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.