COLUMN ONE : Souter: A Life Rooted in the Law : Court nominee’s world is deliberately narrow, with few interests. But his mind is broad and deep and, to everyone but himself, largely unknown.

At the foot of a dirt dead-end road sits the Souter family farmhouse, an unkempt old pile under a siege of waist-high weeds. The brown paint is peeling and moss spreads on the bare wood, windows sag under years of dirt, cobwebs cling to the door and an ancient bird’s nest perches above the porch light. There are five lightning rods along the roof, no television antenna.

Inside, no piece of furniture is less than half a century old. The ancient refrigerator is powered by an electric motor on the top and the antique stove has white cast-iron handles. Boxes are piled to the ceiling and the study is a warren of magazines, phonograph albums and books--reference books, novels, oversized art books, books on foreign lands and long-ago battles, books of laws, books about laws and books about the men who make laws.

It’s hard to believe anyone lives in this creaking museum, except perhaps an aged hermit counting out his days rummaging through faded numbers of Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post. Yet this wreck of a house raised and still shelters U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Hackett Souter, President Bush’s 50-year-old nominee for the Supreme Court.

The house and its study give some clues to this man who may sit the rest of his life on the nation’s highest tribunal. According to longtime friends and neighbors, Souter is a highly disciplined man who has kept a daily diary for 40 years but who cares little for earthly goods, for travel, for restaurants and receptions. Mundane matters--like cutting the grass--move him not at all. When he is not reading case law at work, he is reading at home. He relaxes by hiking the 4,000-foot granite peaks of New Hampshire’s mountains. He wondered aloud the other day why anyone would want to leave New Hampshire.

Souter’s life is deliberately narrow, encompassing only work, church, the historical society and a hospital board.

But his mind is broad and deep and, to everyone but himself, largely unknown.

He eats a hearty breakfast but takes the same lunch to work every day--an apple and a carton of yogurt. He buys the yogurt in bulk and washes out his luncheon container every evening to use again. He drives unwashed Volkswagens. He appears not to own a topcoat, wearing only a suit and a scarf even in the frigid New Hampshire winter.

Souter isn’t merely frugal, his best friend says, he’s cheap. “He’ll squeeze a nickel until the buffalo groans,” said fellow New Hampshire attorney Tom Rath.

He is a devout Episcopalian with broad tastes in literature, art and music. He is a devoted son who visits his mother weekly at a nursing home in nearby Concord. His social life is non-existent, according to a close friend. He is a lifelong bachelor who in the past maintained relationships with women, but his interest in dating appears to have faded over the years as he has become more consumed by the law.

He says he’s still looking for the right woman, said Nellie Perrigo, a neighbor and self-described second mother to the nominee, but “he wants all his time untouched for his job. I don’t think he’ll marry now.”

Finding Hope

According to all who know him, Souter is as austere in his approach to the law as he is in his personal life. In this, both liberals and conservatives find hope. Liberals see in him a strong streak of Yankee libertarianism, a “live free or die” philosophy that firmly opposes judges who dictate morality. Conservatives are hopeful that Souter will remain the restrained jurist he has been for a decade, and will not seek to use the court as an instrument of social engineering.

He has excelled everywhere he’s been, and yet he has never lost his unassuming, almost shy mien. He embodies perfectly the reserved New Englander who, when he first meets you, just stands there staring at his shoes, and, when he really gets to know you, stares at your shoes.

Souter was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Melrose, Mass., the only child of Joseph and Helen Hackett Souter. He spent his summers as a young boy at his maternal grandparents’ farm in Weare.

After the Hacketts died, Joseph and Helen moved up to the farm when David was 11 years old, trading the faster pace of the Boston area for the solitude of the north.

Joseph Souter worked as a mid-level loan officer at the New Hampshire Savings Bank in Concord, which is 11 miles down the old Concord Stage Road from the Souter farm. Neighbor Howard Ineson, who has known the family since the Souters moved to Weare 40 years ago, recalled Souter senior as “very quiet, reserved, conservative; a perfect gentleman.”

The father was not particularly prominent in town nor as wealthy as most bankers. The bulk of the family money apparently went into savings for college for young David.

Early Promise

Teachers at the Weare school immediately recognized the sixth-grader’s promise. Nellie Perrigo, who taught at the school, said the small school obviously could not contain David’s bounding intelligence. Because the town high school had no college preparatory classes, the village paid his tuition to the much larger Concord High School, where he was described in the yearbook as “very hard working and studious.” Souter was voted “most sophisticated” and “most likely to succeed” in the class of 1957.

The yearbook also said Souter liked “giving and attending scandalous parties” but everyone says that was meant with tongue in cheek.

Like all 16-year-olds, he ached to get his driver’s license. When he finally got his permit, he used the family car chiefly to take Perrigo’s elderly mother on outings searching for antiques for her shop.

He was bookish, church-going and unathletic--what kids today would probably call a nerd or a dweeb--but “never prissy,” Perrigo said. He carried a leather briefcase to high school and legend has it that the only time he ever got in trouble was staying past closing time at the local historical society.

One summer in high school, Souter worked at Les and Barbara Knox’s farm, about a mile away from his family’s place across Sugar Hill Road. One day, Les Knox sent him out with an old farmhand to clear some woods. At the end of the day, Knox asked how young Souter had fared.

“Well,” the hand replied, “he don’t know much, but he’s willin’.”

School Romance

In high school, Souter dated Ann Grant, daughter of a local state court judge, and the relationship continued after Souter left to attend Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass. It is unclear whether the two were ever engaged, but friends say the romance eventually faded after Souter was graduated from Harvard and headed for Oxford University in England on a prestigious Rhodes scholarship.

As an undergraduate, Souter majored in philosophy but his interest in the law was already evident. His senior thesis was on the judicial philosophy of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and some friends, detecting Souter’s unspoken ambition, used to jokingly call him Mr. Justice Souter.

At Oxford’s Magdalen College, Souter lightened up a bit, according to fellow Rhodes Scholar and law school classmate William Bardel, now with the Wall Street investment house Shearson Lehman Hutton.

“He had a wry sense of humor, he enjoyed a party, having a pint of beer. He was very sociable even if he was wearing a three-piece suit,” Bardel said.

“What I remember is David, courtly, very gentlemanly, with his hands in the pockets telling stories and especially doing imitations with his New England accent,” he added. “I’m pretty sure also that he climbed in a few windows with me after midnight when they locked the college gates.”

Souter did not serve in the military because his Rhodes scholarship extended his student deferment when his draft call would have come in 1961 or 1962. An Army official noted that draft quotas in those years were relatively low and usually filled by 18- and 19-year-olds without deferments so Souter’s case was not unusual.

‘Serious, Intense’

He returned to Cambridge in 1963 to attend Harvard Law School, where classmates said he was not argumentative and seldom volunteered to speak in class. A member of Souter’s class of 1966, Kent Bishop of Atlanta, remembered him as “a very serious, intense person” whose few outside activities included membership in a non-exclusive dining club called Lincoln’s Inn.

Others remembered that Souter was one of only a handful of classmates who regularly attended religious services and none could recall Souter’s talking of traveling anywhere other than back to New Hampshire during breaks.

By contrast with his Rhodes scholarship and his Phi Beta Kappa standing as an undergraduate, Souter was a relatively undistinguished law student.

Souter was not chosen for the Law Review--the school’s most eagerly sought-after honor--and in a class where nearly one in four students graduated with cum laude or better, Souter did not.

“If there had been a list made of likely Supreme Court nominees, he would not have been on it,” one classmate said. “He was just a quiet brain sitting there,” another said.

After graduating from law school, Souter returned to Concord and signed on with the law firm of Orr & Reno. Malcolm McLane, a partner at the firm who had helped Souter secure his Rhodes scholarship, said the firm was delighted to land him.

Charles Leahy, another partner at Orr & Reno, said Souter soon chafed at the scut work of the “small country law firm,” which chiefly handled tax matters, business disputes and some family law.

“He wanted to break out, to be in charge of something, to be responsible for his own outcomes,” Leahy said.

When Warren B. Rudman, then the No. 2 man at the New Hampshire attorney general’s office, offered Souter a job as a deputy attorney general, he jumped at it.

“Rudman recognized within a week that he had someone of superior abilities,” Leahy said. Within a year, Souter was head of the department’s criminal division and shortly afterwards was named deputy attorney general when Rudman was elevated to the top spot.

When Rudman left in 1976 to enter private practice, he lobbied for his protege to fill his unexpired term. Arch-conservative Gov. Meldrim Thomson happily complied, said Rudman, now a U.S. senator who was instrumental in getting Souter named to the high court.

Working for Thomson forced Souter into defending some extreme stands, such as the governor’s order that state flags be flown at half-staff on Good Friday in honor of Christ’s crucifixion. The state, under Souter, also unsuccessfully tried to prosecute a man who defaced the words “live free or die” on his New Hampshire license plate, saying the words conflicted with his religious beliefs.

Leahy said Souter privately disagreed with both positions, but he articulated them in court because he was obligated to as the governor’s lawyer.

“Given our ultra-conservative politics, he was pushed into a lot of fake issues and red herrings. He had to defend this business about flying the flag at half-staff and some other damn-fool right-wing causes.

“He privately felt that a lot of these things were not of such importance that they should consume court time. But he was also aware of his role in our political system,” Leahy said.

But on the most contentious issue of the decade in New Hampshire--the Seabrook nuclear power station--Souter stood foursquare behind the state’s conservative leaders.

Supervises Arrests

Rowdy bands of demonstrators repeatedly tried to stop construction on the plant in 1977 through a variety of civil disobedience tactics. During several of these demonstrations, which were well planned and publicized long in advance, Souter set up a command post in the plant manager’s office and personally supervised arrests.

He took it upon himself also to argue before a local magistrate that demonstrators should be sentenced to jail rather than be given suspended sentences.

“He didn’t like to delegate important cases,” said an attorney who worked with Souter in the attorney general’s office. “He insisted on being on the scene himself (at Seabrook) while the protesters howled outside.”

In a pattern that would be repeated later on other issues, he did not address the merits of nuclear power, only the more narrow issue of whether protesters were justified in breaking the law to challenge it. Souter felt strongly that they were not.

Leahy to this day said he does not know whether Souter approves or disapproves of nuclear power. “But he feels strongly about public safety and orderly political protest. This was a deliberate and active violation of the law. David finds that type of thing deeply disturbing,” Leahy said.

Despite his central role in quashing the Seabrook protests, the short, gray-suited attorney general never became a lightning rod for the anti-nuclear forces. Nor did he acquire a reputation as a harsh law-and-order official.

Perhaps in another state he would have become a conservative icon or a liberal bogeyman. But not in flinty New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, David Souter is a moderate.

That explains the elaborate praise he wins from Democrats and liberals in the state. “He is clearly an intellectual giant,” said Concord attorney Kate Hanna, a former clerk for one of Souter’s fellow justices on the state Supreme Court. “He stands out among all the other human beings I know. He is just a splendid, splendid jurist.”

State Sen. Susan McLane, a Democrat and a leader of the state’s abortion rights movement, also was unstinting in her admiration. She and her husband, Malcolm McLane, are personal friends as well as colleagues of the nominee.

“He is one of the most brilliant people I know. A fine, fine person,” she said. The McLanes occasionally have Souter over for dinner and she described him as a droll, if low-key conversationalist. He enjoys food and wine, she said, and always sends a graceful thank you note.

Again, Souter never revealed to his friends his views on a central issue--this time abortion. “I kick myself that I never asked him,” Susan McLane said.

Souter’s rare critics detect a lack of compassion in this cerebral, compulsively disciplined man. They say he has exhibited little concern for minorities, the poor and the disabled, both on the court and off. His extracurricular work has associated him with hospitals, historical societies, art galleries and a hiking club.

But George Langwasser, a Hopkinton, N. H., banker who served on the vestry of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church with fellow parishioner Souter, called him a “very caring person.” He escorts an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman to and from Sunday morning services every week and has been generous with his time on church boards and committees.

Langwasser said Souter brought his judicial qualities to church meetings, sitting quietly as opinions were aired and then rendering his opinion. “He had the ability to cut through everything that was said and offer a solution,” he said.

“If they’re looking for a skeleton in his closet or a smoking pistol, they won’t find it. He’s above reproach,” Langwasser added. “The only thing they can question is his judicial philosophy. He’s not going to bring liberal ideas or social change to the court. He’ll bring logic.”

Cardozo Parallel

His most ardent backers compare Souter with another reclusive, monk-like bachelor who achieved fame for his legal brilliance--Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, the “hermit philosopher” of the court from 1932 until 1938--who lived most of his life with his unmarried sister and was eulogized when he died as a “reticent, sensitive and almost mystical personality.”

Although Souter’s admirers mean the parallel to be a compliment, the comparison between the two serves also to illustrate the rather narrow range of issues on which Souter has written in his career so far.

By the time Cardozo reached the Supreme Court, he had produced several books on legal theory and, from his seat on New York’s high court, had written decisions that shaped the law nationally.

By contrast, Souter, as a member of the Supreme Court of a small, relatively homogeneous state, has had virtually no impact on the law outside New Hampshire. He has written more than 200 published opinions on the New Hampshire court, but nothing else, not even a law review article, except for a short piece commemorating a former state judge. Although he currently sits on the federal appeals court in New England, he was only confirmed this spring, has heard just one day of arguments and has not yet written a decision.

On the New Hampshire Supreme Court, to which Souter was named in 1983 by then-Gov. John H. Sununu, who is now President Bush’s chief of staff, Souter was an “intense questioner” who “absolutely dominated oral arguments,” said James E. Duggan, the state’s chief appellate defender, who appeared often before the court representing criminal defendants.

Souter, Duggan said, was notably conservative but “not some crazy, right-wing law-and-order judge.”

Former law clerks said that Souter’s questions dominated debate in chambers among the court’s five members and that his line of reasoning often shaped opinions that were written by his colleagues. After hearing all the arguments on a case, Souter would retire to the solitude of his office and work long hours crafting his decisions.

The style of those decisions is eloquent, although at times turgid because Souter felt compelled to tie up every strand of his reasoning and because they so often concern relatively mundane matters--zoning appeals, disputes over state benefit programs and routine criminal cases.

“About the only thing you can tell by reading New Hampshire Supreme Court opinions is that you wouldn’t want to be a New Hampshire Supreme Court judge,” quipped New York University law professor Burt Neuborne.

The opinions contain few flourishes. They bespeak a mind well-versed in interpreting legal rules but little interested in finding new ways to adapt them to changed circumstances. In short, they are conservative.

Critics who say Souter’s conservatism involves a lack of “compassion” include Bruce E. Friedman, who directs the civil practice clinic at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord and often represents needy plaintiffs in state courts.

In one case, in which Friedman was involved, for example, Souter ruled against two elderly brothers who sued the state after they were denied unemployment benefits.

New Hampshire rules allow unemployment benefits only for those who work full time. The two brothers argued that rule unfairly discriminated against the old and the handicapped, but Souter disagreed.

Women’s organizations objected to a decision Souter wrote in a rape case. The decision allowed defense lawyers to question a rape victim about allegations that she had spent much of an afternoon making sexual advances to numerous men in a bar before leaving the place with one man whom she later accused of attacking her. Civil libertarians, however, supported that decision, saying the questions were needed to ensure the defendant a fair trial.

Abortion rights activists have spent many hours analyzing Souter’s brief comments in a medical malpractice case involving abortion, finding that it sheds little light on his views of abortion.

Souter joined an opinion requiring doctors to test for birth defects in cases where a fetus may be at risk. The opinion acknowledged that abortions might result and noted that the Supreme Court has ruled that women have that right. Souter then wrote a brief separate opinion expressing concern for the plight of doctors who may have moral or religious qualms about abortion.

Other opinions indicate that if Souter had been on the high court for the last 25 years, he almost certainly would have voted against many of the precedent-setting decisions that were supported by Justice William J. Brennan Jr., whom he has been nominated to replace.

In one case, Souter wrote of the need to determine the meaning of a part of the state constitution “as it was understood when the framers proposed it and the people ratified it” in 1784, a sharp contrast with Brennan, who spoke often of the need to understand constitutional provisions with an eye to what “the words of the text mean in our time.”

In another case, Souter wrote of the importance of “ensuring that the executive and judicial branches concede the Legislature’s power to act within its constitutional purview,” a sentiment often voiced by conservatives who have accused the federal courts of overrunning legislative powers.

But if the record indicates that Souter would not have supported many liberal decisions of the past, his writings give virtually no indication of whether he would now vote to overturn them.

“He is by temperament thoughtful and skeptical, a show-me type of guy. He is conservative in every sense of the word,” said Leahy, who has followed Souter’s career for 25 years.

“His approach is, ‘I’m on a firm rock--the constitution, a statute, a precedent. If you want to move me off this rock, you have to show me why it should happen.’ ”

Times staff writers Robert L. Jackson, David Lauter, Don Shannon and Marlene Cimons contributed to this story.