Justice Souter Nearly Quit Supreme Court Over Bush v. Gore Decision

Posted by Liliana Segura at 12:04 PM on September 4, 2007.

Poor David Souter.

Not only is the famously mild-mannered Supreme Court judge a solitary voice of reason among the crazies overrunning the Bench; now it turns out he hates his job.

It should come as no surprise (and yet it kinda does) that the judge who was nominated by Bush I only to become one of the most reliably liberal members of the bench "was shattered" by the Supreme Court's 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore--so shattered, in fact, the decision would move him to tears (repeatedly) and lead him to contemplate leaving the Court altogether.

Also, he hates Washington D.C.

According to a new book on the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin:

"For many months, 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."

This is more sad than juicy, really, but given that the Supreme Court doesn't exactly lend itself to dishy prose, one has to wonder what other interesting human tidbits lie within Toobin's provocatively titled book. (It's called "The Nine," which sounds a lot like a reality TV show or some sort of "24"-inspired drama in which team of swashbuckling judges argues the merits of torture based on the superhero tactics of a certain Jack Bauer...what's that? Scalia's way ahead of me? Oops, my bad.

Lest we be moved to tears ourselves, perhaps it's best not to review what has happened since Bush v. Gore went down--especially not the Supreme Court term that ended this summer, a Roberts/Alito reign of terror peppered with nasty 5 to 4 decisions and prompting various pundits' declarations that the rightward shift of the Court will be the sole success story of Bush's legacy. Best just to sum it up with a line from one of Souter's many dissents this term. "It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way," he wrote after the Court upheld the death sentence of a man who botched an appeal deadline because he was misdirected by a federal judge.

That's for sure. Let's just hope he can tolerate his job--and D.C.--for a few more years. Like, oh...25?

"At this moment," Toobin recently wrote about the future of the Court: the "liberals face not only jurisprudential but actuarial peril. Stevens is 87 and Ginsburg 74; Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are in their fifties."

A chill wind blows.

Tagged as: bush, supreme court, gore, election00, souter

Liliana Segura is a writer and activist living in New York