By SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR, STANLEY PRUSINER and KEN DYCHTWALD

OUR government is ignoring what is likely to become the single greatest threat to the health of Americans: Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that is 100 percent incurable and 100 percent fatal. It attacks rich and poor, white-collar and blue, and women and men, without regard to party. A degenerative disease, it steadily robs its victims of memory, judgment and dignity, leaves them unable to care for themselves and destroys their brain and their identity — often depleting their caregivers and families both emotionally and financially.

Starting on Jan. 1, our 79-million-strong baby boom generation will be turning 65 at the rate of one every eight seconds. That means more than 10,000 people per day, or more than four million per year, for the next 19 years facing an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. Although the symptoms of this disease and other forms of dementia seldom appear before middle age, the likelihood of their appearance doubles every five years after age 65. Among people over 85 (the fastest-growing segment of the American population), dementia afflicts one in two. It is estimated that 13.5 million Americans will be stricken with Alzheimer’s by 2050 — up from five million today.

Just as President John F. Kennedy, in 1961, dedicated the United States to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade, we must now set a goal of stopping Alzheimer’s by 2020. We must deploy sufficient resources, scientific talent

Washington

ALTHOUGH our attention as a nation is focused on the selection of a new justice to the Supreme Court, another judicial process that is also extremely important is happening across the country: the selection of state court judges. But in too many states, citizens are being shortchanged by the way these judges are chosen.

Each state has its own method of choosing judges, from lifetime appointments to partisan elections. But judges with a lifetime appointment are not accountable to voters. And elected judges are susceptible to influence by political or ideological constituencies.

A better system is one that strikes a balance between lifetime appointment and partisan election by providing for the open, public nomination and appointment of judges, followed in due course by a standardized judicial performance evaluation and, finally, a yes/no vote in which citizens either approve the judge or vote him out. This kind of merit selection system — now used in some form in two-thirds of states — protects the impartiality of the judiciary without sacrificing accountability.

State courts resolve the most important legal matters in our lives, including child custody cases, settlement of estates, business-contract disputes, traffic offenses, drunken-driving charges, most criminal offenses and most foreclosures. More than 100 million cases are filed in state courts each year.

When you enter one of these courtrooms, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the judge is

Arizona has always been home to me, even while I served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. With just a little over a year before Arizona celebrates her centennial, it is an exciting time for me to be able to rejoin the dialogue in Arizona. We have come a long way since our territorial days, and now, we need to look anew at how our government works.

As majority leader of the Arizona Senate in the early 1970s, I regularly invited Republican and Democratic legislators over to my house to talk about issues facing Arizona. Over dinner, we would discuss ideas and options in a collegial, civil manner. We did not worry about the political parties because we focused on working together to reach solutions to the problems facing us.

As we’ve seen recently in the news, “civil talk” seems to be something that is missing in much of our politics today – whether here in Arizona or at the national level, whether among our politicians or our citizens.

The genesis for the O’Connor House Project is the mud-adobe home my husband and I helped build and where we hosted many of these events. I don’t want it to become just a “house” that gets preserved. I want it to stand for “where civil talk leads to civic action.” I believe we can return to a time when we work together, find commonality and make decisions that are in the best interest of all Arizonans.

The O’Connor House Project, like various other groups, is facilitating citizens of Arizona coming together to look at government

Voters generally don’t express much interest in the election of judges. This year, as in years past, voter turnout in elections for judges was very low. But judicial elections, which occur in some form in 39 states, are receiving growing attention from those who seek to influence them. In fact, motivated interest groups are pouring money into judicial elections in record amounts. Whether or not they succeed in their attempts to sway the voters, these efforts threaten the integrity of judicial selection and compromise public perception of judicial decisions.

The final four candidates running for open seats on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania raised more than $5.4 million combined in 2007, shattering fund-raising records in Pennsylvania judicial elections. Since 2006, high court campaigns in Georgia, Kentucky, Oregon and Washington also set fund-raising records. Since 2004, nine other states broke records for high court election spending.

Most of this money comes from special interest groups who believe that their contributions can help elect judges likely to rule in a manner favorable to their causes. As interest-group spending rises, public confidence in the judiciary declines. Nine out of 10 Pennsylvanians regard judicial fund raising as evidence that justice is for sale, and many judges agree. According to a nationwide survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Institute, partisan judicial elections decrease public confidence that courts are fair, impartial and operating in