Justice David H. Souter, who died last week At the age of 85, few public performances appeared after he retired in 2009 from the Supreme Court. When he did, he stayed away from politics.
But an apparently boring question from a public member in a New Hampshire Arts Center in 2012 provoked A passionate response of the righteousness that was the opposite of exciting.
He said that he was worried that public ignorance about how the US government works, enabling an authoritarian leader to appear and claim total power. “That is the way democracy dies,” he said.
“An ignorant people can never remain a free people,” said justice. “Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.”
Not understanding how power is assigned among the three branches of the government, he said, leaves a void that invites a strong man. After a crisis, he said: “One person will come forward and say:” Give me total power, and I will solve this problem. “
That was four years before Donald J. Trump, because he first accepted Republican Presidential Nomination, said something strikingly similar: “Nobody knows the system better than me, that’s why I can only repair it.”
There is no reason to think that Justice Souter Mr. Trump had in mind when he spoke. Among the things that justice did not pay attention to were real estate and reality television of New York.
In his comments in 2012, during An interview with an hour With Margaret Warner of “PBS Newshour” before more than 1,300 people in Concord, NH, Justice was basket in a lovable mood, but he gave guarded answers. He did not enjoy public attention and once a colleague told a colleague that “in a perfect world would never give a different speech, address, talk, reading or whatever, as long as I live.”
He made an exception for Mrs. Warner, who had covered him for the Concord Monitor when he became general -general in New Hampshire’s attorney in 1976. But there was little reason to think he would say something.
Then a woman from Windham, NH, lobed a soft softball of a question: what should schools do to produce socially involved students?
Justice Souter was animated. He warned the audience that he might talk for a while, and later he thought he made it clear that the question was not planted.
“I’ll start with the bottom line,” he said. “I don’t believe that there is a problem with American politics and American public life that is nowadays more important than the ubiquitous civil ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of the government.”
He remembered his high school days, in Concord. “There were two required citizen courses,” he said. “When we came from high school, we may not have known much, but at least we had a basic knowledge of the structure of the US government.”
Justice Souter, a Rhodes -scholar with a deep knowledge of history, felt a parallel.
“That is how the Roman republic fell,” he said, with Augustus an autocratic emperor by promising to restore old values.
The rise of such a strong man was accelerated, Justice Souter said, by public ignorance. The lack of knowledge of Americans means, he said, that “the day will come that someone will come forward, and we, and the government will in fact say:” Take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do. “
In the rest of the conversation, Justice gave Souter cautious answers to questions about what was then recent decisions of the Supreme Court.
A student asked how he would have voted A challenge for the affordable care actPresident Barack Obama’s healthcare legislation. “I’m going to pass it,” said Justice Souter.
Mrs. Warner asked about The Citizens United Campaign Finance CaseIt was decided a few months after he left the court. “I’m going to take a partial pass about that,” he said, because “you can’t enter that subject and explore it completely without getting into politics.” He may also have been reluctant to discuss the case because, as Jeffrey Tobin reported in the New Yorker, He had written a destructive concept -district opinions that ensured that the case was argued a second time.
Justice Souter said that he was “certainly not repentant” about joining a different opinion of the court 2008 decides to acknowledge an individual right to possess weapons.
As the event approaches, Mrs. Warner Justice Souter asked to say more about the threat to democracy.
“I don’t think we lost it,” said justice. “I think it’s in danger. I am not a pessimist, but I am not an optimist about the future of American democracy.”
“We are still in the game,” he added, “but we have serious work to do and serious work is being neglected.”
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