AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter died at his home in New Hampshire yesterday. He was 85. In a statement today, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote this of Souter - he brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service.
Here to help us remember Justice Souter's legacy is Kermit Roosevelt III. He clerked for Souter from 1999 to 2000 and is now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Thank you so much for being with us today, and I'm so sorry for your loss.
KERMIT ROOSEVELT III: Thank you.
CHANG: You know, relationships between law clerks and judges - justices, in this case - those relationships can be so different - right? - from chambers to chambers. What was it like to be in the Souter chambers?
ROOSEVELT: Justice Souter was a wonderful judge. He was a great role model, and he was also a wonderful person. He was very kind. He was funny. And he treated everyone with kindness and respect.
CHANG: He was also known for spending long hours in chambers - right? - like, up to 12 hours a day. Were you expected to match his hours (laughter)?
ROOSEVELT: No, we didn't have to match his hours. So the amazing thing about Justice Souter was he would ask us to do some things but not the kind of volume that clerks in other chambers often did.
CHANG: Oh, interesting.
ROOSEVELT: And then I - you know, I sort of realized that most of what he was asking me to do was for my benefit. It became clear to me that he really didn't need our help deciding. And what he was doing with that was really giving us the experience of discussing a case with a Supreme Court justice, which, of course, was fabulous and exciting.
CHANG: I love it. Yeah. Well, Justice Souter was, of course, appointed by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, but he came to surprise, perhaps disappoint, many conservatives - right? - by often joining the court's more liberal wing in later years on the bench. How do you think that fits in with Souter's overall legacy as a justice?
ROOSEVELT: I do think that after the experience of believing they knew what they were getting and realizing Justice Souter was more independent than they had thought, Republicans decided that they weren't going to make that mistake again, so no more Souters was the rallying cry. And then you got a bunch of Republican appointees who, in their confirmation hearing, sounded very much like Souter. They would say all the same things about restraint and the need to understand both sides. But they were more carefully vetted for their ideology, and they were more consistently conservative. So no more Souters, I think, has turned out to be true. I don't think we're going to see appointees where the president doesn't have a pretty good sense of how they're going to vote, but it's a bad thing. It's not a good thing.
CHANG: When you watched Justice Souter engage with the other justices, how would you describe that dynamic - as a colleague, a communicator, a compromiser with the other justices?
ROOSEVELT: Justice Souter got along well with all of the other justices. I think it was harder for the clerks sometimes.
CHANG: How so?
ROOSEVELT: We, as clerks - we were only there for one year.
CHANG: Yeah.
ROOSEVELT: And we're ambitious young lawyers, you know, and we wanted things to go our way. But Justice Souter really didn't think about it that way. He had a much longer perspective. I do remember once, we drafted a majority opinion, and there was a very vicious Scalia dissent, and I was just sort of horrified at the things that Justice Scalia was saying. But Justice Souter said, oh, that's just Nino being Nino.
CHANG: (Laughter).
ROOSEVELT: You know, he didn't take offense.
CHANG: Is there a particular memory or moment outside of working on a case that stays with you?
ROOSEVELT: Well, outside of working on a case, I guess, I remember the afternoon that he took us all - he took all his clerks to the National Portrait Gallery.
CHANG: Oh.
ROOSEVELT: We went through, and he told us to pick out the one thing that we would want to steal, if we could...
CHANG: (Laughter) Oh...
ROOSEVELT: Which...
CHANG: ...I love that.
ROOSEVELT: ...I sort of liked because, of course...
CHANG: Naughty (laughter).
ROOSEVELT: ...He never would have stolen a painting from the National Portrait Gallery. But I think it showed his understanding that you need to figure out what you value in life and grab that.
CHANG: Kermit Roosevelt III, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Thank you so much for helping us remember your former boss.
ROOSEVELT: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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