How do judges of the New Hampshire Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Hampshire Supreme Court / Joined 1983 / Served to 1990

David Hackett Souter

Justice, New Hampshire Supreme Court

David Hackett Souter was a Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. He earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1983–1990 · 7 yrs
Education: Harvard 1961 · Harvard

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	New Hampshire Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University	B.A.	1961
Harvard University	LL.B.	1966

Judicial Record

In our data, Souter authored 181 published opinions for the court (1983–1990), plus 15 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Centronics Corp. v. Genicom Corp. (128 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 207 of these were attributed to Souter by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1989	Centronics Corp. v. Genicom Corp.†	132 N.H. 133	128
1986	Vermont Mutual Insurance v. Malcolm†	128 N.H. 521	109
1987	Daigle v. City of Portsmouth†	129 N.H. 561	103
1986	Smith v. Cote· Concurrence†	128 N.H. 231	91
1988	Panto v. Moore Business Forms, Inc.†	130 N.H. 730	90
1988	Keenan v. Fearon†	130 N.H. 494	71
1988	Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc.· Dissent†	131 N.H. 6	68
1985	State v. Koppel· Dissent†	127 N.H. 286	65
1986	Rockhouse Mountain Property Owners Ass'n v. Town of Conway†	127 N.H. 593	62
1984	Duchesnaye v. Munro Entersprises, Inc.†	125 N.H. 244	57
1985	Hydraform Products Corp. v. American Steel & Aluminum Corp.†	127 N.H. 187	54
1985	State v. Maya†	126 N.H. 590	50
1988	Lempke v. Dagenais· Dissent†	130 N.H. 782	49
1987	State v. Valenzuela†	130 N.H. 175	46
1985	State v. Faragi†	127 N.H. 1	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 207 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the New Hampshire Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was David Hackett Souter on?: David Hackett Souter was a Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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7 years on the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).