I had become increasingly concerned in recent years about the lack of civics education in our nation’s schools. In recent years, the schools have stopped teaching it. And it’s unfortunate.
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.
[Court] is an institution that depends on making tough decisions in close cases for reasons that it explains well and that, in the past at least, have proven satisfactory to the public.
I finally gave up my little law practice and stayed home for about three years. You have to do what you can to keep the family going. But I wanted to get back to work. So I got another babysitter and went to work as an Assistant Attorney General.
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.
What was a problem was the excessive amount of media attention to the appointment of the first woman and everything she did. Everywhere that Sandra went, the press was sure to go. And that got tiresome; it was stressful.
Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.
It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. Thats set out in the Constitution.
The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination …is an unfortunate reality…and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.
I think people know very little, really, about the court, how it works and its history. And both of those things are important in our country, but they’re not things that most citizens know much about.
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.
[G]overnment endorsement . . . of religion . . . sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.
My sense is that jurists from other nations around the world understand that our court occupies a very special place in the American system, and that the court is rather well regarded in comparison, perhaps, to their own.
![Sandra Day O'Connor Quote - [Court] is an institution that depends on making tough decisions in close cases for reasons that it explains well and that, in the past at least, have proven satisfactory to the public.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/court-is-an-institution-that-depends-on-making-tou-683x1024.jpg)
![Sandra Day O'Connor Quote - [G]overnment endorsement . . . of religion . . . sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/government-endorsement-of-religion-sends-a-message.jpg)
