicization of the Supreme Court."

To critics, Souter siding with the liberal bloc only reaffirmed their view of him as a disappointment.

"He has not made a name for himself in any large body of jurisprudence," said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University who worked on high court nominations in the Reagan and Bush administrations. "He's been kind of a go-along guy in the context of the liberal or progressive side of the court. I think George Bush wanted more out of his judicial nominee than that, but that's what he got."

But others think history will judge Souter in kinder terms.

"[He's] a judge's judge," said Rebecca Tushnet, a former Souter law clerk and professor at Georgetown Law Center, "someone with deep respect of the institution and a deep faith in the ability of Americans in all branches to work things out."

Supreme Court Justice Souter To Retire

by Nina Totenberg

NPR.org, April 30, 2009 · NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term.

The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.

At 69, Souter is nowhere near the oldest member of the court. In fact, he is in the younger half of the court's age range, with five justices older and just three younger. So far as anyone knows, he is in good health. But he has made clear to friends for some time that he wanted to leave Washington, a city he has never liked, and return to his native New Hampshire. Now, according to reliable sources, he has decided to take the plunge and has informed the White House of his decision.

Factors in his decision no doubt include the election of President Obama, who would be more likely to appoint a successor attuned to the principles Souter has followed as a moderate-to-liberal member of the court's more liberal bloc over the past two decades.

In addition, Souter was apparently satisfied that neither the court's oldest member, 89-year-old John Paul Stevens, nor its lone woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery over the winter, wanted to retire at the end of this term. Not wanting to cause a second vacancy, Souter apparently had waited to learn his colleagues' plans before deciding his own.

Given his first appointment to the high court, most observers expect Obama will appoint a woman, since the court currently has only one female justice and Obama was elected with strong support from women. But an Obama pick would be unlikely to change the ideological makeup of the court.

Souter was a Republican appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, largely on the recommendation of New Hampshire's former Gov. John Sununu, who had become the first President Bush's chief of staff.

But Souter surprised Bush and other Republicans by joining the court's more liberal wing.

He generally votes with Stevens and the two justices who were appointed by President Bill Clinton — making up the bloc of four more liberal members of the court, a group that has usually been in the minority throughout Souter's tenure.

Possible nominees who have been mentioned as being on a theoretical short list include Elena Kagan, the current solicitor general who represents the government before the Supreme Court; Sonia Sotomayor, a Hispanic judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Diane Wood, a federal judge in Chicago who taught at the University of Chicago at the same time future President Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law there.

President Obama's choice has an excellent chance of being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, where Democrats now have an advantage of 59 seats to the Republicans' 40.

By the time a vote on a successor is taken, the Senate is anticipated to have a 60th Democrat, as the Minnesota Supreme Court is expected to approve the recount that elected Democrat Al Franken over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in that state.

Souter was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He also attended Magdalen College at Oxford University in England. But his academic pedigree was only one reason he had been regarded as a thinking man's jurist and a highly thoughtful conservative prior to his elevation to the nation's highest bench.

Once appointed and confirmed, he soon became a "surprise justice." He bucked the expectation that he would join the court's conservative wing — then led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was appointed to the court by President Nixon and elevated to chief by President Reagan, and featuring Reagan appointees Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

The appointing president had been assured of Souter's credentials by the White House chief of staff, John Sununu, who had known Souter as a conservative member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court when Sununu was that state's Republican governor.

But when confronted by the ideological debates and partisan landscape of Washington, Souter surprised both Sununu and Bush by aligning himself with the court's more moderate wing, which also included Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor.

Later on, Souter became a full-fledged member of the court's unabashedly liberal caucus, featuring yet another Republican, John Paul Stevens (appointed by President Ford in 1975), who remains a member of the court to this day.

Souter was unconventional in other ways beyond his ideological independence. He moved to Washington to attend court sessions, but he returned to his beloved roots in New Hampshire whenever possible, including for the court's long summer hiatus each year.

Rather than fly home, Souter preferred to drive. He also resisted other forms of contemporary technology and convenience, holding out against the cell phone and e-mail and continuing to write his opinions and dissents in longhand, using a fountain pen.

Once engaged but never married, Souter was once listed among the capital's 10 "most eligible bachelors" but remained in that category of "confirmed bachelors."

He was never a creature of the capital city's social scene, living in a spartan apartment in the city not far from the Supreme Court offices on Capitol Hill. Although he served nearly two decades on the high court, he made no secret of his preference for the lifestyle and pace of his native rural New Hampshire.