Judge David H. Starr, an ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a liberal beloved on the bench in nearly 20 years, has retired. He was 85 years old.
The star died Thursday at his New Hampshire home, the court said in a statement Friday.
He left the court in June 2009, giving President Barack Obama the first Supreme Court vacancies. Democrat Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice.
Souter was appointed in 1990 by Republican President George H.W. Bush. He was certainly a free vote on abortion, church-state relations, freedom of expression, and accessibility of federal courts.
During his retirement, Star warned that ignorance about how government works could undermine American democracy.
“What I’m worried about is that when a problem is not addressed, people don’t know who is responsible, and when the problem gets bad enough… there’s one person who says, “I’ll give you full strength and solve this problem.” That’s how the Roman Republic fell,” Starr said in a 2012 interview.
His lifestyle was reserve – yogurt and apples consumed at his desk were typical lunches – and he shunned the Washington social scene. He couldn’t wait to leave town in early summer. As soon as the court completed work in late June, he climbed up to the Volkswagen Jetta and returned to the farmhouse where the drive was worn, where his family moved when he was 11 years old.
But for all his reserves, Suter was loved by his colleagues, court employees and friends. He was a well-known storyteller and was generous with his time.
“Judge David Suter has served our courts differently for nearly 20 years. He has brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to the life of public service,” Chief John Roberts said. Roberts said Star continued to hear the case in the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
When Bush picked Star out of obscurity in 1990, liberal interest groups feared that he was a vote to revoke the court’s ROE v. Wade decision in favor of abortion rights. He was called a stealth candidate by some.
John Sununu, aide to the Bush White House, a former Conservative Governor of New Hampshire, welcomed the choice as a “home run.” And early in his time in Washington, Suter was called a moderate conservative.
However, he soon joined his decision, his most famous job since 1992, to reaffirm women’s rights to abortion. Thirty years later, the more conservative court overturned its decision and its constitutional right to abortion.
Souter asked the exact question during the argument session. “He had the unfortunate knack of finding the weakest link in your argument,” said veteran Supreme Court advocate Carter Phillips.
The star was a judge of the 105th Supreme Court of History, and only his sixth bachelor’s degree.
When he moved from New Hampshire, he was welcomed by the Washington Post as the capital’s most prominent and qualified single man, but Suter was determinedly resisting the social vortex.
“Before I moved to Washington, I wasn’t that kind of person. At this age, I don’t see any reason to change,” the fiercely private star told an acquaintance.
He worked most of his court term from October to early summer, seven days a week, staying in the Supreme Court office for more than 12 hours a day. He said he had undergone an annual “intellectual lobotomy” at the start of each semester, as he had little time to read for pleasure.
Suter rented an apartment a few miles from the court and jogged alone at Fort McNair, an army facility near his apartment.
Suter was returned to the elderly man’s house in the Wear Well in New Hampshire for several months each summer, and was given office use at the Concord courthouse.
Avid hiker, Suter spent much of his time trekking through the New Hampshire mountains.
Shortly after his retirement, Suter purchased a 3,500-square-foot Cape Cora-style home in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Perhaps it was only part of star lore, but it was reported that he was worried that the foundations of Weare’s house would make way under the weight of all the books he owns.
Souter was a federal appeals judge for just over four months when he was selected for the High Court. He had heard of one case as a federal judge, but as a state judge, he had previously had little opportunity to control constitutional issues.
The liberals were initially wary of his appointment, but it was the political conservatives who felt betrayed in the two 1992 rulings. The star helped to build a moderate liberal coalition that reaffirms the constitutional rights of abortion and the long-standing ban on prayer officially sponsored in public schools.
However, as Souter biographer Tinsley Yarbrough pointed out, justice did not take an “extreme position.”
In fact, in June 2008, Suter was on his side at ExxonMobil, with his liberal colleagues significantly reducing punitive damages.
Before serving as a New Hampshire judge, Starr was his state’s attorney general for two years. He worked on the Attorney General’s staff over the past eight years after a brief mission in private practice.
Suter earned an undergraduate and law degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar Washington, DC.
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