Justice Souter may be retired, but he still works

[WI_DEM]

BOSTON (AP) — Justice David Souter ever so politely interrupts an attorney making a complicated legal argument.

"May I ask you a question?" Souter asks. "I will tell you, you do not have to answer it as far as I'm concerned."

Then Souter cuts to the chase, stinging the lawyer with an ethical question: "Do you believe you have a good faith basis in law to make that argument?"

For Souter, retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court last June has not meant retirement from the bench.

At the age of 70, he is unwilling to hang up his robe and is hearing cases one or two days a month for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which handles federal appeals for Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico.

"It was an opportunity to stay involved with the law at a very high level, and he's enjoying it immensely," said former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, a longtime friend of Souter's who was a key player in his nomination to the Supreme Court.

For those who observed Souter during his 19 years on the Supreme Court, the demeanor is the same — polite, formal and sharp.

"He's incredibly bright and insightful," said New Hampshire attorney Sven Wiberg, the lawyer who was asked to defend his argument to Souter. "He cuts right to the heart of things."

Souter is known for being intensely private and declined a request to be interviewed.

As a Supreme Court justice, his rulings often were unpredictable. After his nomination in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, he was called a moderate conservative. But he soon joined in a ruling affirming a woman's right to an abortion, and he became a reliable liberal vote. He was one of the four dissenters in the 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore that sealed the presidential election for George W. Bush.

By retiring at age 69, he became one of the youngest judges to leave the bench. Friends say he never enjoyed Washington — he once said he had "the world's best job in the world's worst city."

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20100527/bce2e6dc-491d-4bdf-96c3-1d0da3d6737d

[kestrel91316]

1. I always liked Souter. Wish he had stayed......

[DarthDem]

2. Is He Really!

That is *awesome*. For anyone who doesn't know, retired federal judges sometimes (often, actually) hang around and continue to hear arguments as part of panels in the appeals court from which they retired, and their vote counts the same as anyone else's, but I have never heard of a for AJ of the Supreme Court doing this at a lower federal court. That's fantastic. Good for Justice Souter - - what a great man he turned out to be and still is.

Thanks for posting this, WI_DEM.