Supreme Court nominee David H. Souter is a quiet, hard-working judge who lives an "almost monastic life" but can skewer stuffed shirts with his sharp sense of humor, friends say.
Friends, colleagues and lawyers who know Souter, 50, described him as an intellectual and a man with a deep respect for the Constitution."I don't think the president could have nominated a person with better qualities, background, a keener intellect, than David Souter," Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., a close friend, said Monday.
Souter moved to Weare, N.H., from the Boston suburb of Melrose at age 11. He has never married and still lives alone on the family farm where he grew up.
"He has a small circle of very good friends and lives an almost monastic life," said Rudman, who first recommended Souter for the high court when President Reagan was unable to get Robert Bork confirmed in 1987.
"If he has any fault, I believe it's that he's worked too hard all his life. But that's the way he is," Rudman said.
Tom Rath, who replaced Souter as state attorney general and also is a close friend, said Souter enjoys hiking and reading.
His voracious appetite for books shows in his farmhouse, which, he said once in an interview, "looks as though someone is moving a bookstore and has stopped."
Despite Souter's quiet, conservative appearance, he has "a wicked sense of humor that can skewer the most stuffed shirt," Rath says.
Souter has left rural Weare only to attend Harvard College and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and Harvard Law School, from which he was graduated in 1966.
As a law student, Souter was a resident adviser in a freshman dorm at the college, where his charges included Chase G. Untermeyer, now White House personnel director.
Souter could "give the impression with the movement of an eye and the slightest inclination of his head that he was catching everything that goes on - which is exactly the type of person you want watching over a freshman dorm," Untermeyer said Monday.
If confirmed, Souter would be the Supreme Court's 105th justice. He would be its sixth bachelor, the first New Englander since Felix Frankfurter retired in 1962, and the second Rhodes scholar, joining Justice Byron R. White.
Though friends recall him driving rusting, aging cars, and living a less than extravagant lifestyle, Souter had a net worth of $621,000 at the end of 1989 - including $191,000 in personal property, $190,000 in securities and $150,000 in real estate - according to financial records released Monday. He listed no liabilities.
Some challenged the selection. Elliott Berry, a New Hampshire Legal Assistance lawyer, voiced reservations about how Souter would treat "the disenfranchised."
"His overall philosophy tends to result in support for the status quo," Berry said.
But he was praised by Ellen Musinsky, who teaches family law at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord and who appeared before Souter often when he was a trial judge. Though she frequently disagrees with Souter, she said she respects him.
"A lot of the male judges were not real pleasant to practice in front of, but he was great," she said. "He was nice. He respected me. He made me feel like if I had done my work, which I did, I'd get a very fair shot. He was delightful."
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David H. Souter, Supreme Court nominee
NAME: David Hackett Souter.
BORN: Sept. 17, 1939, in Melrose, Mass.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Harvard University, 1961. Attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar from 1961 to 1963. Received law degree from Harvard in 1966.
RELIGION: Episcopalian.
POLITICS: Republican.
PERSONAL: Never married. Lives alone on the family farm near Weare, N.H.
PROFESSIONAL: Practiced law in Concord, N.H., from 1966 to 1968. Became an assistant attorney general in 1968, appointed deputy attorney general in 1971 and attorney general in 1976. Appointed a state Superior Court judge in 1978. In 1983, named by Gov. John Sununu to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Appointed to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston on April 30 and began that job last month.