The High Court’s New Justice is Actually One Tough Cookie

FORMER ARIZONA Supreme Court Justice Renz Jennings is one Phoenix lawyer who isn’t thrilled that Sandra O’Connor has been elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court. He doesn’t like her. In 1978, Jennings, by then having returned to private Is Actually One Tough Cookie practice, stood in open court as O’Connor, the trial judge, told Jennings’ client that Jennings was representing him so poorly that he should get a new lawyer. Not content to stop there, O’Connor reportedly complained to the state bar disciplinary hoard that Jennings, then 79 years old, was senile and should be removed from practice.

“For Sandra lo do that took a lot of gumption,” says Barry Silverman, a Maricopa County commissioner who was then a prosecutor assigned to O’Connor’s court. “Jennings’ problem – missing deadlines, mishandling cases – was something all of us had winked at. But here was a trial court judge publicly declaring that a former supreme court judge was incompetent.”

Sandra O’Connor’s record is that of a woman who winks at nothing. Often that has made her formal, even rigid, in demeanor. But more often, and more important, it has made her a strong, sometimes gutsy judge who rii;- idly respects the legal process and is intolerant of those who take it less seriously.

Spurred by references in the national media to her supposedly limited credentials and to the middling ratings she had been given in local bar association surveys, I went to Phoenix the month before O’Connor’s confirmation expecting to