David Souter: An 18th Century Man

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After graduating, Souter returned home to Weare, N.H., and took a job at Orr & Reno, a Concord law firm. But he was not happy in private practice. In 1968 he took the turn in the road that would eventually land him in the White House chatting with the President, by joining the New Hampshire attorney general's staff. Shortly after Warren Rudman became state attorney general in 1970, he plucked Souter from a group of assistants to become his top aide. The thoroughly scholarly Souter soon became the perfect complement to the gregarious, politically wired Rudman. The two, along with Rath, who headed Bob Dole's losing presidential campaign in the 1988 New Hampshire primary, became best friends. Rath joked that his job in the office was to go to lunch and "explain to Warren what David had just said."

In 1976 Rudman resigned as attorney general and four years later ran for a Senate seat. Thomson reluctantly went along with Rudman's advice to appoint Souter to the job. Over the next two years Souter became involved in several controversial cases, largely at Thomson's behest. In 1978 Souter's staff defended the Governor in a suit to prevent him from lowering the American and state flags over state buildings on Good Friday. In another Thomson crusade, Souter's staff unsuccessfully defended the state's attempts to prosecute residents who for religious reasons covered up the state motto -- "Live Free or Die" -- on their license tags.

In those cases, Souter seems to have been acting as a lawyer putting forth the best argument he could on behalf of his client. But friends still talk | about the zeal Souter brought to one of the few cases he personally argued as attorney general: whether the state or the Federal Government had jurisdiction over Lake Winnipesaukee. Combining his love of New Hampshire with his passion for history, Souter headed off to museums and historical societies to dredge up scraps of information. He spent weeks with ancient maps spread out over his office, scanning each meticulously to ferret out tiny differences. When Souter went to Washington to present his case, he went alone and without notes. His argument -- that since a boat could not get to the ocean from the lake, it was not a navigable waterway subject to federal control -- was so cogent and airtight that the Coast Guard withdrew its claim. This case added to the legal lore in the state that no one who is party to a case ever knows more about it than Souter. Says Merrill: "You can always count on David to have read relevant cases that you haven't heard of. He'll say, 'There's an interesting line of 17th century British cases that I'm sure you're familiar with.' "