[HN Gopher] Former Supreme Court justice David Souter has died
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Former Supreme Court justice David Souter has died
Author : danso
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-05-09 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| danso wrote:
| Maybe the first Supreme Court justice I knew by name as a child:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekpUyxovK7k
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| it's a testament to the ubiquity of The Simpsons for millennial
| Americans that I knew exactly what this was a link to before I
| even clicked on it. And then I did and still laughed at it.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| What about the late Earl Warren? https://youtu.be/FUw9Eo9QqmM
|
| That's the one I remember from the simpsond back then
| quantumfissure wrote:
| First thing I thought of too when I saw he died.
|
| Homer's random knowledge of Supreme Court Justices mentioned
| throughout the years never ceases to amaze me.
| detourdog wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0
|
| Here he is discussing the dangers of the erosion of civic
| knowledge.
| neilv wrote:
| He sure called it.
| stevenae wrote:
| How accurate is his claim that Augustus became emperor through
| (my paraphrasing) democratic means and promises to fix real
| problems for Romans?
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Well, first, you have to consider that the Roman republic was
| never really democratic but was at the hand of a small
| aristocracy which had sometimes but rarely the interest of
| the Romans at all, let alone the non citizen inhabitants.
|
| But even, then it is definitely not accurate. Augustus gained
| powers through the numerous conflicts which followed Caesar
| murder at a time when the Republic was already challenged
| thanks to legions he more or less inherited
| (oversimplification) from Caesar. He was given powers by the
| Senate through what we would call rubber stamping only after
| his military power was inescapable.
| roguecoder wrote:
| I recommend "Augustus: First Emperor of Rome" by Adrian
| Goldsworthy.
|
| Given that "democratic" didn't mean the same thing then it
| does now (with suffrage limited to a small group of the uber-
| rich), and that some of the problems he was fixing was "the
| threat of this army I happen to have" and "this war I
| actively participated in", I don't think it is wrong. He
| wasn't in Rome when the Senate awarded him power and the
| Vestal Virgins drank in his name, which isn't something that
| would be commanded.
|
| After decades of war and strife and food shortages, peace
| under one warlord looked more appealing than having three who
| would likely eventually be at each other's throats.
| stevenae wrote:
| Thank you!
| karaterobot wrote:
| > 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--as they might do for example with another
| serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another
| financial meltdown--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: Augustus became emperor not
| because he arrested the Roman Senate, he became emperor because
| he promised that he would solve problems that were not being
| solved.
|
| > If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the
| American people to demand performance from those responsible.
| If we don't know, we will stay away from the polls, we will not
| demand it, and the day will come when somebody will come
| forward, and we and the government will, in effect, say 'take
| the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.' That is the
| way democracy dies, and if something is not done to improve the
| level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about
| at night.
| Amezarak wrote:
| This is a big problem. Democracies throughout the west are
| refusing to do anything about big problems that have populist
| support. This is enabling authoritarianism because the
| authoritarians present an alternative vision and promise to
| actually do something. If mainstream parties would just take
| real action on issues like immigration or crime it would suck
| all the oxygen away from authoritarians.
| ls612 wrote:
| Why solve the problems when you can just outlaw populist
| parties instead? /s
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > refusing to do anything about big problems that have
| populist support
|
| In most countries I lived in, "big problems that have
| populist support" are completely manufactured bullshit.
| Crime may actually be down and populists will be screaming
| a out it, because in politics perception matters more than
| actual numbers.
| d00mB0t wrote:
| "No not Souter! Oh nooo!"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekpUyxovK7k
| shrubble wrote:
| He lived in New Hampshire and after the Kelo decision which
| allowed eminent domain on a property, which he was a deciding
| vote on, some local NH politicians tried to use Kelo to seize his
| property, which caused a kerfluffle in the Libertarian side; if
| it happened today I would guess it would go farther, given wider
| divisions in politics.
| ggreer wrote:
| In Kelo v. City of New London[1], Souter sided with the
| majority in ruling that it was constitutional for the
| government to use eminent domain to take property from a
| private owner and give it to another private owner. In
| response, some people started a voter initiative to take
| Souter's property and give it to a private developer to turn
| into a hotel.[2] The vast majority of voters were against it,
| and the politicians who backed it were voted out in the next
| election.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Liberty_Hotel
| baruz wrote:
| I remember that decision and am still indignant about it. Why
| should the government give private land to a different private
| party? If the government is going to take it for public use, I
| can see the reasoning, but using eminent domain to transfer to
| private owners is fraught.
| detourdog wrote:
| The worst part is the development didn't happen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It was a _terrible_ decision.
|
| Not that those are rare.
|
| [EDIT] To make this a little more substantive, on an issue
| where they _extremely plausibly_ could have decided
| otherwise, they elected to go for the option that is
| _plainly, guaranteed_ to be less-just. There is no universe
| in which anyone with a brain could believe the overwhelming
| result of this decision wouldn 't be to benefit people with
| power and money at the expense of those without power and
| money.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > the city's use of eminent domain was permissible under
| the Takings Clause, because the general benefits the
| community would enjoy from economic growth qualified as
| "public use"
|
| Subjective decisions are bad, like we're seeing in other
| areas. "General benefits" can mean anything if you've got
| cooperative judges you crammed the courts with.
|
| > Not that those are rare.
|
| Heller comes to mind, even as a 2a supporter.
| ggreer wrote:
| What did Heller get wrong? In the majority opinion[1]
| they do a pretty good job of explaining why they think
| the right to bear arms applies to the people, not just
| the militia, and how the amendment enshrines an
| individual right, not a collective one. In contrast, the
| dissenting justices can't seem to agree on why the second
| amendment doesn't apply. Stevens argues that the right to
| bear arms and other rights (the right to assemble, the
| right to petition the government) are collective, not
| individual. He also claims that the second amendment only
| applies to the militia, but he ignores that the
| historical sources he cites define the militia as all
| people capable of bearing arms. Breyer's dissent defines
| the militia differently, and Breyer spends most of his
| time arguing that the government can restrict the rights
| of law-abiding people if the government thinks that doing
| so will serve its interests (in this case, fighting urban
| crime). Breyer applies this argument selectively, since
| if he evaluated other constitutional rights in the same
| way, it would gut all of them.
|
| Banning law-abiding individuals from possessing firearms
| may or may not be good policy, but it's hard to see how
| it's constitutional. If people want to change that
| policy, they'll need to amend the constitution.
|
| 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20100531191739/http://www.
| suprem...
| pyrophane wrote:
| I was active in history and civics events in high school and I
| remember going to DC for a civics competition, and Justice David
| Souter spoke at it.
|
| I was a teenager at the time, it was the 90s, and I don't think I
| took much of anything too seriously, but I remember being kind of
| in awe of him. He talked about the importance of civic education
| which to this day that remains one of my core beliefs as an
| American.
|
| A lot has changed for the worse since then, and it feels like
| we've only gotten further from the idea that the purpose of
| education is, more than anything else, to teach us to be better
| citizens and participants in our democracy.
| devwastaken wrote:
| what you see is a reflection of socioeconomics caused by
| regulatory buyout and political nepotism. "better citizens" and
| "civic duty" may have been optimal a generation ago and are now
| a losing strategy. remove the systems that created corps like
| Rockefeller and you fix this problem.
| senderista wrote:
| I remember him being derided as "the stealth nominee" because he
| didn't have much of a paper trail that could be used against him
| in confirmation hearings. (This was of course before confirmation
| hearings became rubber-stamps when the President's party held the
| Senate.)
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> This was of course before confirmation hearings became
| rubber-stamps when the President's party held the Senate
|
| Souter was nominated in 1990. The President's party held the
| Senate in 2005 when Harriet Miers nomination didn't even make
| it out of committee.
|
| If you're talking about an actual vote for a nominee, looks
| like there were only four rejected candidates in the entire
| 1900's and 2000's so far (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsucce
| ssful_nominations_to_th...), and only one of those was when the
| President's party held the Senate. That was in 1930. Things
| don't seem to have changed much.
| senderista wrote:
| I wasn't referring exclusively to SCOTUS nominees. You think
| RFK could have been confirmed 10 years ago even if the
| President's party held the Senate?
| DrillShopper wrote:
| 10 years ago? Yes. He's a Kennedy.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| In the past one hundred years, only 2 cabinet position
| nominations have been rejected by a vote in the Senate, and
| neither occurrence was when the President's party held the
| Senate.
|
| If you look at nominations that were withdrawn rather than
| going to a vote and being rejected, President Trump has had
| 5 withdrawn so far which is the most of any President in US
| history.
|
| I see no evidence that the process is becoming more of a
| rubber-stamp than it was previously. If you've got some,
| I'd like to see it.
| treetalker wrote:
| I met him at the Court once during law school.
|
| He came across as the most even-keeled person in the world.
|
| I asked him how he thought he had changed, if at all, throughout
| his years on the Court. He said, "We never see ourselves as
| others see us." I'll never forget it.
|
| He'll be missed; sorry to hear that his papers won't be released
| for 50 years.
| WalterGR wrote:
| > sorry to hear that his papers won't be released for 50 years.
|
| Are they subject to Freedom of Information requests?
| rhd1729 wrote:
| Radiolab made a podcast on him, detailing about how he rose above
| partisanship. We need more people like him in the courts.
|
| Episode link:
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/epi...
| pstuart wrote:
| Partisanship is effectively treason when party loyalty trumps
| loyalty to the country.
|
| We were warned from the beginning:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell...
| Hilift wrote:
| The Gingrich Revolution happened shortly after Souter arrived.
| Republicans corrected all the previous mistakes and succeeded
| in stacking the court after that.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| What does "stacking the court" mean?
| delichon wrote:
| Four justices are now older than Souter was when he retired at
| age 69. Thomas and Alito, 75, Sotomayor and Roberts, 70. Souter
| appeared to be in good health at retirement. I admire him for not
| clinging to power.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| All charges should have an age limit, like 70 for Supreme
| Court, and 65 for president/legislative.
|
| Stop making the government a geriatric
| edmundsauto wrote:
| This is fair if there are minimum age requirements like for
| the presidency.
| lovich wrote:
| Not that I necessarily agree with the OP's opinion, but who
| cares about fair when it comes to running the government?
| It should be about being effective.
| delichon wrote:
| Supreme Court justices are famous but not well known. Their names
| are familiar but not their faces. For this reason, David Souter
| and Stephen Breyer were frequently mistaken for each other. Once
| during his tenure on the court, Souter was driving from
| Washington to his home in New Hampshire, and he stopped in a
| little restaurant to get something to eat. A couple came up to
| him, and the man asked him a question.
|
| "You're on the Supreme Court, right?" Souter nodded. "You're
| Stephen Breyer, right?"
|
| Souter didn't want to embarrass the fellow in front of his wife,
| so he said yes, he was Breyer. They chatted for a little while,
| and the fellow asked, "Justice Breyer, what's the best thing
| about being on the Supreme Court?"
|
| After a pause, the justice answered, "I'd have to say it was the
| privilege of serving with David Souter."
|
| https://x.com/WakeUp2Politics/status/1920887550496927899
| freedomben wrote:
| Hah! What an amazing story. I don't want to read too much into
| it, but generally speaking I think you have to have some
| genuine humility to do such a thing :-)
| quesera wrote:
| You might also enjoy this:
|
| > The story of how Queen Elizabeth handled an encounter with
| an American hiker who did not recognise her, recounted by a
| former bodyguard who was with her that day
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/what-queen-elizabeth-
| said-w...
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(page generated 2025-05-09 23:02 UTC)