Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor regaled University of Denver law students Wednesday in a wide-ranging 35-minute talk – a purple-clad icon whom some found as “normal” as their grandmother or aunt.
“I’m now just an unemployed cowgirl,” O’Connor said.
She weighed in for judicial independence in the face of looming counterterrorism concerns and other issues.
A push to impede judges’ ability to cite foreign court decisions strikes her as wrong-headed, she said. Lawmakers appear concerned that the U.S. system could be “gummed up by what some court in Zimbabwe says,” she said. “But it hasn’t passed, and I’m not in Congress, and I wouldn’t vote for it if I were.”
Presidential power in near-war situations such as the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks; in handling terrorism suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and in running military tribunals may require high-court action, she said. “We’re going to have some answers, probably,” after cases clear lower courts, she said.
Growing public concern about judges, leading to term-limiting initiatives of the sort seen in South Dakota and Colorado, threaten judicial independence, she said. “Perhaps many of our citizens have forgotten why we do have courts and judges, and why they matter, and what services they perform in our country.”
O’Connor, 77, assured students that even in a huge, complex society, “you can still be an effective instrument of change.”
Learn to resolve disputes “without going to court,” she said. Learn “how to make things happen in the public sector.”
Her advice appealed to first-year student Amy Lopez, 23. “There’s too much litigation in the United States,” Lopez said. “Very inspirational.” O’Connor “has such a normal aura about her,” she said.
O’Connor told the students that she retired last year from the bench “because my husband suffers from Alzheimer’s. … I did what I should do. We’ve been married 54 years. And his needs came first.”
She visited DU at the invitation of former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis, who runs DU’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
