Singlehood
Justice Souter: A Lifelong Bachelor Who Followed His Heart
Personal Perspective: Was David Souter old-fashioned or a man of the future?
Posted May 13, 2025 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
David Souter, the 150th U.S. Supreme Court Justice, died on May 8, 2025 at the age of 85. I’ve read dozens of obituaries and essays about him since then. Just about every one noted that he had never married. Some called him old-fashioned and reclusive. They noted that he had no immediate survivors.
I’d call him grounded, authentic, beloved, and probably single at heart.
For people who are single at heart, single life is their best life—their most meaningful, fulfilling, and authentic life. They are happy and flourishing because they are single, not in spite of it. I don’t know if Souter was single at heart, but his life exemplified some of the key characteristics of those who are, such as valuing freedom, treasuring solitude, and living authentically.
Recluse or Lover of Solitude?
When Souter first arrived in D.C., he was ranked first on a list of the 10 most eligible bachelors. He could have been the toast of the town, attending the most prestigious dinner parties and the glitziest gatherings. But he wasn’t interested. He didn’t like giving lectures or interviews either.
Instead, when court was in session, he worked seven days a week, often 12 hours a day. He usually ate alone at lunch and jogged alone at night. When the court recessed for the summer, he drove back to New Hampshire, where he lived alone in a farmhouse that had been in his family for several generations.
It was reported in the New York Times that Souter told a colleague, after his first term, why he returned to New Hampshire for the summer: “I have wanted as much as possible to be alone to come to terms in my own heart with what is happening to me.”
But it wasn’t just that first summer. He returned home every summer, enjoying nature, hiking, reading, serving his community, and reuniting with old friends. He wasn’t a recluse to those friends or to others he met as a Rhodes Scholar and throughout his legal career.
Like everyone who is single at heart, Souter cherished his solitude. But that didn’t mean that he was a recluse or friendless.
Old-Fashioned or Man of the Future?
Souter did not have a computer in his chambers and did not watch TV. He wrote his dissent to Bush v. Gore on a legal pad using a fountain pen. He preferred natural light and didn’t turn the lights on until it became too dark to see.
Those preferences and others were the basis for so many of the claims that he was old-fashioned. In the Washington Post, Souter was described as “a modest jurist from a bygone era.” A professor quoted in Souter's New York Times obituary said, “Observers disagree about whether David Souter is a man of the 18th century set down in the 21st century or merely a man of the 19th century.”
I’d say neither. As a lifelong bachelor who hewed to his own true north rather than following the conventions of his day, he is our future. He could have been unconventional in ways that seemed avant-garde rather than old-fashioned. That’s not what mattered. What was important was that he lived authentically.
If Souter had been a conventional Washington insider, he’d have been at the parties, on the lecture circuit, and in the media. He’d have been attached to a laptop and glued to a cell phone. But that’s not who he was. Like so many other people who are unapologetically single at a time when couples are still celebrated and esteemed, he knew who he was and lived accordingly.
Souter is also our future demographically. It was once uncommon to be a lifelong single person. It is becoming less so all the time.
No Immediate Survivors?
Souter was an only child who had no children. His mother lived to see him appointed to the Supreme Court in 1990 and then died in 1995. His father had died in 1976. In a way, then, the obituaries were correct in noting that he had no immediate survivors.
But what a narrow way of thinking about the people left behind. Souter had friends who cherished him, some who had been in his life for decades (longer than many marriages) and who will miss him terribly. He has surviving clerks who adore him and will continue his legacy. They will go on to have their own clerks, in a continuing line, almost like grandchildren, only they may have the power to change the nation with their decisions.
As more people stay single longer and often for life, and as they speak up for themselves and for one another, the section of obituaries reporting on survivors will, I hope, come to reflect that. Single people, especially those who are single at heart, will bring with them their more open-hearted understanding of who counts as a significant other and what counts as a life well lived.
