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Souter's belief system mirrors that of an aunt, a Simmons College professor and Cambridge dowager who swam Lake Winnipesaukee in her 70s, was conservative socially and politically but liberal in her concern for other people. Although she was an heiress of the Boston & Maine Railroad who didn't need the money, she became a pioneering medical social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Souter's conservative philosophy alternately pleases and confuses both ends of the political spectrum and is a reminder that the label does not belong only to Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms. Elizabeth Hager, who led the state's successful 1972 fight to pass an equal-rights amendment, points out that people outside the state "equate the word conservative with right wing. We don't do that in New Hampshire."
That philosophy led Hager to seek Souter's aid when she wanted to kill a parental-consent bill in the New Hampshire house of representatives in 1981. In response, he wrote a letter to lawmakers opposing the bill because it would have required judges to make "fundamental moral decisions about the interests of other people without any standards to guide the individual judge." Last week, as Sununu was hinting to right-to-lifers that Souter could be trusted, Hager was busy allaying the fears of members of the National Abortion Rights Action League. Hager kept repeating, "He has never associated with pro-life groups. His friends aren't pro-life." His closest political allies and friends -- Republican Senator Warren Rudman and Rath -- are pro-choice.
Souter is the son of an assistant bank manager and a mother who worked in a giftshop. He attended public elementary schools and Concord High School, where he managed to be well liked despite being something of a grind -- voraciously studious, fastidiously neat, with no time for organized sports.
At Harvard College, Souter joined Hasty Pudding and majored in philosophy. He wrote his senior thesis on Justice Holmes' belief that a judge should not be influenced by either politics or ideology. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. For a graduation gift, friends put together a scrapbook of made-up news stories featuring Souter as the lawyer he hoped to be. One headline read, DAVID SOUTER NOMINATED TO THE SUPREME COURT.
He won a Rhodes scholarship to Magdalen College at Oxford. His classmate Bill Bardel, now a managing director of Shearson Lehman Hutton, recalls that Souter belonged to a group that would return so late to their rooms after visiting the local pubs that they would have to climb a ladder to get over the locked gates. Back at Harvard Law School, Souter played the role of courtly gentleman, wearing a three-piece suit to parties and telling stories in his strong New England accent. Says Levine: "No one I've ever met is more fun at a party; he has that British satirical sense of humor, does wonderful impressions." That hardly qualifies him as a party animal, but it may have contributed to his failure to make law review.