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
