The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOREach justice hires their own clerks, and applications are made individually to the justices. It isn’t a group decision.
More Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.
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And I went off to Stanford, I was pretty young and pretty naive. And I had a professor I really loved, who was himself a lawyer.
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The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.
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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
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I’m a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it’s terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don’t like.
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We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.
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In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.
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I don’t think it’s the court’s perceived role to do some explaining of a political nature.
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If a State refused to let religious groups use facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion.
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Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.
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I think it’s inevitable that some of the court’s decisions will be found by a segment of the public to be not the right decision or subject to criticism.
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If I stumbled badly in doing the job, I think it would have made life more difficult for women, and that was a great concern of mine and still is.
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My hope is that 10 years from now, after I’ve been across the street at work for a while, they’ll all be glad they gave me that wonderful vote.
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I have always thought that while it’s wonderful to be the first to do something, you don’t want to be the last.
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I think I learned to appreciate and treasure each day, because you don’t know how many you’re going to be given.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR






