David Souter Changed Supreme Court Nominations Forever

It was a symbolically potent finale for Souter’s tenure. His nomination came at a pivotal time in the Supreme Court’s history. After decades of dominance, conservatives did not control the Supreme Court for most of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Franklin D. Roosevelt had appointed all nine sitting justices over his 12-year presidency by the time he died in 1945. Democrats held the White House for all but eight of the next 24 years.

Even Dwight D. Eisenhower’s picks during that two-term gap did not shift the balance: Justice William Brennan became the intellectual leader of the court’s liberal wing, while Eisenhower’s choice for chief justice, California Governor Earl Warren, gave his name to the court’s most progressive era. The Warren court effectively dragged the United States into liberal democracy by ending racial apartheid in the South, adopting the “one person, one vote” principle for redistricting, and incorporating most of the Bill of Rights against the states.

But the river turned after 1968. Richard Nixon managed to appoint four justices in his first term, ending the court’s liberal era and placing its moderates in control. Ronald Reagan’s administration, particularly the Justice Department under Edwin Meese, became a launching pad for many legal conservatives. As the Warren-era liberals died or retired, they hoped to replace them with justices committed to originalism, the conservative legal movement’s preferred method for constitutional interpretation.