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May 04, 2009
David Hackett Souter
In part due to the nature of my current job, I’ve come to be fascinated by the Supreme Court. I enjoyed Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine, and I tend to like reading profiles of Supreme Court Judges, especially the liberal (or, more accurately, not-super-conservative) ones. The Court is so strange, so undemocratic, so perversely fixated on the wisdom of just a few people that its analysis really seems to benefits from an intense contemplation of character.
These last couple days have provided plenty of fodder, and I’ve read perhaps too much of it.
I was alternately fascinated and ashamed by the quasi-stalkerish piece in the Times today with pictures of Justice Souter’s home and copius interviews with his neighbors to establish that he values his privacy. I liked the twin pieces in Slate, especially Dahlia Lithwick’s which managed to paint an image of who Souter is without resorting to the same old David-Souter-hates-Washington storyline.
But I think the best analysis was in a very short post by Andrew Sullivan this morning, writing about Souter’s commitment to New Hampshire:
I think it was Larkin who said that travel narrows the mind. It was a mischievously provocative statement, but at its core is something true. The world is a mystery; one place is amazement enough. To live well and deeply in one place, to commit to it, to protect and cherish and understand it: this is a great and difficult and rewarding thing. And David Souter is a good man.
Whether or not Souter would agree is unclear—it seems to be too florid for the kind of person who would write this—but I think it does accurately describe a value that Souter illustrates, and one that I’ve found myself trying to articulate without much success. I’m very pleased to see someone else get it down in writing.
Posted by Drew at May 4, 2009 09:08 PM