It can't have happened often (if at all) that a retired
Justice would decide a new case based on his reading of an opinion
in which he dissented.
Yet that is precisely what happened in Thayer v.
Worcester, 755 F.3d 60 (1st Cir. 2014) (Souter, J.), a First
Circuit decision from earlier this year in which the now retired
Justice Souter, writing for that court, upheld Worcester's
panhandling law using Justice Kennedy's analysis from International Society for Krishna
Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672 (1992).
Lee was the latest decision (in a series of three) from
the Supreme Court dealing with anti-panhandling laws and one in
which Justice Souter had dissented.
The Seventh Circuit highlighted this historic twist recently in
Norton v. Springfield, No. 13-3581 (7th Cir. Sept. 25,
2014), where that court considered whether the City of
Springfield's panhandling ordinance, which prohibited
panhandling in the city's "downstown historic
district" and defined
