More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She had long appreciated the simple truth that if people get to know each other in a relaxed setting, they are more likely to find common ground.
She would walk away from fights she deemed unnecessary, while never shying away from the important ones. She knew when to tease, when to flatter, and when to punch the bully in the nose.
O’CONNOR WAS THE most powerful Supreme Court justice of her time. For most of her twenty-four-plus years on the Court, from October 1981 to January 2006, she was the controlling vote on many of the great societal issues, including abortion, affirmative action, and religious freedom, so much so that the press came to call it the O’Connor Court.
Confident but humble, and a born politician, she effectively controlled the Court because she was a moderate who believed in compromise.
Day remained a lifelong anti–New Deal, anti–Big Government conservative, even after the Rural Electrification Administration brought a steady supply of electricity to the ranch.
Sandra and her brother, Alan, vividly recalled DA’s tirades against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “Why, that son of a bitch even tells me when to get up in the morning and go to bed at night,” he railed when FDR instituted Daylight Saving Time at the beginning of World War II.19
she learned something else by watching her mother. She learned how to not let bullying or passive-aggressive males get under her skin. She learned not to take the bait. That may have been the most valuable lesson.
Do not look back, do not regret, take life as it comes and make the most of it. That was Ada Mae’s way, and in time it would be her daughter’s way, too.
The most important lesson from God was that one individual, however insignificant he or she may seem, could make a difference in the world.11
Sandra was the product of a world in which Mexicans and Anglos routinely mixed, in part because every Anglo family in El Paso that could afford one had a Mexican housekeeper. Sandra could be a demanding boss; she expected the household helpers to keep up with her rapid-fire schedule, and a few quit or were let go. At the same time, she never raised her voice, and she invited the help to join the family for dinner. When one of the maids became pregnant, she made sure the mother and child were well cared for.
The boys were exposed to a steady parade of houseguests and visitors from all over, including foreigners—diplomats, businessmen, a chef in the Japanese imperial household, the crown prince of Swaziland—who came to dinner through the World Affairs Council. The O’Connors arranged for the boys to live in Mexico for six weeks on an exchange program, and for several months they cared for a Hispanic couple’s son, a star football player from Duncan, Arizona, who had lost a leg because of medical malpractice.
The ERA was a provocative instrument and, in O’Connor’s careful analysis, not the only way to get from here to there on women’s rights.
The Equal Rights Amendment was (and, decades later, arguably still is) a laudable proposal aimed at guaranteeing the rights of women. But the nation, and certainly the state of Arizona, was not ready for such sweeping change in the early 1970s.
The women’s movement generated a severe backlash from both men and women who felt threatened by disruptions in traditional gender roles. O’Connor had keen political instincts, and she preferred to live in the world of the possible, to go for better if best was not immediately obtainable.
Women’s rights would become a quiet cause for Justice O’Connor—never frontally embraced as an activist on the model of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who came to the Court twelve years after O’Connor), but slowly and surely furthered and fostered in her judicial opinions.
Phyllis Schlafly, the highly effective conservative activist, brought her “Stop ERA” campaign to Phoenix. Before long, there were protesters on the plaza of the state capitol waving placards with messages like WHO’S GOING TO NURSE ME WHEN MOMMY’S DRAFTED? and I LOOK BETTER IN GO-GO BOOTS THAN COMBAT BOOTS.41
The ERA, she decided, was not worth protracted fencing with the likes of Conlan—especially if, at the end of the day, the amendment lacked the votes to pass the legislature.
“You know, the only thing you get from sitting on the fence is a sore crotch.”48
“Sandra was a frustrated English teacher and she spent much of her time correcting grammar, and I spent much of my time making fun of her correcting grammar.”54
Their mutual animosity finally came to a head over a bilingual education bill that was hung up in the House. At a meeting in the office of Speaker Stan Akers, O’Connor blamed Goodwin for the delay. Goodwin said to her, “I hear you said I was a drunk.” O’Connor replied, “I did.” They
(O’Connor was particularly intent on turning out Mexican Americans to vote Republican.)
On the mantel of his chambers, Thomas put a YALE SUCKS bumper sticker. Asked to lecture at Harvard and Yale, he responded, “I don’t do Ivies.”59
When we met Justice Thomas, maybe he was still reeling [from Anita Hill’s testimony], but I was sort of shocked. He wasn’t nice. He had a chip on his shoulder. It was almost unpleasant. We were so uncomfortable. And we were not wealthy and entitled kids.60
Thomas had his own clerks watch the 1949 movie The Fountainhead, a dramatization of Ayn Rand’s novel extolling individualism. (The hero is an architect who refuses to bend to conformity.) On the Court, Thomas was content to be a judicial loner, to the right of Scalia. He wanted to restore “the Constitution in Exile” by discerning the intent of the Founders and stripping away the layerings of post–New Deal activist judges.61
Thomas, at first, may have been sullen around Ivy-educated law clerks, but he was warm and funny with the Court’s support personnel, the security guards and elevator operators who appreciated his kindness.
At the Supreme Court, the justices continued to struggle to find tools that could be used to promote the advancement of African Americans as well as other historically marginalized groups—without running afoul of the guarantees of equality written into the U.S. Constitution. If the arguments appeared technical and narrow, it was because the Court was trying to find ways of finessing societal problems that defied sweeping solutions and yes-or-no answers, as well as buying time to nudge other democratic institutions to wrestle with the issues. On the
Had the Court allowed the recount and had Bush ultimately won, either in Florida or in Congress, she would have felt free to step down. It is an irony of her vote in Bush v. Gore that it guaranteed she could not retire anytime soon.
The O’Connor Christmas card for 2000 read, “May Your New Year Be Free of Hanging Chads.”)
In January 2017, asked if she had any regrets about Bush v. Gore as she sat in a wheelchair at her assisted living facility, she answered, “I’m sure I did, but second thoughts don’t do you a lot of good. It looked like a party-line vote, I know.” Her craggy face softened and grew sad.13
O’Connor was very disappointed when the Roberts Court’s conservative majority, in an opinion written by Anthony Kennedy, opened the floodgates to corporate spending on elections in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.12 Corporations and other organizations, wrote Kennedy, have free speech rights, too, and spending to influence elections is protected by the First Amendment. O’Connor thought Kennedy was being naïve and allowing the Court to be used as a political weapon.
