Word: souter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That self-deprecating style has made Souter the Nowhere Man, a tabula rasa in the cult of personality -- and so the perfect post-Bork appointment. Law- review articles asserting opinions on controversial subjects? There are none. Sweeping court decisions? Souter, as a trial and appellate judge, narrowly ruled on the facts at hand. In Souter, Bush may have found the last person in America who does not think in opinionated sound bites. Souter, with his Yankee reticence, does not presume anyone would be interested in what he thinks if legal scholars have already thought about it. In that...
...turns out, Souter, like everyone, has a personality, if not strong personal opinions, and a rich inner life, which he was able to keep to himself until last Monday. Friends describe him as a combination of the intellectual, scholarly, never married Justice Benjamin Cardozo and a tightfisted solitary cleric. In looks and wit, he resembles comedian Pat Paulsen; in his 5 o'clock shadow, Richard Nixon. He favors well-worn suits (black robes are said to add color to his wardrobe), cheap cars (a 1987 Volkswagen), non-power lunches (cottage cheese and an apple) and classical music. His main indulgence...
...call Souter bookish would be like describing the Grand Canyon as a hole in the ground. In the ramshackle farmhouse nine miles outside Concord where he has lived since he was 11, groaning shelves of books on philosophy, history and the law have won the battle for space. Souter jokes that the room looks like "someone was moving a bookstore and stopped." Vacations are devoted to rereading as much of the work of a particular author as he can; he has plowed through Dickens, Proust, Shakespeare and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the legendary Supreme Court Justice. When he is not reading...
Like other aspects of his life, the unmarried Souter's social activities resemble those of an 18th century gentleman, when an unmarried relative was often the backbone of the community, with the leisure to do what those with children did not have time for. Like Henry Higgins, Souter may be happiest spending "his evenings in the silence of his room; ((in)) an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb...
...Souter had barely left the podium in the press room of the White House before Republican Party officials were raising "the 50-year-old bachelor thing," which was widely interpreted as a way of introducing speculation that Souter is homosexual. In fact the question has been dealt with twice: once in 1978, when Souter was about to be appointed a superior court judge, and then again in 1983, before he was named a state supreme court justice by then Governor John Sununu. During law school, he went out with Ellanor Fink, a student at Wheaton College. After he became...