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Bill Mac's avatar

"16 years after his retirement from the Court at the unusually young age of 69, the phrase best associated with the late justice is almost certainly “No more Souters.” As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about long-term (and not just short-term) Court reform, it strikes me that "more Souters" would actually be a damned good place to start."

Well said.

And I think this concept is applicable well beyond judging -- into day-to-day life. Enough with the "agendas" and the "axes to grind." Confront each set of facts with integrity and rigorous reasoning -- and go where that takes you.

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Jeff Bergman's avatar

Being a practicing trial court lawyer and not a scholar, I can’t offer an appreciation of Justice Souter’s work. What I can offer, however, is an appreciation for his independence and somewhat ascetic mode of living. I seem to remember one of the Justices of the Supreme Court — Scalia maybe? — telling us that judges are not monks. But in my experience, the best judges are often a bit monkish, and sometimes more than a bit. This is so not just for the obvious reason that palling around with rich people who buy you nice things raises suspicion about your impartiality not just in cases involving your friends, but in all cases involving rich people (who might one day become your friends), but because a judge, like the monk in his cell, serves mankind best by serving his god, by isolating himself from others while following a rigorous discipline with humility and sincerity. Judging isn’t a job for men and women who don’t love their fellows, and a misanthrope cannot be a good judge, but neither is it a job for those who want to live in the limelight, or to be universally loved. Justice Souter, it seems to me, struck the right balance.

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