Goodbye David Souter

David Souter's retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court caps a frustrating but unexpectedly brilliant career for the bookish New Hampshire jurist. Souter has been the voice of reason for nineteen years a fairly broadminded justice with a knack for getting to the heart of a case with intense cross-examination and basing his decisions on intellectual rather than ideological thought. Having been derided by judicial experts for being unknown when the first President Bush picked him ("Never heard of him - Thurgood Marshall on Souter), Souter's lack of a paper trail allowed him to approach his job with a clean slate and live up to the ideals of the Court. But Souter never warmed to Washington and abhorred the politicization of the Court. The decision that made the younger George Bush President in 2001, rumor has it, appalled Souter so much he wanted to resign but wouldn't do so as long as the younger Bush was President. 

President Obama now gets to replace Souter, who happily plans to return to New Hampshire and, approaching 70, become the Old Man of the Mountains (he's an experienced climber who's made it to all 47 peaks in the White Mountains). This appointment won't change the ideological bent of the Court, but it could get Obama's judicial values into the Court. A constitutional law professor himself, Obama will certainly choose a justice who's simpatico with him about the law of the land and how to approach it.