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Former Supreme Court justice David Souter has died

Souter was appointed to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. He retired in 2009.

But his academic pedigree was only one reason he had been regarded as a thinking man's jurist and a highly thoughtful conservative prior to his elevation to the nation's highest bench. But when confronted by the ideological debates and partisan landscape of Washington, Souter surprised both Sununu and Bush by aligning himself with the court's more moderate wing, which also included Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor. Later on, Souter became a full-fledged member of the court's unabashedly liberal caucus, featuring yet another Republican, John Paul Stevens (appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975).

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