David Souter Set an Example for the Supreme Court: Noah Feldman

David Souter, the former US Supreme Court justice who died at 85 on Thursday, was sometimes mistakenly thought to have turned into a liberal after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush on the expectation that he would be an ideological conservative.

History will show the opposite: Souter was among the most consistent, principled justices ever to have sat on the Supreme Court in its 235-year history. His jurisprudence was steeped in the value of precedent and the gradual, cautious evolution of the law in the direction of liberty and equality. A New Englander to the core, he said what ...