VIII. Other Notables: Justices Who Later Served on the U.S. Supreme Court
In addition to the three Signers of the Declaration of Independence who were justices of the state supreme court and the two
great chief justices, two other notable former members later went on to serve on the United States Supreme Court:
Levi Woodbury and David Hackett Souter.27
Levi Woodbury
Levi Woodbury.
Justice Levi Woodbury was born in Francestown, New Hampshire on December 22, 1789.28
He attended Dartmouth College and graduated in 1802. He went on to study law in Litchfield, Connecticut and was admitted to
the New Hampshire bar in 1812. He practiced in Francestown, N.H. from 1813 until 1816 and served as a judge of the Superior
Court of New Hampshire before being elected Governor of New Hampshire in 1823. He represented the state in the U.S. Senate
from 1825 to 1831, which was followed by his appointment as Secretary of the Navy by Andrew Jackson.
In 1834, Jackson appointed Woodbury as Secretary of the Treasury, a title which he continued to hold through President Martin
Van Buren’s term in office through 1841. He later returned to his position as a Senator of New Hampshire in 1841. In 1845,
Woodbury resigned his seat in the Senate in order to take his seat as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
He was appointed to the position by President Polk and served until his death on September 4, 1851.
David Souter
Left to right: Loretta Kenison, Honorary Chair of the NH Supreme Court Society, Chief Justice John T. Broderick, former
Justice David Souter, NH Supreme Court Society President Mary Susan Leahy and former US Senator Warren Rudman.
Photo: David Walowitz.
David H. Souter was born on September 17, 1939 in Melrose, Massachusetts. At age eleven, Souter moved to Weare, New Hampshire
where he spent much of his childhood on his family’s farm. He attended Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire before
attending Harvard College where he graduated in 1961. He then studied at Magdalen College in Oxford from 1961 to 1963 as a
Rhodes Scholar. When he returned to the United States he studied law at Harvard Law School and graduated in 1966.
He returned to New Hampshire to practice, working as an associate at Orr and Reno in Concord. He then entered public service
in 1968 as Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire. He worked his way up to Attorney General of New Hampshire by 1976.
Souter was appointed Associate Justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court in 1978 and then Associate Justice of the New
Hampshire Supreme Court in 1983. He became a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1990.
Souter was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to the Supreme Court of the United States and was officially sworn in on
October 8, 1990 as the 105th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Souter retired from the U.S. Supreme Court at the
end of June 2009 and returned to New Hampshire where he is active in law related education.
27 Justices Woodbury and Souter are not the only U.S. Supreme Court justices with New Hampshire connections.
In fact, there are five such justices with links of varying degree to New Hampshire – two of whom served as Chief Justices
of the High Court. In addition to Woodbury and Souter, New Hampshire can claim at least partial credit for Salmon Chase
(born in Cornish and educated at Dartmouth College, appointed by President Lincoln in 1864 after a career in Ohio politics
and service as Treasury Secretary); Nathan Clifford (born in Rumney and schooled at Haverhill Academy and the New Hampton
Literary Institute before going on to a political career in Maine. Clifford served both as U.S. Attorney General and as a
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, having been appointed by President James Buchanan); and Harlan Fiske Stone (born in
Chesterfield, after a career in New York practicing and teaching law, Stone was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by
President Calvin Coolidge. Stone was elevated to Chief Justice by President Franklin D. Roosevelt).
28 These biographies were researched by college student Nicole Nunnari for a proposed exhibition (UNH April 2009).
