Souter, David Hackett

Souter, David Hackett, 1939–, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1990–), b. Melrose, Mass. A graduate of the Harvard Law School, he served as New Hampshire's attorney general (1976–78), and on the state's superior court (1978–83) before being named to the New Hampshire Supreme Court (1983–90). After serving only a short time as a judge on the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals (1990), he was named by President George H. W. Bush in July, 1990, to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing William Brennan. Although regarded initially as a conservative, Souter emerged by the mid-1990s as key to a moderate bloc that resisted pressures from the political right to undo Court precedents of the 1960s and 70s.