Reigning Supreme
September 4th, 2007According to Jeffrey Toobin’s latest book (The Nine, about the Supreme Court), David Souter really wasn’t happy about Bush v. Gore.
According to Jeffrey Toobin’s new book on the Supreme Court, Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the wake of Bush v. Gore, so distraught was he over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed George W. Bush as president. In “The Nine,” which goes on sale Sept. 18, Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, “David Souter alone was shattered,” at times weeping when he thought of the case. “For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice,” Toobin continues. “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.”
I, for one, am happy that he didn’t resign as that would’ve led to yet another Republican appointment. Besides that, I admire David Souter. He’s a great Supreme Court Justice and he’s got a lot of personality. I do wonder how this entreaty upon the Court’s sovereignty affected his jurisprudence and while some might consider it blasphemy to suggest that Souter would respond to an intellectually bankrupt ruling by ruling opposed to conservatives in close cases, it’s a possibility. Would it make him less willing to work with Scalia or Thomas? I think so, but I’ll have to ask him sometime!
He is human, after all. And the human relationships on the Supreme Court are some of the most interesting relationships in all of America’s history.