Litigation

Souter Speech Prompts Diverse Opinions

By Peter Hardin

Retired Justice David H. Souter’s recent commencement speech at Harvard is causing ripples–depending who you listen to.

In the New York Times’ Opinionator blog, Linda Greenhouse said she listened to the speech “with a mixture of joy and relief.” She summed up:

“[F]or those who care about the Supreme Court, Justice Souter served up some rich fare: his own vision of the craft of constitutional interpretation and a defense of the need for judges to go beyond the plain text ? what he called the ?fair-reading model? ? and make choices among the competing values embedded in the Constitution.”

In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times called it “a compelling argument on why the Supreme Court must constantly interpret the Constitution and why that isn’t ‘activism.’” The editorial recommended that senators who will vote on the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court read the speech.

Commentator E.J. Dionne wrote in the Washington Post that Justice Souter’s speech “should become the philosophical shot heard ’round the country,” as the jurist “took direct aim at the conservatives’ favorite theory of judging,” or “originalism.”

Matthew J. Franck in National Review Online disagreed strenuously. He countered that “it doesn?t come close to living up to Dionne?s build-up.  In fact, it?s not even clear that the speech is any kind of attack on ‘originalism,’ let alone the demolition job Dionne thinks it is.”

You can read a neutral account of Justice Souter’s speech in this earlier Gavel Grab post.

Full post as published by The Gavel on June 04, 2010 (boomark / email).