Law review article

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: A Selected Annotated Bibliography

Law review article / By

JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR: A SELECTED ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Julie Graves Krishnaswam/

WORKS AUTHORED BY JUSTICE O’CONNOR 1102

The Judiciary, Judicial Philosophy, Federalism and

International Law 1102

Equality and Feminism 1112

The Legal Profession and Professionalism 11 l 5

Tributes 1118

Autobiographical Works 1121

WORKS ABOUT JUSTICE O’CONNOR 112 l

Substantive Law Review Articles Written About

Justice O’Connor 112 l

Scholarly Monographs and Book Chapters About

Justice O’Connor 1143

Biographical Works 1146

Tributes to Justice O ‘Connor 1147

By Supreme Court Justices 1147

By Members of the Legal Profession 1149

As the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is a profound and fascinating figure in American jurisprudence. During Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, he promised to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court, and he appointed Sandra Day O’ Connor. 1 She was confirmed in 1981 and spent the next twenty-four years on the Supreme Court bench, retiring in 2005. Before her time on the Court, Justice O’Connor

+ Reference/Faculty Research Librarian and Associate Law Library Professor, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. B.A., 1999 Reed College, J.D., 2004, CUNY School ofLaw, M.L.I.S., 2008, Pratt Institute. The author wishes to thank Julie Lim, Director, CUNY School of Law Library, and colleagues Raquel Gabriel and Sarah Valentine for encouragement and assistance. The author also acknowledges the support of a research

Law review article

The Alito/O’Connor Switch

Law review article / By

The Alito/O’Connor Switch

Joan Biskupic*

There are many factors that define the current Roberts Court, not the least of which is the dominant personality and determined approach of the Chief Justice himself. But a close second, or even arguably the leading determinant of the Court’s current direction, is the replacement of Sandra Day O’Connor with Samuel Alita in January 2006.1 And my task today is to look at some of the cases that are freshest from the recent Term that show the consequences of this succession.

The Justice O’Connor who I will be using for a point of comparison with Justice Alita is not the freshman jurist who was appointed in 198 l by Ronald Reagan2 and who, in her early years, was more aligned with Chief Justice Warren Burger and William Rehnquis t.3 Rather, I will be focusing, for purposes of these key recent cases; on the Justice O’Connor who moved to the left over time and who, in the end, controlled the Court.4

That distinction may not be so important in some areas of the law, but it is definitely crucial in the statutory and constitutional issues that were so important in the recently completed Term. It is also a reminder that Justice

Author and Supreme Court reporter for the USA Today.

See Joan Biskupic, Contrast Obvious Between O’Connor, Would-Be Successor, USA TODAY, Nov. I, 2005, available at http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-0l-alito oconnor_x.htm (highlighting the differences between Justices Alito and O’Connor on issues such as

Law review article

Remembering Rehnquist

Law review article / By

Remembering Rehnquist

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR

William Hubbs Rehnquist spent the last thirty-three years of his life as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, fifteen as an Associate Justice and eighteen as Chief Justice. I met Bill when I was a freshman at Stanford in 1946. He was attending Stanford and working part time as a “hasher” at my dormitory during the evening meal. He amazed all of the young women by carrying such heavy loads of dishes on his tray. Perhaps that is how he learned to carry all those heavy loads in all of the years that followed. He was tall and good-looking, and he had a sharp sense of humor.

In 1950—after he had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford with a B.A. and an M.A., and received another M.A. from Harvard—he and I enrolled at Stanford Law School. He really put the “Bill” into the “G.I. Bill”: he had attained the rank of sergeant and had served in the Army Air Corps as a weather observer in the United States and North Africa. Like many of my classmates who had served in the war, he was serious about his studies and eager to get his LL.B. and practice law. Bill was clearly the brightest in our class, always prepared and willing to express his views when asked, and his conservative views were backed up by brilliant analysis. We also enjoyed bridge games, charades, and occasional movies. Little did either of us expect to serve on the Supreme Court one day.

Our class was very excited when Bill got a Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Robert

Speech

Remarks on the Uniform Law Commission

Speech / By

Sandra Day O’Connor The uniform law commission plays a very special role in the laws of this country. As all of you know, we have a national government, we have a National Constitution. But what it did was to bring together the separate states. And most Americans aren’t totally unaware of how complex our legal system is. And the reason it has worked fairly well, I think, is due in large measure to the existence and work of the uniform law commission. It’s interesting that at least four members of the Supreme Court have given some time to serve on the uniform state law commission. And I think the members of the Supreme Court are keenly aware of the role play by having uniform state laws in the areas in which otherwise there’d be total conflict. I was privileged to be a state senator in Arizona, from 1969 to 1975. And for part of that time, I was the senate majority leader. And during my time of service in the Arizona State Senate, we passed more than a dozen of the uniform law Commission Act. And I was very much aware of the work of the Commission. Without it, I don’t think my state could have or would have enacted the laws dealing with commercial transactions, issues affecting child custody and support of the handling of trusts and estates. And it could be very difficult, duplicative and costly, without the existence of uniform acts passed by the various state. Now, at the time I lived in Arizona, I had a former law school classmate who also lived in Arizona. His name was William

Law review article

Foreword: The Establishment Clause and Endorsement of Religion

Law review article / By

FOREWORD: THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE AND ENDORSEMENT OF RELIGION

Hon. Sandra Day O’Connor*

The first few words of the First Amendment to the Constitution are deceptively simple: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The meaning of those sixteen words, however, has been a source of much debate – often intense and divisive – over the course of this Nation’s history.

Thus, as we approach the Bicentennial of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, it is altogether fitting for the editors of the Journal of Law and Religion to devote this issue to a celebration and reaffirmation of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment. The Williams burg Charter on Religion and Public Life, in particular, stands as an articulate and emphatic call for civility in public discourse on religion and politics and for a renewed commitment to the enduring precepts underlying the Religion Clauses. That leaders from all walks of our society have joined together in this national compact is a testament not only to the diversity and pluralism that we celebrate, but also to the depth and strength of our Nation’s commitment to religious liberty. I applaud the efforts of the drafters of the Charter for their thoughtful contribution to our continuing national debate on this important topic.

The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause have had somewhat of a tortuous history in the Supreme Court. The Court’s jurisprudence in this

Law review article

Reflections on Arizona’s Judicial Selection Process

Law review article / By

REFLECTIONS ON ARIZONA’S JUDICIAL SELECTION PROCESS

Sandra Day O’Connor* & RonNell Andersen Jones**

Using Arizona as a case study, this Essay examines the history of changes in state judicial-selection rationales, methods, and practices. It outlines Arizona’s journey from contested elections to a hybrid merit-selection system featuring appointments and retention elections, and compares this experience to that of states that have continued with a pure election system. The Essay explores the purported tension between judicial accountability and judicial independence and argues that Arizona’s experience demonstrates both the falsity of that dichotomy and the superiority of a hybrid merit-selection system in simultaneously promoting accountability, independence, competency, and fairness.

INTRODUCTION

This 50th Anniversary Issue of the Arizona Law Review presents a wonderful opportunity to look back at some remarkable legal developments of the latter half of the twentieth century and the issues that have impacted the work of the judicial branch during that time. One important development is a shift in the issues surrounding the judicial selection process. This trend is particularly notable at the state level because selection processes in the states are easier to change, interest has historically been much lower, and more litigation takes place at the state level than in the federal judicial system.1 Judicial selection methods and the practices surrounding them have a great impact

Law review article

Judicial Accountability Must Safeguard, Not Threaten, Judicial Independence: An Introduction

Law review article / By

This issue of the Denver University Law Review is devoted to an important subject: judicial accountability. Properly understood, judicial accountability is a fundamental democratic requirement of our federal and State governments. Put simply, judges must be accountable to the public for their constitutional role of applying the law fairly and impartially. Judicial accountability, however, is a concept that is frequently misunderstood at best and abused at worst. It has become a rallying cry for those who want in reality to dictate substantive judicial outcomes. The notion of accountability is superficially attractive: judges who reach outcomes that part ways with the will of the majority—often mislabeled “activist” judges—should be held “accountable.”

This simplistic understanding of accountability—judicial accountability for the majority’s desired substantive outcomes—ignores the role of the judiciary and indeed the very structure of our democratic governments, State and federal. Worse, this perversion of the concept of judicial accountability threatens to undermine the safeguards of democracy and liberty that were so brilliantly conceived by those who first designed our governmental institutions and drafted our Constitution. In short, “[p]opulist, substance-based accountability for judges is precisely what the Founders feared[.]”1 The Framers placed at the core of the judiciary’s design the concept of judicial independence as a means to guarantee the Rule of Law. Judicial

Speech

The Importance of an Independent Judiciary

Speech / By

Stewart Schwab Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for Cornell University’s second annual Milton Konvitz Memorial Lecture. I’m Stewart Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell law school. And I have the distinct honor to serve as your moderator for this unique and special occasion. thanks to the generosity of Dr. Irwin Jacobs, who received his engineering degree here in 1954. And this is Joan Jacobs, who received her degree also in 1954. From Human Ecology, the Milton our convicts, visiting lectureship and American ideals honors the spirit of Professor Milton our convicts, and especially his theoretically rich and diverse American ideals course. The purpose of their gift is to bring a prominent expert in American democratic thought, ethics or political philosophy to campus to speak to the Cornell community. Both the law school and the IR school are proud to count Professor Milton comets as a former prominent faculty member. Professor conference was a founding member of the ILR school and also held a joint appointment and was a vital member of the law school faculty. But Professor conferences legendary reputation at Cornell stems in significant part from the fact that more than 8000 students university wide were students in his American ideals course from 1946 to 1973. In this course, undergraduates examine the writings and teachings of the great intellectual thinkers and philosophy Throughout history and throughout the world, who shaped American democratic values?

Law review article

Foreword to ASIL Handbook for Judges

Law review article / By

This overview of international law should provide much-needed background in an area of the law that is rapidly emerging in ways that affect courts here and abroad. The reason for the expanded focus on international law, of course, is globalization. No institution of government can afford now to ignore the rest of the world. The importance of globalization should not be underestimated. Thirty percent of our gross domestic product is internationally derived. We operate today under a large array of international agreements and organizations: the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the Hague Conventions on Collection of Evidence Abroad and on Service of Process, and the New York Convention on Enforcement of Arbitral Awards, to mention only a few. But globalization is much more than simply these agreements and organizations. Globalization also represents a greater awareness of, and access to, peoples and places far different from our own. The fates of nations are more closely intertwined than ever before, and we are more acutely aware of the connections. As we learned in this country on September 11, 2001, these connections can sometimes be devastating rather than constructive. But as we also are learning in the post-September 11 world, the power of international cooperation and international under standing is much greater than the obstacles we face.

The word “globalization” has many connotations, some positive and

Law review article

Music and the Law

Law review article / By

[A]n overspeaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal.

-Francis Bacon, The Essay on Judicature

As you know, I’ve made a life in the law. And I’ve always loved music, from childhood on.

Lawyers feature in plenty of operas, of course. It starts with Moses, the first Lawgiver, in Rossini’s Mose and Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. As expected, Moses generally comes off as an admirable character. But operatic evaluations of later lawyers are more critical. What we find in opera concerning lawyers after Moses is Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi about forging a will; a lawyer in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess who sells Bess a divorce for a dollar-when he learns Bess was never actually married, he raises the price of the “divorce” to $1.50; we also see the lawyer in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus,who is so incompetent that he gets his client’s sentences increased.

The law’s presence is also palpable in the many operas which take place in jails. Jails must be irresistible to composers looking for a place to set a reflective aria-there is plenty of time to think in jail; there is nothing better to do; and the resonance is good. There are jail scenes in Faust, Don Carlo, and Tosca, for instance. Fideliot akes place entirely in jail, portraying a disguised woman’s successful attempt to save her wrongly imprisoned and soon-to-be-executed husband.

Gilbert and Sullivan also come through, as usual, with well placed pokes at the law. In Trial by fury,we meet a lonely Lord Chancellor whose job of approving