Former Supreme Court Justice "saddened" by attacks on judiciary

[image]

This was former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's first visit to the University of Minnesota in 19 years. Back in 1987, the University bestowed on her an honorary doctorate. On this night, she appeared to be nursing a cough but she still managed to interject bits of dry humor into her 45-minute talk.

She was deadly serious, however, in her comments about those who attack the independence of the court system. She said, "We hear so about judicial activists ... retaliation, cutting finances for the court. The framers of the Constitution were so careful of the independence of federal judges that they knew that without judges that would or could make unpopular decisions, we would lose the constitutional protection itself." She went on to say that "those concerns are real today."

[image]

No doubt her comments resonated with many in the audience of nearly 4500 people. The crowd included many of Minnesota's legal elite: members of the federal bench, the state appellate courts and district courts were in attendance.

O'Connor, who was a Reagan nominee, served on the nation's highest court for more than 24 years. She resigned this past January. O'Connor earned a reputation for casting the swing vote on a court that could get mired in ideological extremes. But her accomplishments will always be placed in the context that she was the first woman justice of the United States Supreme Court. She said another woman paved the way for her: the first woman to clerk at the Supreme Court, Lucille Loman. O'Connor told the story of how Justice Douglas couldn't find a good law clerk in 1944 because all the top men just out of law school were serving in the military. No one had thought to hire a woman law clerk, until then.

She ran through a litany of other firsts on the High Court: the first African-American Justice, the first Jewish Justice, and even the first semi-pro baseball player. But she made a not-so-subtle reference to earlier disappointment that President Bush did not nominate a woman for O'Connor's seat. She said while the number of women law clerks is up at the Supreme Court to 40%, they are much better represented there then as justices on the High Court where she said the "number has gone down substantially." The lone woman on the Court now is Ruth Bader Ginsberg.