Unknown Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen,
if you please. I'd first before introducing Justice O'Connor, I'd like to just say a brief word about the special edition of the National Security Law Journal, which is here on the tables. That includes, among other things, the eulogy that Justice O'Connor gave at justice, palace funeral, and a number of other remarks. And justice pals honor and in as much as this is a special tribute to him. This this dinner this evening. I like to thank every meeting of this committee as a tribute to him. But this is a special tribute. I invite you to pick a copy up on your way out and make it part of your power collection. I'm particularly pleased to have been given the assignment to introduce Justice O'Connor, to the family, to the committee and to its broader family. In part two, because of the special place that she had in the affections of lewis powell and the special esteem the professional esteem that he had for her. I've been instructed to make my introductions snappy, she shakes her head. And therefore I won't pause long over the record facts which are well known but quite astonishing. So I'll just glide by them quickly. Coming off a large cattle ranch near the New Mexico border, growing up there getting to Stanford at age 16. If I counted correctly, getting both her bachelor's degree and Law Degree in six years. I think I'm right about that. finishing third in her class, and then finding herself unable to persuade any top law firm on the west coast to employ her other than as a legal secretary. Leading to this absolutely delicious moment and I've been I've read I've read about it since when, having been nominated by the president united states. The Attorney General William Fred Smith, calls her a former partner of Gibson Dunn and Crusher, one of these top law firms calls her to tell her that she has been nominated by the President. And the justice is reported to have said, Oh, I guess you mean for the position of a secretary.
Unknown Speaker
At a time and in a profession where opportunity came mostly in the public sector. For women, her career is astonishing. And it's in it's a swift ascent. Deputy county attorney, state attorney general state senator Majority Leader I think she was the first woman to be Majority Leader of her party in any state legislature. Judge at several different levels. nominate did for the court upon the retirement of Potter Stewart in 1981. Having set already in the few brief years since then, a special trail of achievement in the courts deliberations and most notably in the area of abortion, affirmative action, federalism, religion, many other areas that they occupy themselves with. And also and I don't want to bypass this other side of the justice. She's probably the only Justice of the Supreme Court ever to appear before in the conference of justices, which happened to be taking place that day on Halloween. In what was said to be a mask of Groucho Marx mask. History doesn't record Chief Justice burgers reaction to this. Another another aspect of the Justice his personality is revealed by her the membership and what is apparently known the insiders as the mobile party unit, a group of seven or eight women from Arizona, old friends who find it congenial to go off for a week a year while their husbands are doing whatever they do a week a year. And they and they do tennis and they do golf and they do bridge history records one such event in Stanley, Idaho, a small, rural town of maybe 100 souls. And the ladies decided bridge one evening was not sufficiently exciting. They found themselves in a restaurant and a bar with cowboys dancing back and forth across the landscape. I witnesses report that it wasn't long before the Justice who was not in any way labeled as a justice at this point was asked to dance and for the next hour to she probably was the most swinging justice in US history. And probably the cowboy does to this day realize that he was dancing with anybody other than a cowgirl from Arizona. One of the special reasons though, why this is a fitting time for Justice O'Connor to come and talk to us is that in the life of this committee, Justice Powell having died we need some guidance and some inspiration as to the direction this committee can take as it unites the study of law with the pursuit of sound national security.
When Justice O'Connor came to the court,
Powell was being introduced to a new phenomenon his life, he had not had the good fortune to be in contact with many female lawyers of real achievement at that time, I was a partner in his law firm, we had no women partners. And so in meeting Justice O'Connor he was meeting appear someone whom he considered a superb lawyer and a committed public servant. And it happened that she was a woman. They were both they are both, in a sense, hard working very hard working very bright, it was natural that they should become friends and close colleagues. They each share, I believe, a fondness for family, they each rely on the importance of public service. Both have very clearly set in their own areas, special records of achievement, both civically and professionally. And therefore it was all together fitting that they should become close colleagues and close friends. At justice pals funeral, Justice O'Connor, his obituary, which you can read for yourself, was especially moving to those of us who had worked closely with and become close friends of Justice Powell. So it is with that spirit of recognizing her significance to justice pal. And with the hope that she can, in her turn, give us the kind of guidance that he gave us that I am happy and proud to welcome to this family into this committee, Justice O'Connor and to introduce her to all of you, Justice O'Connor.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Thank you, john. When this committee was formed in 1962, with the support of my former colleague, Justice pal, we were in the midst of a Cold War. Our security concern was primarily focused on containing the Soviet threat. how different our international concerns are today. Justice pal volunteered, as you know, for military service and World War Two, and spent part of that time and North Africa part in England, where he worked an ultra, a key intelligence group that helped the Allies formulate their targets and plans. He knew and he understood well the need for accurate intelligence in maintaining our security in a world more. Today, the communist threat is vastly diminished. And the world is not formally at war. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union broke up, we were euphoric. In the West, we no longer worried constantly about a nuclear threat, and the need for bomb shelters. But the euphoria phase subsided. As we witnessed a startling increase and number of nation states around the world. areas which had been forcibly integrated into large nation states in the past, separated and forms small nation states centralized around a single ethnic group. every ethnic group seemed to want its own country in Africa to tribal and ethnic group sought separation, South Africa miraculously eliminated apartheid without us a civil war, expectations in the West were high. we tended to assume that the newly formed nations and Central and Eastern Europe would quickly succeed and becoming part of the free world and that's positive market economy. It's clear that no democracy can function well, without the basic institutions of open elections, a free press, and a qualified independent judiciary, right. Accordingly, American lawyers realize that we should offer assistance, and how to structure legal systems and institutions to serve these new democratically elected governments, and wonderful help was provided, including that of the central Eastern European law initiative initiated by the American Bar Association. But we fail to appreciate how establishment of a rule of law takes a long time. It comprises far more than the basic institutions of government and of criminal in a civil code. United States after all, has had over 200 years to develop a whole network of rules, regulations, and administrative machinery to establish and enforce limits and guides for business and the marketplace. There is an innate capacity Cassidy and humankind for both good and evil. The simple side has to be curved.
That we've witnessed a serious amount of organized crime in Central and Eastern Europe. And in the Russian Federation, were no general regulatory scheme was in place. The rule of law espoused by the American Bar Association, by lewis powell, and by all of us who are trying to help form the basic institutions and rules turns out to be a vast network of interrelated rules and guidelines. And there's no instantaneous set of rules that we can put in place in every country that wants to be part of the free world. In the Middle East, there's another set of problems, which are producing a serious terrorist threat with a global dimension. These concerns have replaced our cold war concerns of the 1960s when our constitution was formed, as Thomas Jefferson said, America was kindly separated from much of the world by nature and by a wide ocean. those barriers have been breached, the earth seems to grow smaller as our national economies are increasingly linked together. And as more and more people kind of, can communicate instantaneously at the stroke of a computer key globalization many of our leaders and scholars have commented in the last decade of this century, is an inescapable proof of our time. We're rapidly forming new institutions that will enable close working relationships between nations trade agreements and treaties, such as the World Trade Organization. Economic partnerships, including the European Union, America expanded forms of our traditional strategic alliances such as NATO, and the international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank. When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was first drafted in 1947, there were approximately 31 signatories. And there are nearly 150 members today of what has become the World Trade Organization. It's a critical development in world history. To have so many of these nations agree on such things as binding rules regulating trade standards for the protection of intellectual property, and provisions for the resolution of international disputes. The United States is also a party to the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA, which remove tariff barriers that formerly separated a trading population of 365 million people. The law is racing to catch up with the re conception of international markets and alliances, and with the international courts and alternative dispute resolution bodies which have multiplied each of the treaties and new international bodies incorporate some kind of panel or tribunal to resolve the disputes that inevitably arise among the signatory states and their citizens. Differences might be resolved or crimes prosecuted in the European Court of International Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the American Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the Andean communities, their tribunal of the law and the sea, the International Labour Organization, the dispute panel systems of the World Trade Organization, or NAFTA, administrative tribunal's of the UN, or more special lies bodies like the Iran Contra
Claims Tribunal and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. Recently, a diplomatic conference convened in Rome to produce a new permanent International Criminal Court to pry work criminals, which as of now, the United States does not want to join. We've not yet fully developed the legal regimes appropriate to recent advances in cyberspace, and telecommunications. And in transportation, we're still formulating the necessary rules and procedures to maintain some degree of financial stability, to enforce international contractual obligations to set industrial and product standards to protect the environment. And to enhance national and international security. It's going to take time to resolve how fully flexible borders will affect the domestic legal problems that our courts confront, including questions of jurisdiction, immigration restrictions, and I trust them copyright violations, and the applicability of criminal laws to internet transactions. That's where all of you come in. You're experts in the area of law and national security. Your participation and advice is and will be needed. The greatest challenge I see for the next century is to learn to live together in a world with porous borders. It has to be met with an international legal system that balances our respective needs to maintain emulator internal authority against the obvious gains from closer union with the global community. How can our tradition of law and freedom and justice be adapted to the new and different tribunal's that will resolve some issues affecting our nation's and our citizens? Without at the same time sacrificing these principles and the internal sovereignty that served us well, on the past? How can our experience be brought to bear in constructing the dispute resolution forum that will serve for some of our global activities in the future? The answers? Well, these are all questions worth asking. And the answers are going to be one significant mark of our success in the next century. I suspect that lewis powell will be watching from somewhere, just how will we respond? Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
I hope that justice Powell is watching. And he would have applauded as vigorously as we have applauded. know, sometimes when your lights are low, and you feel oppressed by the overwhelming tasks of your daily existence and the problems that confront you, you think of those pure spirits who lift yours, your own spirits and serve as exemplars, and serve to be the models of what you would like to be in what you would aspire for our leaders. Justice O'Connor is one of those. And just as powerful was another Justice O'Connor, we have a small gift that thank you tonight. And it is a book called sources of our liberties. It's very appropriate because you are one of the sources of our liberties. And so we are very proud to give you this book, which was done some years ago compiled by the American Bar foundation and some of the pressures