In follow-up to my earlier post on the work habits of Justice David Souter, the Harvard Law Review’s December 2025 issue includes a collection of memorials by former clerks and colleagues. More about his judicial philosophy than on his routines and habits. Worth reading.
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Justice David Souter
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Recent Article: Obligation and Duty – Two Things or One?
In Obligation and Duty – Two Things or One?, Lionel Smith examines whether obligations and duties are fully synonymous under Quebec civil law. He argues that they are not, saying that obligations are a subset of duties: every obligation is a duty, but not every duty is an obligation. He suggests this distinction is also present in English common law.
I remain skeptical of the extension to English common law. While lawyers routinely speak in terms of duties rather than obligations, it is not clear that this reflects a conceptual distinction rather than habit.
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Work Habits of Justice David Souter
Yale Law Journal recently had several articles as tributes from former law clerks of Justice Souter. Some interesting work habits of Justice Souter:
- He went to chambers seven days a week and often stayed late into the night. Yet he did not ask or expect his clerks to stay late or work weekends.
- He insisted on reviewing every death-penalty case himself and reaching his own conclusions. He told clerks not to tell him how other Justices voted, even if his vote could not change the outcome.
- He capped bench memos at two pages.
- He knew the names and backgrounds of every employee at the Court.
- He wore the same suits for decades; Sunday “casual” meant a two-piece suit instead of three.
- He would not turn on the lights in his office until the last rays of sun were gone; he rarely flew and preferred driving between Washington and Weare, New Hampshire in an Volkswagen.
- Books were the main indulgence: catalog orders, towering piles in chambers, and eventually so many at home that the house could not bear their weight.
- He ate the same lunch daily: yogurt and an apple, down to the core.
- He didn’t use a computer. He wrote by hand, often indecipherably, and avoided electronic communication.
- The time he was forced into contact with the dreaded internet—when the Court heard its first case about online pornography. He needed a crash course on what websites were. Seated between two librarians as his instructors, the unsuspecting Justice was told to type into the search bar a (deceptively) harmless-sounding web address. He was so appalled at what appeared onscreen—and mortified in the presence of those librarians—that he resolved not to go on the internet ever again.
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The Story of David and the Godfather
After rereading the story of David in 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, and the first part of 1 Kings, and reading David Wolpe’s book David: The Divided Heart, it seems that the Godfather films (and presumably the novel, which I have not yet read) mirror the story of David in striking ways.
In no particular order: (1) David falls for Bathsheba / Michael falls for Apollonia in Sicily (the “thunderbolt”), (2) David eventually becomes king after Saul and the rest of Saul’s house fall away / Vito Corleone rises after Don Fanucci is killed in America and later returns to Sicily to kill Don Ciccio, (3) David’s years in exile harden him and teach him to act more forcefully / Michael’s exile in Sicily similarly changes him, (4) David’s son Absalom fights for succession to the throne, acting out of a sense of entitlement / Fredo resents being “stepped over” and betrays Michael, (5) David’s longtime general Joab eventually throws his support behind Adonijah instead of David’s son Solomon / Vito’s longtime capo Tessio switches sides against Vito’s son Michael, (6) Solomon does not initially push himself to become king / Michael is initially hesitant to take over the family business, (7) at the end of David’s life, he tells Solomon which enemies to watch out for and how to deal with them as Solomon takes the throne / at the end of Vito’s life, Vito tells Michael who the real enemies are and how he will recognize the traitor, (8) after Solomon takes over, he has several influential figures killed to stabilize the throne / Michael has several rivals killed during the baptism scene, and (9) Nathan tells David his house is cursed in that “the sword shall never depart from your house” / Michael comes to see that violence will never leave his family by the final scenes of Part II and Part III.
Interesting parallels. Perhaps the story of David is still underrated.
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Benjamin Franklin
After reading Edmund Morgan’s biography of Franklin, rereading Walter Isaacson’s biography, and going back to Franklin’s own writings, I think Franklin is underrated as a writer, traveler, and diplomat. Most self-help books cannot do much better than Poor Richard’s Almanack. He was perhaps the most well-traveled American of his time. He understood the French much better than the better educated John Adams. In his early eighties, he added an entire floor to his house just to be a library, holding some 4,700 books. His familial relationships, however, could have used a little more work.