Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who died last week at age 85, will probably not be remembered as the author of any truly momentous majority opinions, because he never really wrote any of those. Nor will Souter be remembered as one of the Court's great dissenters, because none of his dissents inspired the next generation to keep the faith about unpopular ideas. Souter's career will likely be remembered for a more unusual reason: the severe and enduring backlash that he inspired.
Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1990 by Republican President George H.W. Bush, Souter quickly emerged as a consistent "liberal" vote in high-profile cases about hot-button issues such as abortion and affirmative action. This was supremely disappointing to conservative legal activists, who had hoped Bush would pick someone in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia, the outspoken conservative tapped four years earlier by President Ronald Regan.
To make matters worse, Souter replaced retiring Justice William Brennan, a liberal icon. The Bush administration thus squandered a rare opportunity to shift the ideological balance on the Court. Instead of replacing a liberal justice with a conservative one, Bush effectively traded a liberal for a liberal. In the eyes of many folks on the right, that was a grievous mistake that neither could nor should be forgiven.
