Supreme Court Justice David Souter to Retire

Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 6:17 AM on May 1, 2009.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Supreme Court Judge David Souter will retire from the bench at the end of his term.

NPR reports:

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.

NPR has more.

Justice Souter made headlines in recent years when Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine, revealed that, following the Court's fateful decision in Bush v. Gore, "it was not at all clear whether [Souter] would remain as a justice ... That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same."

As one legal analyst said, "Souter was a terrible disappointment to the first President Bush, who appointed him with hopes that he'd be a solid conservative like his contemporary nominee, Justice Clarence Thomas. But that never happened ... Souter went and stayed in the middle."

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights and Liberties and War on Iraq Special Coverage.