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semiotic_pirateShock. Denial. Anger. Depression. Acceptance.
What is this?! I go out to walkabout nature, and what happens??? (Yes I know a lot of you have already posted about this, but I didn't see anyone with the NPR article coverage yet.) And just yesterday I bought a T-shirt on Cafe Press put together by someone that had a quote of her dissent on the KELO case. ::sigh::
Is it the end of the world as we know it?!
A Letter of Resignation
The text of Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement letter to President Bush:
Dear President Bush:
This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor. It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure.
Sincerely,
Sandra Day O'Connor
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and a key swing vote on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, said Friday she is retiring.
O'Connor, 75, said she expects to leave before the start of the court's next term in October, or whenever the Senate confirms her successor. There was no immediate word from the White House on who might be nominated to replace O'Connor.
It's been 11 years since the last opening on the court, one of the longest uninterrupted stretches in history. O'Connor's decision gives Bush his first opportunity to appoint a justice.
"This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor. It has been a great privilege indeed to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure."
O'Connor's appointment came amid speculation that the aging court would soon have a vacancy. But speculation has most recently focused on Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, and suffering from thyroid cancer. Rehnquist has offered no public clue as to his plans.
The White House has refused to comment on any possible nominees, or whether Bush would name a woman to succeed O'Connor. Her departure leaves Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the only other woman among the current justices.
Possible replacements include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and federal courts of appeals judges J. Michael Luttig, John Roberts, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Michael McConnell, Emilio Garza and James Harvie Wilkinson III. Others mentioned are former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, lawyer Miguel Estrada and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson, but Bush's pick could be a surprise choice not well known in legal circles.
Another prospective candidate is Edith Hollan Jones, a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who was also considered for a Supreme Court vacancy by President Bush's father.
O'Connor's appointment in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, quickly confirmed by the Senate, ended 191 years of male exclusivity on the high court.
She wasted little time building a reputation as a hard-working moderate conservative who emerged as a crucial power broker on the nine-member court.
O'Connor often lines up with the court's conservative bloc, as she did in 2000 when the court voted to stop Florida presidential ballot recounts sought by Al Gore, and effectively called the election for President Bush.
As a "swing voter," however, O'Connor sometimes votes with more liberal colleagues.
Perhaps the best example of her influence is the court's evolving stance on abortion. She distanced herself both from her three most conservative colleagues, who say there is no constitutional underpinning for a right to abortion, and from more liberal justices for whom the right is a given.
O'Connor initially balked at letting states outlaw most abortions, refusing in 1989 to join four other justices who were ready to reverse the landmark 1973 decision that said women have a constitutional right to abortion.
Then in 1992, she helped forge and lead a five-justice majority that reaffirmed the core holding of the 1973 ruling. Subsequent appointments secured the abortion right. Commentators called O'Connor the nation's most powerful woman, but O'Connor poo-poohed the thought.
"I don't think it's accurate," she said in an Associated Press interview.
O'Connor in late 1988 was diagnosed as having breast cancer, and she underwent a mastectomy. She missed just two weeks of work. That same year, she had her appendix removed.
O'Connor remained the court's only woman until 1993 when, much to O'Connor's delight and relief, President Bill Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Click here to listen to an evaluation of O'Connor's two decades in the Supreme Court. Madeleine Brand speaks with Slate legal analyst Emily Bazelon and with Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor at the New Republic magazine, about O'Connor's career and legacy. via NPR
Here, you can listen to how Washington Reacts to O'Connor Resignation. President Bush offered his thoughts Friday about the resignation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Madeleine Brand speaks with Don Gonyea about the president's remarks and other reaction to the resignation from around the Capitol. via NPR
This link brings you to The Politics of Supreme Court Succession. The nomination of a new U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor is perhaps the most anticipated political fight of the year. American law affecting abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty and other issues could turn on the new nominee. Madeleine Brand discusses the politics of Supreme Court succession with NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams. via NPR
Here is a recap of an interview of Sandra Day O'Connor on All Things Considered, May 14, 2005 by Nina Totenburg. To listen to an extended version of the interview click here.
Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Legacy
First Female High Court Justice Reflects on 22 Years on Bench
Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, has written a second book. The first book, Lazy B: Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, recalled her life lessons of hardy self-reliance and love of the outdoors. Her second book is about her 22 years as a Supreme Court justice.
The justice sat down with NPR's Nina Totenberg to discuss her latest literary effort, The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice.
"Sandra Day O'Connor was not exactly a household name in 1981," Totenberg says. "She was, by her own account, not exactly nationally recognized for her scholarship or judicial writing. So she didn't take it very seriously one day in 1981 when she got a call from the Attorney General of the United States, asking her to come to Washington to discuss the upcoming vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court."
President Ronald Reagan had promised during his campaign to appoint a woman to the court -- if he had a chance.
"I wasn't genuinely excited," O'Connor remembers thinking when she was first told she was under consideration to join the bench. "I didn't think realistically that it would happen. That was out of the ordinary."
O'Connor survived the confirmation process and started her Supreme Court career with a great deal of experience dealing with appeals court cases over disputes of state law, but no experience in federal court. "She had a green staff, none of whom had worked at the court before -- and she says quite candidly that for the first few years, she felt buried by the work," Totenberg says.
The mail alone was a huge burden. As the court's first woman, she got a lot of letters of encouragement -- and also plenty of messages from detractors who questioned whether it was appropriate for a woman to serve in the nation's highest court.
O'Connor, often described as a cautious and guarded person, also found the media attention to be overwhelming. "As she puts it, 'Everywhere that Sandra went, the press was sure to go,'" Totenberg says.
O'Connor spends much of her book discussing the subject of women in the legal profession and in American society. In her interview with Totenberg, she speaks fondly about those who encouraged her to be an attorney. "I wanted to be a cattle rancher when I was young, because it was what I knew and I loved it," O'Connor says.
A professor at Stanford University, Harry Rathman, changed her mind. "He spent a lot of time convincing students that they could make a difference... that a single individual could make a difference. Really, because of him, I decided to go to law school."
She found that finding a job as a female attorney in the early 1950s was a daunting task -- and that in the beginning, she worked for free in an attorney's office alongside a legal secretary. "But soon there was a vacancy, she got a salary, and an office," Totenberg says.
There is perennial speculation about whether O'Connor will retire at the end of the court's term this year. "The justice says she has, quote, 'No plans to retire,'" Totenberg says. "It is a typically firm answer -- but also typically, with a touch of enigmatic wiggle room."
One more interview from March, 2002 by Susan Stamberg.
Sandra Day O'Connor, Writing Her History
Justice's New Book Recalls Life on the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona
March 13, 2002 -- The first woman to be named to the U.S. Supreme Court works in a sunny office filled with family photographs, relics and reminders of an earlier life spent on the wild, wide-open spaces of her family's ranch in Arizona. The ranch, named the Lazy B, is now the focus of a joint memoir Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote with her brother, Alan Day.
In an interview on All Things Considered, guest host Susan Stamberg and O'Connor discuss the new book, Lazy B: Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.
It's clear from the things O'Connor chooses to surround herself with in her private chambers that the Lazy B is a touchstone for her. And her description of daily life on the ranch is a lot different from the hushed granite corridors and somber black robes that have defined her life for the past two decades.
Still, some Supreme Court analysts would say O'Connor's decisions reflect the core values she learned as a child on a working ranch: responsibility and self-reliance.
The ranch was huge -- 198,000 acres with more than 2,000 cattle, 25 miles from the town of Duncan along the Arizona-New Mexico border. It was founded by O'Connor's grandfather, Henry Clay Day, in the early 1880s before Arizona was a state. Until O'Connor was 7, there was no running water or electricity.
O'Connor tells Stamberg that despite the hardships, the Lazy B was a haven of sorts, where the system of values "was simple and unsophisticated and the product of necessity." O'Connor and Alan Day write: "We belonged to the Lazy B, and it belonged to each of us."
O'Connor was an only child until she was 8 -- so her earliest childhood friends were her parents, some ranch hands and a few wild javelina hogs. She was given responsibility early in life, out of necessity -- mending fences, riding with the cowboys, firing her own rifle and driving a truck.
O'Connor and her brother grew to have very different lives. She earned her law degree and eventually became a judge and Republican Party political activist in Arizona.
Alan Day stayed on and ultimately came to run the ranch for 30 years until it was sold in 1986. The book makes it clear that for both siblings, the ranch played a pivotal role in defining their identities and the paths they took in life.
Finally, a bit of a timeline on SDOC's life:
Highlights of O'Connor's Life:
• Born March 26,1930, to Harry A. Day and Ada Mae Wilkey Day in El Paso, Texas.
• Graduated high school at 16 and enrolled at Stanford University, earning an economics degree in 1950. Two years later, she earned her law degree, also from Stanford.
• In 1952, married John O'Connor, a fellow Stanford law student. She could not find a law firm that hired women -- except one, as a legal secretary -- and became a deputy county attorney in the Northern California city of San Mateo.
• Husband joined the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps, and the couple spent three years in Frankfurt, Germany. While overseas, Sandra Day O'Connor worked as a civilian lawyer for the Quartermaster Corps. They returned to the U.S. in 1957 and settled in Arizona.
• In 1965, O'Connor became an assistant state attorney general. Four years later, she was appointed to the Arizona state Senate.
• In 1974 O'Connor was elected to be a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, and five years later was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals.
• In August 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated O'Connor to fill a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by Justice Potter Stewart. The full Senate confirmed her appointment 99-0, and O'Connor took her oath of office Sept. 26, 1981.
Chief Justice Warren Burger administers the oath of office to O'Connor as her husband John holds two Bibles, Sept. 25, 1981.
Source: Supreme Court Historical Society
What is this?! I go out to walkabout nature, and what happens??? (Yes I know a lot of you have already posted about this, but I didn't see anyone with the NPR article coverage yet.) And just yesterday I bought a T-shirt on Cafe Press put together by someone that had a quote of her dissent on the KELO case. ::sigh::
Is it the end of the world as we know it?!
A Letter of Resignation
The text of Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement letter to President Bush:
Dear President Bush:
This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor. It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure.
Sincerely,
Sandra Day O'Connor
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and a key swing vote on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, said Friday she is retiring.
O'Connor, 75, said she expects to leave before the start of the court's next term in October, or whenever the Senate confirms her successor. There was no immediate word from the White House on who might be nominated to replace O'Connor.
It's been 11 years since the last opening on the court, one of the longest uninterrupted stretches in history. O'Connor's decision gives Bush his first opportunity to appoint a justice.
"This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor. It has been a great privilege indeed to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure."
O'Connor's appointment came amid speculation that the aging court would soon have a vacancy. But speculation has most recently focused on Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, and suffering from thyroid cancer. Rehnquist has offered no public clue as to his plans.
The White House has refused to comment on any possible nominees, or whether Bush would name a woman to succeed O'Connor. Her departure leaves Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the only other woman among the current justices.
Possible replacements include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and federal courts of appeals judges J. Michael Luttig, John Roberts, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Michael McConnell, Emilio Garza and James Harvie Wilkinson III. Others mentioned are former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, lawyer Miguel Estrada and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson, but Bush's pick could be a surprise choice not well known in legal circles.
Another prospective candidate is Edith Hollan Jones, a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who was also considered for a Supreme Court vacancy by President Bush's father.
O'Connor's appointment in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, quickly confirmed by the Senate, ended 191 years of male exclusivity on the high court.
She wasted little time building a reputation as a hard-working moderate conservative who emerged as a crucial power broker on the nine-member court.
O'Connor often lines up with the court's conservative bloc, as she did in 2000 when the court voted to stop Florida presidential ballot recounts sought by Al Gore, and effectively called the election for President Bush.
As a "swing voter," however, O'Connor sometimes votes with more liberal colleagues.
Perhaps the best example of her influence is the court's evolving stance on abortion. She distanced herself both from her three most conservative colleagues, who say there is no constitutional underpinning for a right to abortion, and from more liberal justices for whom the right is a given.
O'Connor initially balked at letting states outlaw most abortions, refusing in 1989 to join four other justices who were ready to reverse the landmark 1973 decision that said women have a constitutional right to abortion.
Then in 1992, she helped forge and lead a five-justice majority that reaffirmed the core holding of the 1973 ruling. Subsequent appointments secured the abortion right. Commentators called O'Connor the nation's most powerful woman, but O'Connor poo-poohed the thought.
"I don't think it's accurate," she said in an Associated Press interview.
O'Connor in late 1988 was diagnosed as having breast cancer, and she underwent a mastectomy. She missed just two weeks of work. That same year, she had her appendix removed.
O'Connor remained the court's only woman until 1993 when, much to O'Connor's delight and relief, President Bill Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Click here to listen to an evaluation of O'Connor's two decades in the Supreme Court. Madeleine Brand speaks with Slate legal analyst Emily Bazelon and with Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor at the New Republic magazine, about O'Connor's career and legacy. via NPR
Here, you can listen to how Washington Reacts to O'Connor Resignation. President Bush offered his thoughts Friday about the resignation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Madeleine Brand speaks with Don Gonyea about the president's remarks and other reaction to the resignation from around the Capitol. via NPR
This link brings you to The Politics of Supreme Court Succession. The nomination of a new U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor is perhaps the most anticipated political fight of the year. American law affecting abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty and other issues could turn on the new nominee. Madeleine Brand discusses the politics of Supreme Court succession with NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams. via NPR
Here is a recap of an interview of Sandra Day O'Connor on All Things Considered, May 14, 2005 by Nina Totenburg. To listen to an extended version of the interview click here.
Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Legacy
First Female High Court Justice Reflects on 22 Years on Bench
Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, has written a second book. The first book, Lazy B: Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, recalled her life lessons of hardy self-reliance and love of the outdoors. Her second book is about her 22 years as a Supreme Court justice.
The justice sat down with NPR's Nina Totenberg to discuss her latest literary effort, The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice.
"Sandra Day O'Connor was not exactly a household name in 1981," Totenberg says. "She was, by her own account, not exactly nationally recognized for her scholarship or judicial writing. So she didn't take it very seriously one day in 1981 when she got a call from the Attorney General of the United States, asking her to come to Washington to discuss the upcoming vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court."
President Ronald Reagan had promised during his campaign to appoint a woman to the court -- if he had a chance.
"I wasn't genuinely excited," O'Connor remembers thinking when she was first told she was under consideration to join the bench. "I didn't think realistically that it would happen. That was out of the ordinary."
O'Connor survived the confirmation process and started her Supreme Court career with a great deal of experience dealing with appeals court cases over disputes of state law, but no experience in federal court. "She had a green staff, none of whom had worked at the court before -- and she says quite candidly that for the first few years, she felt buried by the work," Totenberg says.
The mail alone was a huge burden. As the court's first woman, she got a lot of letters of encouragement -- and also plenty of messages from detractors who questioned whether it was appropriate for a woman to serve in the nation's highest court.
O'Connor, often described as a cautious and guarded person, also found the media attention to be overwhelming. "As she puts it, 'Everywhere that Sandra went, the press was sure to go,'" Totenberg says.
O'Connor spends much of her book discussing the subject of women in the legal profession and in American society. In her interview with Totenberg, she speaks fondly about those who encouraged her to be an attorney. "I wanted to be a cattle rancher when I was young, because it was what I knew and I loved it," O'Connor says.
A professor at Stanford University, Harry Rathman, changed her mind. "He spent a lot of time convincing students that they could make a difference... that a single individual could make a difference. Really, because of him, I decided to go to law school."
She found that finding a job as a female attorney in the early 1950s was a daunting task -- and that in the beginning, she worked for free in an attorney's office alongside a legal secretary. "But soon there was a vacancy, she got a salary, and an office," Totenberg says.
There is perennial speculation about whether O'Connor will retire at the end of the court's term this year. "The justice says she has, quote, 'No plans to retire,'" Totenberg says. "It is a typically firm answer -- but also typically, with a touch of enigmatic wiggle room."
One more interview from March, 2002 by Susan Stamberg.
Sandra Day O'Connor, Writing Her History
Justice's New Book Recalls Life on the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona
March 13, 2002 -- The first woman to be named to the U.S. Supreme Court works in a sunny office filled with family photographs, relics and reminders of an earlier life spent on the wild, wide-open spaces of her family's ranch in Arizona. The ranch, named the Lazy B, is now the focus of a joint memoir Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote with her brother, Alan Day.
In an interview on All Things Considered, guest host Susan Stamberg and O'Connor discuss the new book, Lazy B: Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.
It's clear from the things O'Connor chooses to surround herself with in her private chambers that the Lazy B is a touchstone for her. And her description of daily life on the ranch is a lot different from the hushed granite corridors and somber black robes that have defined her life for the past two decades.
Still, some Supreme Court analysts would say O'Connor's decisions reflect the core values she learned as a child on a working ranch: responsibility and self-reliance.
The ranch was huge -- 198,000 acres with more than 2,000 cattle, 25 miles from the town of Duncan along the Arizona-New Mexico border. It was founded by O'Connor's grandfather, Henry Clay Day, in the early 1880s before Arizona was a state. Until O'Connor was 7, there was no running water or electricity.
O'Connor tells Stamberg that despite the hardships, the Lazy B was a haven of sorts, where the system of values "was simple and unsophisticated and the product of necessity." O'Connor and Alan Day write: "We belonged to the Lazy B, and it belonged to each of us."
O'Connor was an only child until she was 8 -- so her earliest childhood friends were her parents, some ranch hands and a few wild javelina hogs. She was given responsibility early in life, out of necessity -- mending fences, riding with the cowboys, firing her own rifle and driving a truck.
O'Connor and her brother grew to have very different lives. She earned her law degree and eventually became a judge and Republican Party political activist in Arizona.
Alan Day stayed on and ultimately came to run the ranch for 30 years until it was sold in 1986. The book makes it clear that for both siblings, the ranch played a pivotal role in defining their identities and the paths they took in life.
Finally, a bit of a timeline on SDOC's life:
Highlights of O'Connor's Life:
• Born March 26,1930, to Harry A. Day and Ada Mae Wilkey Day in El Paso, Texas.
• Graduated high school at 16 and enrolled at Stanford University, earning an economics degree in 1950. Two years later, she earned her law degree, also from Stanford.
• In 1952, married John O'Connor, a fellow Stanford law student. She could not find a law firm that hired women -- except one, as a legal secretary -- and became a deputy county attorney in the Northern California city of San Mateo.
• Husband joined the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps, and the couple spent three years in Frankfurt, Germany. While overseas, Sandra Day O'Connor worked as a civilian lawyer for the Quartermaster Corps. They returned to the U.S. in 1957 and settled in Arizona.
• In 1965, O'Connor became an assistant state attorney general. Four years later, she was appointed to the Arizona state Senate.
• In 1974 O'Connor was elected to be a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, and five years later was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals.
• In August 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated O'Connor to fill a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by Justice Potter Stewart. The full Senate confirmed her appointment 99-0, and O'Connor took her oath of office Sept. 26, 1981.
Chief Justice Warren Burger administers the oath of office to O'Connor as her husband John holds two Bibles, Sept. 25, 1981.
Source: Supreme Court Historical Society
