Justice David Souter retires from US Supreme Court

David Souter, one of the nine Supreme Court judges who preside like high priests over politics in America, is set to retire. Still only 69 and in good health, Souter has indicated that he will leave his job as Associate Justice as soon as he can, possibly in June.

Little-known outside of his home state of New Hampshire at the time, Souter was appointed to the Supreme Court by Republican president George H W Bush in 1990. But he has consistently confounded expectations and voted liberally, notably on upholding the Roe vs Wade judgment on the right to abortion, and on the separation of church and state.

Consequently, he has often held opposing views to Antonin Scalia, another judge. After one dispute over whether a state could form a separate public school district for Hasidic Jewish children in 1994, Souter said, "Justice Cardozo once cast the dissenter as 'the gladiator making a last stand against the lions.' Justice Scalia's dissent is certainly the work of a gladiator, but he thrusts at lions of his own imagining."

Once named by the Washington Post as one of the town's most eligible bachelors, Souter worked 12-hour days and defiantly resisted the social whirl of life in the capital. He once said he held "the world's best job in the world's worst city."

Every year, as soon as the Supreme Court season comes to a close, he drives back to New Hampshire, where he enjoys an ascetic lifestyle and mountain climbing. "When the term of court starts I undergo a sort of annual intellectual lobotomy and it lasts until the following summer when I sort of cram what I can into the summertime", he once said. Souter has a reputation as an endearing Luddite - he doesn't have a TV or a mobile phone, and uses a fountain pen rather than a computer.

Souter's impending retirement leaves Barack Obama with the task of finding somebody to replace him. As Alexander Cockburn writes of Souter today on The First Post, "fights over who should sit on the US Supreme Court are always serious. It's an opening for the Republicans but one that will fervidly arouse its nutball contingent. For liberals it will be a call to Obama to step up to the plate and really show what he's made of."

And Souter may not be the only Supreme Court judge on their way out. "In line behind Souter as candidates for retirement or summary removal by the Reaper are [Justice John] Stevens, who turned 89 on April 20, and Ruth Bader Ginzberg, who just had surgery for pancreatic cancer," Cockburn wrote. "Two more liberals. Obama could well be nominating three in his first term. He no longer has the alibi of a threatened Republican filibuster as excuse to pick a 'centrist'."