Jeff Curley
Thank you all for being here this morning, Sunday am. St. Patrick's Day weekend's an impressive show here in Chicago especially. My name is Jeff Curley. I'm co-founder of iCivics. And I have the pleasure of introducing Justice O'Connor this morning, and having a chance to have a question and answer with you all. Obviously, Justice O'Connor requires no introduction. So you can keep my remarks very brief and then let her take the floor. But Justice O'Connor was the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court,
Sandra Day O'Connor
But not the last.
Jeff Curley
Her incredible accomplishments are extraordinary particularly given the era in which she began her career. Sandra Day O'Connor was born in El Paso, Texas.
Now let's see if we have any Arizonans here, she she grew up on her family ranch, the Lazy B In Arizona
Sandra Day O'Connor
And New Mexico, and New
Mexico. lots of places to call home
Sandra Day O'Connor
You know the ranch was within both states. Yes. And the only reason I got to El Paso was there wasn't any town near the Lazy B, no hospital. I was the first child. My mother thought it would be good to have a hospital. So off we went to El Paso and I ended up going to school in El Paso. So so all the things you hear today, that might be kind of crazy. It's because I went to school male pastor.
Jeff Curley
Well, when she left El Paso in 1946 she was accepted at Stanford University, where she earned her bachelor's degree in economics and continued her studies at the law school. She completed her law degree in two years.
Sandra Day O'Connor
No, no, no, that's great. I finished my undergraduate
Jeff Curley
she completed both in five years. Right
. Which is quite impressive and right alongside are at graduation was another future Supreme Court Justice, William Rehnquist.
Sandra Day O'Connor
in my law school class. Isn't that amazing? And we used to play bridge and charades and we have a they didn't stay for Didn't have any housing for graduate women in those days, not a single place. And so I found a room in the home of a, an old lady whose husband had been head of the School of Education at Stanford and he died. And she rented rooms out in her house for graduate women. And we had to run the household we took turns cooking, if you can imagine for the whole group. And we would have about once a week we plan something for bridge and or charades and we get bill renderer Stoker here for all laugh so we had good times. Club. Yeah.
Jeff Curley
The Justice started her career in public service first as a state Assistant Attorney General and was the later elected to the Arizona Senate. In 1972, she became the first female in the country to serve As Majority Leader of the State Senate, shortly thereafter, she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. And in 1981, she was nominated by President Reagan and confirmed unanimously by the Senate to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Well, it was 99 to nothing. And the 100th vote was that of the Senator from Montana, Max Baucus. And he couldn't be there at that day. So he was very nice. He wrote me a letter, told me he was sorry, he couldn't be there, he would have voted yes, and he sent me a copy of A River Runs Through It. Can you read that? So that's how it all worked out.
Jeff Curley
The Justice served the court with distinction for 25 years. Report and opinions on privacy discrimination. Religious Freedom continue to shape our national conversation. In 2009, President Obama awarded Justice O'Connor with America's highest civilian honor the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Jeff Curley
Since stepping down from the bench Justice O'Connor has dedicated her tireless energy to restoring civics education in the US. Under her leadership, she founded iCivics in 2009. And in that short time, she has led our organization to reaching more than 600 or 60,000 educators and 2 million students around the country each year. We look forward to justice O'Connor's remarks this morning. We're going to be passing around the note cards at the end of her remarks for you to have a chance to ask questions. Those questions will be received up here. And we'll have a chance to have a conversation following the justices remarks. So please now join me in welcoming Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Thank you. Well, I'm really glad to be here today with all of you because you are working with young people across this country, trying to prepare them to deal with the many challenges we all have. And I really commend you because the work of educators matters as much or more than anything anybody could do in this country. The only way we're going to continue on a trajectory that will help our country is if we have good educators who are willing to work with our young people generation after generation and keep us going. So I appreciate so much what you do. And I think it's so important.
And my life has been intersecting a little bit more with teachers and school administrators and educators in recent years since we started this iCivics thing and I'm just very glad to have this chance to meet with you. As you heard, I grew up on a cattle ranch in the southwest and that shaped a lot of what I am today if guided me. I guess I continue to be a cowgirl at heart. But other chapters in my life have added to my beliefs and experiences as time went on. And my experiences on the supreme Court and following are what put me in the position I have today have a commitment to civic learning in America. But let me take you back to an earlier time for a minute if I could. When I graduated from Stanford Law School, I could not get a job. I gotten engaged to John O'Connor, who was also in law school. I was a year ahead of him. So we planned to get married. And that meant one of us had to work, and that was me.
And when I got out of law school, I couldn't get a job. Now I was about third I guess in my graduating class, you think that would have helped a little bit. It didn't. The only thing that mattered was that I was a woman. And it was really a problem. And I heard that San Mateo County attorney had once had a woman lawyer on his staff and I thought that was a good sign. So I wrote to him and asked if I could have him a time to meet with him about a job. And he wrote back and he said, Well, he didn't have any money to hire another deputy. But he'd be happy to meet with me. Anyway. And so I went to the office of the county attorney in San Mateo County, they, it's in Redwood City, California. And we had a nice visit. He was very pleasant. And he just said, in addition to not having any money from the supervisors to hire another deputy, I don't have an office space to put another employee right now.
So I went back to the Lazy B ranch and
wrote him a letter. And I said that I knew that he didn't have money right then to hire another deputy, but I worked for him for nothing until such time as he eventually got some money, so it doesn't matter. That's what I'd like to be doing. You don't have to pay me. I'll go to work there. And I said, Now I know you don't have an empty office. But I met your secretary, and she's very nice. And if she didn't object, we could put my desk in her office. There's room and that would be fine with me. So that was my first job as a lawyer out of law school. I didn't get paid and I put my desk in with the secretary. But I loved my work. It was really fun. I just really liked what I was doing. And I stayed there long enough that in due course, I actually got a, and I got an office. So it all works out at some point.
But I think that early experience with a local Government agency made me realize that I had some role to play possibly in how our nation functions at its basic level. And that, really the process of improving our nation occurs at every level, even the lowest one. So it worked out. And I went on from that humble beginning in San Mateo County, California, to being an assistant attorney general for Arizona. And then I became a state senator in Arizona. I ran for that and was elected. And then my colleagues made me senate majority leader. And so that was a very interesting position to hold. I like that. And then I was put on the Arizona Court of Appeals I've been a trial court judge for a while. And I was put on the court of appeals, which I enjoyed. And I got a phone call one day from the White House. Turned out the White House was going to send somebody to meet with me and talk to me. And three people showed up at my door. One of them was can star remember that name? And so we met all day, and we were some distance from downtown. I wasn't near any restaurant, so I fix lunch. And I'm not a bad cook. So lunch was probably pretty good. And we had a nice visit. And from that day on, my life changed, that's for sure. Because what happened next was I was in my office at the Court of Appeals. In Arizona and the phone rang and it was the White House. Well, okay. It was the president. Oh, well, all right. And it was Ronald Reagan on the phone. I could tell from his voice, actually. And he said, "Sandra, I'd like to announce your appointment tomorrow for the Supreme Court of the United States. Is that OK with you?"
It was kind of a surprise call. And I said, "Well, yes, Mr. President, I think it is." And I was really pleased and privileged to have had the opportunity to serve on the Supreme Court for 25 years, goodness.
And when I retired, which was in 2006. I had served for a long time, and I watched them to spring chicken at that point. But I had a goal that was still high on my list of things that maybe I could help accomplish. And that was to help restore as part of our education system for young people. Some programs in civics education, how does our country one run? What? How does it work? And how are we all part of it? How are you young people, part of it in the schools, and that was what I wanted to do. I saw so much evidence during my 25 years on the court, that there was a misunderstanding, in large part by many people about the function and role of the courts and lawyers, lawyers were way down. The list of people we like and don't like they don't like. It just we got public schools in this country, about 30 years after we got our constitution after we started our form of government here. And at that point, we didn't have schools and people began saying, Now look, we got this pretty good constitution, and we're proud of that. And wouldn't it be a good idea if we educated all of our young people about how our government works, that would be a good thing to do. That was how we got public schools. And the knowledge of citizenship, really, you don't hear it that through your parents, even if they're good citizens, you don't narrative you have to learn it. And they have to be learned by every generation. And I think as an We've been pretty good at responding to crises in that country when we've had them. We've done okay with economic disaster with war with other problems. But when it comes to long term development of things, we haven't been as effective as a nation, I think as we could be. And I think that's been the case for learning about civics, our government runs.
And my years on the court and there were a lot of mine, I told you, I was there 25 years. But I got more and more concerned about threats to the notion of an independent judiciary. And there were lots of efforts for many quarters in the country, to politicize our courts, to unduly influence them, I thought, and is somewhat—the attacks on judges, I thought, were both unfounded and really hateful. And we saw some evidence in the Congress when we had contact with members of Congress have a real distrust of courts and of lawyers and judges. And it concerns me.
And it stemmed, I concluded, primarily from ignorance out there about our system of checks and balances, and about the value and importance to our country of having an independent judiciary to be sure we do have a rule of law, because I think most of us pay lip service to that notion anyway. But to really have it work, you do need an independent judiciary, and the facts are fairly compelling civic scores in high school. have declined even since 2006. But civic scores among middle school students have stayed about the same. They haven't gone down but they haven't improved. And on the last nationwide civics assessment test, two thirds of the students scored below proficient. Now, that's not a good score. And it tells me we really have work to do in the schools with people to teach out government is is organized and runs and how we're all part of it and how those students are. Only about one third of American adults can name the three branches of government only a third.
And they certainly can't describe their role in our system. Only 7% of eighth graders can name the three branches Now that's pathetic. Come on. I'm some of you. How many of you get eighth grade students? Anybody out there? Yeah, they can't name the three branches. And less than one third of eighth graders can identify the historical purpose of the Declaration of Independence. And it's right there in the title.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Now, come on,
we're in bad shape. Two thirds of Americans cannot name a single supreme court justice. And only one in seven can correctly identified John Roberts as our Chief Justice at present. Less than one fifth of high school seniors can explain how citizen participation helps our democracy. Now, these statistics bad as they are or even more Traveling, when you realize that there are compounded by disparities in income and racial brambles, and there is a huge civic achievement gap between students from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more economically well-off peers.
And we need to remember that providing our citizens with the knowledge and the skills needed to be functioning citizens of this country, was the main reason we got public schools in America. That's why we got them. We didn't have them when we adopted the Constitution. And a group of well-meaning, interested people started going around the country and saying, "Now look, we adopted a good constitution and a form of government and that's fine, but we're going to need schools to educate our young people about it, and what their role is." That's why we got schools and so on. We know that a good quality civic education or learning does help students develop their skills they need in the 21st century. They need to think somewhat critically about issues, they need to understand what that is to identify a problem and think it through. And they need to engage in some thoughtful and respectful discussion and exchange of ideas with even their peers from different backgrounds.
You know, we have very different backgrounds in this country. And we need as young people to learn how to mix it up and have good discussion among all of us. And we need to understand and teach the young people to understand the political processes we have, so that we can address the challenges we have now and are going to face in the future as a nation. And I think teaching the skills of citizenship is pretty difficult. That's what you're faced with. I don't think it's going to get any easier. And I think we need it as badly as ever. So what you do matters. Only 29 states require students to take even one civics or government course to get out of high school. Did you know that? Only 29 states, so we're not doing too well on that score. Only 19 states include civics as part of their statewide assessment systems. And for middle schools. That's the group I love best. They're great. They are really eager to learn and they like teachers.
We're good middle school, but only four states include a civics course for middle schools. That's not enough. It really is not enough. And so the picture is bleak, but I guess it's not hopeless. We do see some positive signs of change. I appreciate the number of people, including educators and parents and students and public officers who are speaking up today and saying, look, we need to make some improvements and some change and we want to, so that encourages me.
And the campaign for the civic leadership mission of schools, which I co-chaired with number Lee Hamilton of Indiana. He was the national chairman. And we've identified six promising practices that maybe can revitalize civic learning in our schools. And they include providing some classroom instruction in government history, law and democracy. I mean, those things are what we're talking about. And we need to include those things in our teach—our teaching programs for these young people. And we need to incorporate in classrooms some discussion of current, local, national and international issues and events. Those that students can understand are important to them to—we need to make sure we talk about some of those things.
And we need to design and implement programs that let students have the chance to apply what they've been talking about in community service. By actually getting involved and doing some form of community service. I think it's great if schools can find opportunities for students to be out there and actually work on something that helps in, in the way of community service. And it's good if there are extracurricular activities for students that are more involved with their schools and or their communities. So, and it helps if the young people get involved in school governance. There are lots of positions in school and make it take if they will.
And I think we need to simulate the democratic way that we deal with problems with discussion and voting and deliberation about what changes would make a difference and practice a little diplomacy inside the classrooms. So I worked with some people who share these concerns. And what emerged With the help of a great group of teacher advisors, you teachers have a lot of talent. And I latched on to some Mike and identify that we're closer to me geographically. And that's what resulted in the creation of iCivics. It's that website that we have to try to help teach these things that we've been talking about and to have ways for students to become engaged. So if you haven't, I know how would a cowgirl from Arizona be involved in video games? I don't know. But there it is. And if you play on iCivics, you can be a citizen leader or a lawyer or a judge or a member of Congress or even president. And you can learn how civic processes work by really experiencing them in some of these problems. And best of all, you know what? iCivics is free. We don't charge. So I think I think it's a help in one of our recent. We have two recent things that I'm excited about. One of them is a game we call We the Jury. And it helps the young people, the students understand the jury system and how it works and functions, and that's good because they're all going to have to do that someday.
And we have a teaching module now called Drafting Board and it teaches the students how to do some research and then write good essays, to put forward some specific problems so solving thing and it's a good thing. I think It works. The feedback so far from teachers and students and the communities has been very, very positive. And I think that what I'm hearing from teachers is that iCivics, but we call it—why iCivics? It's because we have iPads and iPods and "i" everything. So I thought we might as well have iCivics. Okay. That's the reason. But anyway, the young people who use it, save it, the games are fun and cooling. And about half of the students who learn a game during that evaluation period, go home and play the games at home without being asked at all. And that's very encouraging. You know, I hear a lot of that from teachers. So, I think these stories are encouraging. And I there are so many opportunities. Now I'm going to stop talking because I think Jeff over here is getting very impatient. And we're going to turn it back over to him to see what we gotta do.
Jeff Curley
This is great, thank you
. So I'm going to ask a few questions if if you all have questions that you'd like to ask just raise your hand and we'll pass around note cards for you to submit questions for the justice
Sandra Day O'Connor
and we might or might not get to all nighter might not get to
Jeff Curley
all and we'll see. Yeah, so I want to I want to go back in time a little bit. You, your first book was called Lazy B. You wrote it with your brother.
Sandra Day O'Connor
about some rant about the ramp now that's a good book. It's in paperback. Now.
Jeff Curley
It is a very good book. And in that book, you write that being on the Lazy B ranch, you and your brother learned how to be responsible for the care and the nation. Maintenance of your livestock. And I'm interested if you could reflect a little bit about what it was like growing up on a ranch and how that may have informed.
Sandra Day O'Connor
I don't know, it was fabulous because you do have a lot of responsibilities. If you're out on a ranch, you have a lot of cattle to take care of, and they can't talk back to you. So you have to figure out what they really need and provide it. What happens is she'll be riding around the ranch and discovered that the water isn't flowing in some from some well where the cattle are they are hoping to get a drink and they don't have any water coming fast an emergency. It really is, and you have to get out there and solve, figure out why for barter, stop and do something about it instantly and get the thing working again. So you have lots of practical, hands-on experience in observing what's going wrong inside. And no matter what age you are or how you're equipped, you have to learn to be a problem solver. And that's a good thing, I guess.
Jeff Curley
I think we have a lot of problem solvers in this room.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Yeah, I think we do see these teachers do the same thing. You run into a, an emergency or an unanticipated problem, and you've got to solve and you can't call five or six people and have them give you a proposal, you have to get a job.
Jeff Curley
So I'm curious to know what you obviously went to high school in El Paso, what kind of civics education you had growing up?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Well, we had some in those days in El Paso, believe it or not, and but it was kind of boring. That's the thing you have to keep it from being boring. And I guess one of the ways you do that is find ways to have the students actually engaged in some fashion in doing something Maybe getting this city council to do a new bike path or do something anyway, get him involved and engaged.
Jeff Curley
Do you have any reflections regarding the impact of Ronald Reagan elevating you as the first woman does record? I believe you've said it was only 191 years in the making.
Sandra Day O'Connor
That's all, 191 years. But President Reagan was running for the presidency, and he started his campaign in California in the West, and he did not think that he was getting much of any doozy aesthetic response from women. And he started thinking that he really needed to say things and do things that would be more appealing to women voters. I think that was one of the things that was behind his effort to say, "Well, if I get a chance, if you elect me President, I'd like to put a qualified woman on the Supreme Court." That was one of his so-called campaigning. I don't know how many votes that would have produced, but at least, that was one of the things he said. And he was elected. And within a few months, Justice Potter Stewart announced his retirement from the court, boom, there was a situation that required the president to think about who he was going to put on the Court in…it was kind of a big decision, particularly in his circumstances.
Jeff Curley
Was Yeah.
Jeff Curley
And I take it you were surprised when you made that call?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Yes. I was sitting in my chambers at the Court of Appeals in Arizona when the phone rang. And, "Hello, this is the White House speaking, can we reach Justice O'Connor?" So there he was on the phone.
-"Sandra."
-"Yes, Mr. President."
-"I'd like to announce your nomination tomorrow for the Supreme Court. Is that alright with you?"
Well, I mean, what are you gonna say?
Jeff Curley
I don't know.
Jeff Curley
So here I am. So here you are. Yeah. So you and John moved to Washington, DC.
I know some people may have noticed you've been on TV quite a bit recently. Your most recent book is Out of Order. Yes. Thank you, I think it shares some of the unique stories.
Sandra Day O'Connor
I had recently wrote another book, and it includes some episodes from the Supreme Court's history that are very interesting and most people don't know those stories. You know, just don't grow up in school learning about these events that the court…so there was a lot of good material to work from.
Jeff Curley
Can you see a little bit of insider perspective on what it was like to work on the court, the dynamic among the justices?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Well, it's a great deal of hard work, to tell you the truth. And the Court has to review thousands and thousands of petitions for certiorari. That are, that's a good word to teach our students: certiorari. How about that? Anyway, they're filed with the court month in and month out from individuals, corporations, institutions and so forth saying, "This is the case that I want the court to consider. This is the involvement that I or my entity has with the problem, and this is what we see about it in terms of the authorities out there, and please take the case to solve it." And so the justices have to review those month in and month out. They come in We're out here and these petitions, and then periodically, a group of them are put on the agenda for the justices to discuss.
And it takes the agreement of at least four of the nine justices to accept a case for review by the court. If you get four votes, that's enough, you don't need five, you get five, that's better. But four will do it, and it takes just a majority vote of the participating justices do accepted for put it on the Court's calendar. And when that happens, then the parties in the case are advised and they're given a schedule, a time within which they have to file their arguments in written form called briefs. I don't know why we call them brief because they aren't brief. They're long written arguments. But anyway, that's what happens. We get those and then we schedule an oral argument at the court in due course after the briefs have been filed. And in the early days of the court, there were no time limits. The lawyers would come, they didn't have that many cases. And it was the entertainment in DC. And it was socially desirable for the, you know, major players to come sit in the court room and hear the oral arguments. And no time limits for the oral arguments. So they went on endlessly, which was not good. Now we give them a maximum of an hour. And that's enough for…
Jeff Curley
Your story is so
wonderful. We have a question from the audience. What would your message be specific to middle school girls about future desires to be successful?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Well, that the essential message is that there are great opportunities to Young people, male and female, all across the spectrum, in private employment in public employment, or in, in volunteer service, whatever it is, and that they can anticipate and expect to be able to serve in a whole wide array of categories. Nothing is really precluded anymore, and the opportunities are going to be there. So they need to learn, you need to encourage them to learn to read quickly. And two, right. Well, if there were two things I could give a student that would be, read fast and write well. You'll go very far if you can do those things. So I don't know how you encourage them to do that. But those are pretty desirable, very desirable.
Jeff Curley
think one of the things that most people don't know about your quote unquote, retirement years is that although you've retired from the Supreme Court, you're still a sitting Article Three judge?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Yes, I serve as a volunteer judge. I mean, just so I don't totally lose the hang of it. So we have, our federal courts are serving in geographic regions called circuits. And that just means it's a chunk of a country that's divided up. And each circuit has a group of judges who sit on cases at the appellate level for the circuit. And I volunteered to sit as a member of those circuit court panels around the country. I can't do them all but I go to some because it's kind of fun. It's back in the saddle, so to speak, with interesting issues of federal law, and you get to sit with, typically in those Courts of Appeal, they sit in groups of three. So it would be me and two others. And it's often judges who might at least met at some time in the past, or if not, it's a pleasure to meet them, because I know about them. And we'll sit and hear the oral arguments and write opinions. And then an appeal can be taken from that opinion up to the Supreme Court. I've had a couple of cases already decided at that level. Me as a volunteer that then the Supreme Court is taken, and you have to say, "oh, oh, what are they going to do?" So why—do you have a question from the audience?
Jeff Curley
What do you consider to be your best educational experience and what made that experience so worthy?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Oh gosh, I like go all the way back to grade school with a teacher. Who was obviously a woman who cared about teaching us something? She really did, you know, have that sense of her. She really wanted you to do well. I, this is fuel. I look back to this day and think that she made classes good, in a way, because she really cared about us and really wanted us to learn something, and that was helpful. And then in high school, that's dicey stuff. I mean, the hormones kick in and from then on, it's trouble. I don't know how you keep them more involved here than elsewhere. But—
Jeff Curley
Neither do I. I think you've also said that at Stanford, as an undergrad, you had a professor that inspired you to go into the law.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Well, yes. Uh-huh. I, I was accepted at Stanford, which was such a blessing. I didn't know how hard it was to get. And later on, I decided, but that really wasn't good thing. And it was, I liked it. And you had a choice as a student about what classes to take and what subjects to take. And that was such a shock, because you don't have that choice in high school or junior high or anything else you take, which Yeah, so that was interesting. And I did hear from many sources that there was a law school professor at Stanford, who taught a class open to undergraduate students. And I heard it was really a good class. So I took it and it was, I think, because of that class probably I decided to apply to the law school and, surprise surprise, they took me.
Jeff Curley
Great educators all along the way. So going to an audience question here, how do you feel the presence of more women on the Supreme Court has changed, that the practice
Sandra Day O'Connor
changed the way I look, my I go in the court occasionally when I'm in Washington, if they have oral arguments, I like to go and hear one if it sounds like it's going to be an interesting case. Some of them are deadly boring, but some are interesting. And if it is, and I'm there, I like to go sit in a courtroom. And listen, and when I looked up at that bench and see three women up there, that is astonishing. It really is.