The next stage of retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's public life began to take shape last week: a combination of speaking out, receiving accolades and even, she hinted, sitting as a judge on lower federal courts.
"I'm trying to figure out how to spend my time," O'Connor said in a talk Thursday before the Corporate Counsel Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center. When it was suggested to her that she could be more candid now that she is no longer a justice, she demurred. "I've retired, but I'm still a federal judge." Retired justices can sit by designation on any federal court, but she did not indicate where she hopes to sit.
But the 75-year-old O'Connor, looking refreshed and energetic five weeks after her Jan. 31 retirement, said she had no hesitation about promoting and defending the independence of the judiciary. Recent attacks by members of Congress on the judiciary have made her "really really angry," she said. As with the prior times she mentioned these attacks, O'Connor named no names, but the criticisms she mentioned were made in recent years by former House Majority leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "Republicans are not the only offenders," she added.
O'Connor called on the nation's "vibrant lawyer class" to speak out in defense of judges who make unpopular rulings. "They don't step up to the plate."
Earlier in the week, nearly 500 lawyers and judges stepped up to celebrate O'Connor's trailblazing career, as the National Association of Women Judges gave her a lifetime achievement award. The association was founded with a handful of members in 1979, only two years before O'Connor joined the Supreme Court in 1981 as its first female member.
|