News Story

For additional information about Justice O'Connor's visit and the Law School, please go to the press kit page.

Day One at Cornell Law School

The Hon. Sandra Day O’Connor, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice, arrived on Cornell’s campus Sunday, October 21, to begin her duties as the Law School’s 2007 distinguished jurist in residence. Her first assignment: to serve as the presiding justice in the 2007 Cuccia Cup Moot Court Competition.

When the gavel sounded a 6 p.m., followed by the call to rise, Justice O’Connor seemed right at home as she marched into the MacDonald Moot Court Room, the third among five justices of note, and took her place on the bench up front under the carved gold letters, “Law must be stable and yet it must not stand still.”

Flanking her were Law School alumnus and former jurist in residence the Hon. Richard Wesley, JD ’74, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; the Hon. Robert Sack, also on the second circuit appeals court; the Hon. Dolores Sloviter and the Hon. D. Brooks Smith, both U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Justice O’Connor and her colleagues heard law students Nicholas Dorsey and Gary Adamson argue for the petitioner, and William Whiney and Jonathan Sclarsic argue for the respondent, in an imaginary case, Fernndez v. State of Cascadia, involving two issues that have divided the lower state and federal courts, one of which currently pending before the United States Supreme Court.

In Blakely v. Washington, the Supreme Court, relying on its previous decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, held in 2004 that factors that enhance a criminal defendant's sentence must be unanimously found by a jury using the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. In Fernandez, the moot court participants and judges grappled with whether Blakely could be and should be given retroactive effect to cases that had already been heard on direct appeal when Blakely was decided.

The Moot Court judges heard, and aggressively contested, petitioners arguments for applying the Blakely ruling retroactively, using state as opposed to federal law. But they were equally contentious when respondents counter argued that states should be required to use the narrow standards now binding federal courts, as set forth in a real 1989 case, Teague v. Lane. They also disputed arguments and counterarguments about whether Blakely should be considered a new rule of criminal procedure, and if so, “watershed” rule that must be applied retroactively. A pending Supreme Court case, Danforth v. Minnesota, will look at similar issues.

“We wrote the case and the problem it addresses around Justice O’Connor’s opinions,” explained Amanda Kopf, a third-year law student who is Moot Court chancellor. “Being able to involve opinions she actually wrote gives the Moot Court another dimension and has been a thrilling experience for me and a lot of students here.”

Following deliberations, Justice O’Connor delivered the Moot Court’s finding: “We think at the end of the day that the respondents deserve the award for the best advocacy. But each and every one of you have demonstrated that you will perform very well in courts in the future and will respond with ease under a peppering of questions.”

The other judges agreed. “It’s an honor to see four students perform so admirably,” said Judge Wesley. “I feel proud to be a Cornell Law School graduate.”

“These are not easy issues. I’d be happy if the lawyers for the Third Circuit would argue as well as each of you argued,” added Judge Sloviter.

“It’s great for the school and the Moot Court board and program to have a Supreme Court justice, and the first woman to serve on the court, as a presiding Moot Court judge and jurist in residence,” said Law School Professor John Blume, the program’s faculty adviser.

Following the Moot Court case, Justice O’Connor joined Stewart Schwab, Allan R. Tessler Dean of the Law School, students, and faculty at a reception and dinner at Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room.

Day Two at Cornell Law School

One Monday, October 22, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor began her second day as distinguished jurist in residence at the Law School by taking in the view of campus from the seventh floor of Myron Taylor Hall tower in the company of women leaders of student organizations at the school.

Over coffee and croissants she spoke with them about her upbringing on a cattle ranch in a remote region in western Texas, how she came to consider a career in law at a time when few women did so, why she thinks education and an independent judiciary are essential to a well-run society, and what she considers are the world’s most pressing problems.

Some of her responses resurfaced at a press conference with local media later that morning and a well-attended “fireside chat” with Cornell Provost Biddy Martin that afternoon in Anabel Taylor auditorium. Here are a few of her remarks.

On growing up on a ranch: “I learned poker from ranch hands, raised an abandoned bobcat my father brought home in his pocket, and kept a wild horse we tamed, Chico, whom I wrote about in a book for children. I learned how to read at a young age—my mother kept a wonderful library and books were my friends.” Her most enduring memories are of “the wide sky and endless sense of space. The stars looked so close you could reach up and pluck them. You had the sense that human beings were just infinitesimal in this vast universe.”

On choosing law: “At Stanford I took a law class for undergraduates taught by Harry Rathbun. Because of him I thought of applying to law school. I loved the study of law, found it fascinating.”

On her first job: “I graduated first in my class at Stanford law school. I wanted to work at work worth doing, but I couldn’t get an interview, much less a job. I didn’t spend a lot of time wringing my hands though.” Instead she related how she talked her way into a non-paying job as a lawyer with San Mateo County that led to a paying one with the county, after a vacancy occurred. When the family moved to Phoenix she started her own small private law practice with a male partner. Volunteering with her local Republican Party led eventually to her appointment as assistant attorney general of Arizona to fill a mid-term vacancy. Later she was elected to the post and also won a successful state ballot measure to eliminate the election of judges.

On balancing work and family: “I wanted to be married and have a family as well as practice law.” She managed to keep her legal mind active while taking time off from law to raise her children by grading state bar exams, handling bankruptcy cases, serving on the county zoning board and refereeing youthful offenders.

On her first visit to the Supreme Court: “It was the Korean War. My husband and I were living in North Carolina, where he was training as an officer. One cold, snowy day I said, ‘Let’s drive up to D.C.’ I wanted to see the Supreme Court. When we arrived, the building was closed, so we walked up the icy steps and I took a picture of him in front of the columns. I said, ‘That’s the closest we’ll ever get to the court.’”

On her role at the Supreme Court: “I decided I’d put all my energy into deciding a case, and not look back later and second guess what I’d done. But there is one case, Minnesota v. White that concerns an independent judiciary that is causing a lot of trouble. You law students can look it up.”

On how that role is portrayed in the media: “I detest the term ‘swing vote.’ What does that conjure? Someone sitting on a swing, back and forth, doesn’t matter.”

On her most controversial decision: “There are a lot of people who were very unhappy with the Bush v. Gore decision [which stopped the recounting of votes in Florida in the 2000 presidential election]. But the Supreme Court did not decide the vote. The result [in Florida] was not changed by three recountings. A couple of times in our nation’s history the candidate who won the popular vote did not win the electoral vote. That was the case in the 2000 election. We elect our presidents by an electoral college system—not a popular vote. It was a compromise made at the time of the Constitution that was a protection for smaller states. A Constitutional amendment would be needed to change that.”

On the world’s most pressing problem: Water, not oil is probably the number one. There is not enough water worldwide for irrigating crops or for drinking. We’re going to have figure out how to desalinate water from the ocean less expensively and grow more crops that tolerate slightly saline water. You can make all the difference in the world by providing clean drinking water in places that need it, doing something as simple as digging a well.”

On her female colleague on the High Court, Cornellian Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “She’s so gifted. She writes well, thinks well, is enormously competent. We’ve enjoyed a wonderful relationship.”

While Justice O’Connor said she disliked the attention that being the first woman on the court brought her, she is pleased women in law school and law practice are now commonplace. “I have lived through an entire revolution,” she said. She challenged her fireside chat audience to determine why 50 percent of law students are women in the United States, but only 35 to 40 percent of recent law graduates in law firms are women. And two years out of law student, only 15 to 20 percent of law firm associates are women.

She also spoke proudly of her visit the previous week to Seneca Falls, N.Y., the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention: “I was privileged to go with a group of marvelous women to visit the spot where that first conference was convened in 1848 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. We stood by the remaining wall of Wesleyan chapel and read Mrs. Stanton’s speech. It was so moving it brought tears to our eyes. That was the start. But getting women the right to vote took a long time, till 1920.”

Another highlight of the day: Justice O’Connor and Dean Stewart Schwab, who had clerked for her early in her second term, presented a paper they co-authored on the future of affirmative action, at a brown bag luncheon workshop with Law School faculty in the MacDonald Moot Court Room.

The paper was inspired by Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion in Grutter v. Bolinger in which she ruled race could remain a factor in college admissions because of “educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body,” but also stated “[t]he court expects that twenty-five years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

During the workshop she expressed her worries about “the fragility of the decision,” which barely garnered five votes when she was on the court and may not stand in her absence, she said. She voiced her concern that minority admissions were significantly down at universities in states like California, where affirmative action in college admissions has been banned. “We’ve got to do what we can to improve these statistics,” she said.

“How many opportunities do you get to hear a former U.S. Supreme Court justice,” said first year law student Melissa Delaquila, who attended O’Connor’s fireside chat. “She an extraordinary person and an incredible role model.”

“I’m extremely impressed by her intelligence, her confidence, her presence,” said first-year law student Joe Ronca. “She is a captivating speaker, and I was in awe of her at the Moot Court.”

Day Three at Cornell Law School

On Tuesday, October 23, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor began her third and final day as distinguished jurist in residence at the Law School playing tennis with her former law clerk, Dean Stewart Schwab.

She then made a morning visit to Ithaca High School, where she spoke to students in civics and government classes. Recounting her own school experiences in El Paso and Austin, she told of getting to meet Eleanor Roosevelt then. “My parents believed strongly in individual responsibility and if there was one person they disliked more than FDR it was Eleanor, so I couldn’t tell them,” recalled Justice O’Connor. Meeting her was unforgettable, however. “She had such presence and such charisma that she made a strong favorable impression on me. I’ve only met two other people whose persona I’ve never forgetten: Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.”

Justice O’Connor also talked about her father’s ranting about “paying good money” to send her to Stanford University, only to discover she was being taught Keynesian economic theory there, which he considered radical.

One high school student asked Justice O’Connor whether she’d been at the court when the case New Jersey v. TLO was argued in 1985. She hadn’t, but she explained to his classmates that the case involved the search of a student by school authorities and that the court had found that the school only needed to show “reasonable grounds” to conduct such a search, a lesser standard than “probable cause.”

After lunching with Law School student leaders at Banfi’s in the Statler Hotel, Justice O’Connor delivered her Milton Konvitz Memorial Lecture in Bailey Hall at 4:30 to packed house.

Richard Polenberg, Goldwin Smith Professor of American History at Cornell and an expert on the High Court and its justices, who followed Dean Schwab in introducing Justice O’Connor, noted that she had written decisions on such important societal issues as gender equity, religious freedoms, and educational equality. Like Konvitz, a Cornell professor famous for his course on American ideals, Justice O’Connor “believes that law is not an abstract concept removed from the society it serves but must work to bridge the gap between the ideal of justice and the reality,” he said.

Justice O’Connor talked about how the style of oral argument before the Supreme Court has changed since the court’s beginnings in the late 18th century, but how well-crafted spoken argument continues to influence Supreme Court decisions.

“For my part, I have found it helpful in shaping my views on a case,” she said. “We depend on lawyers to identify and spell out the legal issues and offer ways to resolve them.”

She contrasted the oratorical styles of the two opposing attorneys who argued the series of cases known as Brown v. Board of Education that led to the landmark 1954 decision in favor of racial integration of public schools. An attorney arguing for segregation in public schools was John W. Davis, who spoke with “rigid logic and flowery elegance” and was often wet-eyed when he finished, Justice O’Connor reported. Arguing against him was the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, then an attorney for the NAACP, “who could capture the essence of his position in a phrase or two that emphasized the common-sense morality,” she said.

Marshall’s oratorical style apparently also won. “His understated method of succinct answers to questions proved to be the path of the future,” said Justice O’Connor.

“As someone who argues before the Supreme Court with some regularity, I’ve often wondered whether oral argument does have an effect on the ultimate outcome of the case,” said Cornell Professor of Law John Blume, director of the Law School’s Death Penalty Project. “I was pleased to hear that Justice O’Connor believes that effective oral advocacy can and does make a difference.”

In response to a question following her talk, Justice O’Connor said she had some misgivings about one decision she made as a Supreme Court justice: Minnesota v. White, which involved the First Amendment rights of candidates for judicial office. The ruling, which did away with Minnesota’s code of ethics clause constraining judicial candidates from discussing issues that could come before them if elected, has spurred the election of judges, she believes. “Partisan elections are not a good way to select judges. There are too many interest groups and big money changing hands,” said Justice O’Connor, who prefers merit-based appointment.

Reported by Linda Myers