Academic

Justice Souter as legal historian ... or maybe just historian?

By Alfred Brophy

The Washington Post has a charming portrait of Justice Souter ("Quiet N.H. Home Is Where Souter's Heart Has Always Been"), which includes these three paragraphs:

"He never unpacked," said Thomas Rath, one of Souter's closest friends. "A few years ago, he said, 'I figured I'd take the pictures out of the boxes and hang them up, but I figured in a few years I'd be coming back to New Hampshire and I'd have to pack them back up, so I might as well leave them in the boxes.' "

At the relatively young age of 69, Souter is giving up what he once called "the world's best job in the world's worst city" for a life of simple solitude in Weare. It is a rural hamlet that fascinates him so much, he has told neighbors he may someday write a history of the town.

When he departs this summer in his Volkswagen sedan -- he dislikes flying and always drives himself to and from Washington, leaving at odd hours to game the traffic -- Souter will cross the Piscataquog River, drive past country stands selling maple syrup and fresh eggs, and turn down a narrow, unmarked dirt road.

My favorite librarian commented that several parts of that sound suspiciously like, well, me.  ... Especially the never unpacked the boxes part (though for me it's an issue of efficiency--I'm not moving any time soon, but why unpack what is not immediately needed?); the local history part, of course; and the leaving at odd hours to game the traffic....  

I made no further inquiry about whether the similarity is positive or negative, because she's been known in the past to say things like, "wow, you and Obama are a lot alike as law professors."  This in response to my referencing parts of his race and law syllabus, especially this part:

you'll see that much of the material has been marked up.  I apologize for not giving you cleaner copies -- it's the consequence of not having a teaching assistant.  (On the other hand, my wife tells me that she wouldn't have minded getting the professor's notations on her reading material when she was in law school.)

And just as I was beginning to think, hey--what a compliment--she added, "you both use your friends and family as props in your classes!"  Ah, well.... so much for comparisons with the smart and famous.  Now I see that Jodi Kantor has an article in the Times this morning about Obama's pragmatism as a law professor.  Kantor remarks on Obama's marked-up copies of cases:

[A]s a law professor, he led students through landmark cases from Plessy v. Ferguson to Bush v. Gore. (He sometimes shared his own copies, marked with emphatic underlines and notes in bold, all-caps script.)

Good to know that what was once a subject for apology has now become something an object of study.  This history of the book stuff is everywhere!  Meanwhile, I look forward to Souter's history of Weare--some of my most favorite works of history are micro-histories of New England towns (makes you appreciate the value of probate records--and about those and one small town in rural Alabama I will be talking soon).  Of course, I'm partitial to other forms of micro-histories, like histories of a single day ....

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 03, 2009 (boomark / email).