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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.
Amen!
“My score on the law school test was very good. In the upper 15 percent, so I will undoubtedly get in. Isn’t that nice?”
I love how casual this is
“I love you—and love you—and love you some more,” Sandra wrote John. “Only 46 more days—til you’re do-o-o-o-omed. What fun.”
“Your letter about waking me up in the morning with lots of kisses so we could snuggle some more was quite a temperature raiser. More, S.D., more!”
Cute early romance
“We all got hooked on Julia Child. Sandra cooked through the book, recipe by recipe. We said, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sandra, do you always have to overachieve?’
The OG Julie and Julia
“You know, the only thing you get from sitting on the fence is a sore crotch.”48
“I hear you said I was a drunk.” O’Connor replied, “I did.” They parried on: GOODWIN: If you were a man, I’d hit you in the nose. O’CONNOR: If you were a man, you could.
“I hope it doesn’t take a court order to tell you to not rush back to work too soon.”28
SDOC advising about self care to a colleague
She was very circumspect and cautious, but her face was expressive. It would show impatience by the twist of her mouth. You knew when she was not happy. Her eyes would narrow. Her mouth would set.”
Sounds like Miranda Priestly
In her files was a note to herself, written in her careful script sometime in the late 1970s. It read: “Don’t let fate take over. You can influence your destiny.”
“With Sandy, there ain’t no Miller time.”29
While most of her friends called her Sandra, she had put up with men who wanted to show they were pals by calling her Sandy
Ugh my life
Breast cancer, Ignatius saw, “was an unusual attack on Sandra’s belief that she could be good at everything. She needed someone who had been through it all who could say that it would be okay.”38
“Having this disease made me more aware than ever before of the transitory nature of life here on earth, of my own life. And it made me value each and every day of life more than ever.”
“Some of the intemperate language in dissents reached the level of personal criticism. This, if the trend continues, could lessen respect for the Court as an institution.”
O’Connor was listening to a Supreme Court argument from an unreconstructed Southern lawyer named Harry McCall, Jr., who was defending the state of Louisiana in a prisoners’ rights case. “I’d like to remind you gentlemen,” he said at one point, prompting O’Connor to lean over the bench and say, with a slightly mischievous smile, “Would you like to remind me, too?” McCall, who was seventy-five years old, tried again. “Justice O’Connor and gentlemen,” he began. Byron White interjected, impatiently, “Just ‘Justices’ would be fine.”43
For both men and women the first step to getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show. As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.44
Anxious, high-achieving law students applying for a Supreme Court clerkship were sometimes startled—then soothed—when the justice not only offered them a cup of coffee, but poured it and served it to them, asking, “Sugar or cream?”63
“Liberty finds no refuge in the jurisprudence of doubt.”
What moved her was a powerful sense of civic duty. If O’Connor had an overarching faith, a kind of secular religion beyond her belief in God, it was the duty to serve one’s community.
“She would say she could tell how the Times felt about her opinions by the picture they ran—frowning and dour versus smiling and attractive.”
O’Connor leaned more toward three-part tests: If this condition were met, or that circumstance arose, or this event happened, how would a “reasonable” person feel or act? Context and circumstances were important, sometimes decisive.
One of the justice’s favorite movies was Legally Blonde, the 2001 film about a sorority queen who turns stuffy Harvard Law School on its head.
This gives me such joy! #BendandSnap
