Former President George H. W. Bush, who died peacefully Friday night, made far-reaching changes to the Supreme Court, appointing two justices to the nation\u2019s\u2026<\/b>
\nFormer President George H. W. Bush, who died peacefully Friday night, made far-reaching changes to the Supreme Court, appointing two justices to the nation\u2019s highest judicial tribunal and clearing the way for three more.
His appointments helped set the trajectory of the nascent conservative legal establishment, and permanently altered Republican perceptions of the judicial selection process.
Bush 41\u2019s legacy pick was Justice Clarence Thomas, who has served on the court for over 25 years. Thomas\u2019 writings as a justice have done significant work toward articulating a coherent conservative legal philosophy, which has since captured wide swaths of the federal judiciary.
The justice\u2019s influence is far reaching as a matter of both scholarship and personnel \u2014 his acolytes now populate the federal bench and President Donald Trump\u2019s White House.
Trump has appointed 22 Thomas clerks to senior positions in his administration or the federal courts as of August. One observer called Thomas\u2019 clerks \u201c the legal brain trust of the Trump administration,\u201d while another bemoaned the \u201c Clarence Thomas takeover \u201d of the executive and judicial branches.
However, Thomas\u2019 confirmation amidst allegations of sexual misconduct permanently sullied his standing in liberal eyes, and some legal commentators believe Bush\u2019s pick ultimately diminished the court .
\u201cIt is with deep and profound sadness that Virginia and I learned of the passing of President Bush,\u201d Thomas said in a Saturday statement. \u201cI was honored to be nominated by him to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit and the Supreme Court of the United States. Both he and Mrs. Bush were the essence of decency and kindness then and throughout the years. Virginia and I extend our thoughts and prayers to the entire Bush family.\u201d
Bush\u2019s other appointment to the high court was former Justice David Souter, then a little-known judge from New Hampshire. Though Souter would prove a diligent, highly respected jurist, he was an enormous disappointment to conservatives, as he voted reliably with the Supreme Court\u2019s liberal bloc. (RELATED: Here Are The Harrowing Details Of How George H. W. Bush Earned The Distinguished Flying Cross)
Souter rejected formal interpretative methods like Thomas\u2019 originalism, in favor of an approach that acknowledged ambiguity or contradiction in law and looked to human experience to resolve it. Speaking at Harvard in 2010, he summarized his view with a favorable quotation of former Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: \u201cCertainty generally is illusion and repose is not our destiny.\u201d
Court watchers believe Souter became alienated from his conservative colleagues as time progressed. A 2012 New Yorker report claims that Chief Justice John Roberts went to great lengths to ensure that Souter\u2019s draft dissent in the Citizen\u2019s United case \u2014 which struck down limits on corporate campaign expenditures \u2014 was never published. Souter retired in 2009 and was succeeded by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice David Souter poses for an official picture with other justices at the U. S. Supreme Court in Washington, Oct. 31,2005. (Photo: Reuters)
Bitterness still lingers among Republicans over the Souter nomination, such that many conservatives give no quarter to prospective judicial nominees whose views are even somewhat obscure. As a general matter, most Republican appointees to the Supreme Court and the appeals courts have been reliably conservative since the Souter nomination, a shift prompted in part by the demands for ideological allegiance Souter\u2019s appointment provoked.
A patrician New Englander like the late former president, Souter noted Bush\u2019s passing with a gracious statement Saturday.
\u201cThe president was a gentleman who showed me great kindness, and for as long as memory serves I\u2019ll think back on him kindly and gratefully in return,\u201d Souter said. (RELATED: Conservatives Back Disabled Death Row Inmate At Supreme Court)
Bush appointed three other sitting justices to the federal courts. In the closing months of his administration, he nominated Roberts \u2014 then an attorney in the solicitor general\u2019s office \u2014 for a seat on the D. C. Circuit. The Democrat-controlled Senate never took up the nomination, which lapsed with the inauguration of former President Bill Clinton in January 1993.
The elder Bush\u2019s son, former President George W. Bush, would make Roberts chief justice of the United States in 2005. Bush senior was an \u201cextraordinary American patriot and fundamentally decent man,\u201d the chief said in a statement Saturday.
Bush 41 also appointed Justice Samuel Alito to the Third U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he would serve until his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2006.
Perhaps unexpectedly, Sotomayor was also a George H. W. Bush appointee. The former president nominated her to serve as a trial judge on a federal court in New York City. The White House generally relies on senators to recommend candidates for judgeships in their states, and presidents are often deferential to these choices as a matter of tradition. Sotomayor had champions in former New York Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, and Al D\u2019Amato, a centrist Republican, leading to her appointment by George H. W. Bush in 1991.
Six years later in 1997 she was elevated to the 2nd U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. An appointment to the Supreme Court followed in 2009.
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