Roberts And Souter Exchange Letters Of Admiration
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the departing Justice David H. Souter exchanged gushing letters of admiration this morning. As Souter got ready to take the first available transport back home to New Hampshire, he and Roberts both read their lovey-dovey, poetry-quoting letters from the bench as the court concluded its business for the term.
“We understand your desire to trade white marble for White Mountains and return to your land ‘of easy wind and downy flake’,” Roberts wrote, quoting the poet Robert Frost. The other justices and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor all signed on to his note.
Souter responded by reading his own letter, in which he told Roberts that his “generous letter has touched me more than I can say.” He then went on to quote Frost too, noting that his life on the bench was “the ideal of the life engaged, ‘where love and need are one’.”
Lawrence Hurley 