I loved my husband very much, and it was heartbreaking to have him develop Alzheimer’s disease, and to stand by and watch him decline in his ability to take care of himself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution and the Court is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it. And I’m not sure the recent generations have done that good a job of learning about it.
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.
[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.
![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)
