The first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court discusses her past, the courts and why the younger generations need to become more politically engaged. Excerpt from “Justice Sandra Day O’Connor,” October 22, 2012.

SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR, Former Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

In conversation with DR. MARY BITTERMAN, President, Bernard Osher Foundation; Past Chair, Commonwealth Club’s Board of Governors

O’CONNOR: There’s nothing like ranch life to toughen you up a little bit. I mean, if it’s a remote ranch like ours [when I was growing up] – we were 35 miles from the nearest small town. If something went wrong, there was no Yellow Pages and no phone to call, so you had to do it yourself.

BITTERMAN: You graduated third in your class at Stanford Law School. But in trying to get a legal position, it was very difficult, and you ended up in a secretary position. Share that.

O’CONNOR: I was offered a secretary position, but I didn’t take it. I met my husband-to-be in law school and he was a year behind me. I graduated, and he still had a year to go. We decided to get married out on the Lazy B Ranch. It was a difficult time, because we both liked to eat. That meant one of us had to work and he was still in school, so that one was me.

I was out of law school, and my classmates from Stanford all had well-paid jobs in the big firms up here in San Francisco, earning their livings as distinguished lawyers. There were at least 40 names of law firms and phone numbers on a bulletin board saying “Stanford law graduates, call us. We’d like to talk to you about possible employment.” I called every telephone number on the bulletin board. Not a single one of them would give me an interview. They wouldn’t even talk to me.

I said, “Why won’t you talk to me?”

They said, “Well, we don’t hire women lawyers.”

“Why not?”

“We just never have and our clients wouldn’t stand for it.”

I heard that the county attorney in San Mateo County once had a woman lawyer on the staff. I thought, “Well, if he’s had one, he can have another.” I wrote him and made an appointment to go see him. He was very nice. To this day the voters elect the county attorney in the counties. Elected officials are always gladhanders: They’re always glad to meet you. He welcomed me and we sat and talked and he looked at my resume, but he said, “I did have a woman here one time on the staff. She did a good job. I’d be happy to have another, and you’ve got a good resume, but I get my money from the county Board of Supervisors. I’m not funded to hire another deputy. But let me show you around the offices since you’re here.”

He walked me around the office and, sure enough, every office was occupied. He said, “Thanks so much for coming around.” I explained to him that it was very important to me to get a job. I said, “I know you don’t have any money. I’ll be willing to work for you for nothing if you will let me work in your office until such time as the supervisors give you a little more money. I met your secretary. She’s very nice and there is room in her office to put a second desk, if she wouldn’t object.”

That was my first job out of law school. No pay and I put my desk in with the secretary. I loved my job. I got to answer various questions that were posed by the district attorney, his deputies and the different agencies of the county. I loved what I was doing. It was all right, except the pay was a little slender.

BITTERMAN: As we move forward, give everyone a sense of meeting with President Reagan, and the stir the information about your appointment caused on the Lazy B, in Arizona and the nation.

O’CONNOR: It was a shock that President Reagan ended up hiring a cowgirl from Arizona to go on the U.S. Supreme Court as the first woman to serve. He sent a couple of people out to Arizona to check my record. I held various public offices in Arizona and there was plenty about me in old newspapers. They had to check it all out. No Google at that time. 

They spent time checking me out. Then I met the people who were sent out to check on me. It wasn’t too long afterward that I was sitting in my chambers at the court of appeals in Arizona, and the phone rang. It was the White House calling. President Reagan said, “Sandra?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I’d like to announce your nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court. Is that all right with you?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Yes, Mr. President.” I had to go home that afternoon and tell my husband. “You won’t believe the phone call I had today.” It certainly affected his life more than mine.

I think what interested Ronald Reagan was my life as a cowgirl. He loved to ride horses. He kept horses all of his life. Even in the White House he kept a couple of horses down on Rock Creek Park where the park rangers keep their horses. He loved ranch life and loved horseback riding. I think that’s what he liked about me. I don’t know if it was my legal ability.

BITTERMAN: If we look now at the bench, three of the justices are women.

O’CONNOR: It’s incredible. I go in the courtroom today and look up and see three women. It’s astounding to me. It took [many] years to get one on the bench, so it’s pretty amazing.

BITTERMAN: Can you ever imagine that the court could be predominantly women?

O’CONNOR: Of course I can! They like to work hard. They’re used to it.

BITTERMAN: Your quarter century on the bench saw you as a proponent of clear thinking, civility, compromise when it was essential, and as David Gergen in a recent interview with you put it, “the sensible center.” How people yearn and lust for a sensible center these days. Yours was often the determining vote in a 5-to-4 decision. I know that you’re not allowed to opine on any matters currently before the Court – and many people also want to know if you’d like to predict the outcome of the presidential election, which occurred to me you may want to pass on. Certainly people are, in many cases, familiar with your majority opinions. I’m wondering if you might comment on the importance of the dissent, and maybe speak to one of your dissenting opinions you authored, in Kelo v. City of New London in 2005.

O’CONNOR: On the Supreme Court, of course, every case the court accepts for decision that is orally argued at the court results in a written opinion, or several, at the time that the decision is released so that the public can see them.

In some of the cases, a fairly high percentage, the court is not unanimous. In the last term, something in the neighborhood of 30 percent had dissenting opinions. When there are separate opinions, you will have an opinion for the majority, and you can have separate writing by other justices. There will be a dissenting opinion and sometimes all of the justices will join the dissent, though it could be you’ll have a single dissent and separate opinions. Not every justice writes in every case. If you can join a circulating majority opinion, you don’t have to say anything else. You can join a circulating dissenting opinion. But for some reason, if you want to add something to the majority side, you can ask for the writer to include it. If the writer does not, you may want to write separately. You can join a dissenting opinion, or you can write your own dissenting opinion, or a concurring opinion.

Much of the justices’ time is spent writing opinions. The work of the court is then expressing these written opinions. It’s very interesting to follow them if it’s an issue you care about. It makes for very good reading. I hope all of you, at least on occasion, take advantage of the opportunity to look at and read these opinions in a given case that you’re interested in.

BITTERMAN: Would you speak to the goals you would hope to be accomplished by iCivics.org?

O’CONNOR: I’ve been concerned for some time about how not enough people in our country are registering to vote when they can. About how not enough of those who are registered to vote do vote and make their voices known in our country. It seemed to me that we were falling down on educating people on how our government works and how every one of us is part of it.

The framers of our Constitution did a pretty darn good job when they wrote our Constitution and developed a system of government with three branches. We owe them enormous thanks; but to make it work, each of us has to participate in our [own] way. That means that when we’re eligible to vote, we need to register to vote, we need to cast that vote and we need to care about what happens in our governmental entities: our city, our county, our state and our national government. That’s how we participate, and it really does matter. I hope that every young person here is planning on being a participating citizen the minute you’re eligible.

BITTERMAN: In one of your recent interviews, you were mentioning people who are preparing themselves for citizenship tests. So many people look at the materials and say, “My goodness, I wouldn’t be able to answer this.”

O’CONNOR: If you’ve come here from Mexico or France and you want to become a citizen, you have to take a citizenship exam and it’s hard. They ask terribly hard questions. If you haven’t studied up a lot, you couldn’t pass that test. It’s amazing how much you have to be able to answer to become a citizen. But if you just have been born here, gone to school here, you’re already a citizen, you don’t have to know much at all. It’s just amazing.

BITTERMAN: What do you consider your most difficult decision during your tenure in the court?

O’CONNOR: Do you remember Bush v. Gore? That was pretty hard.

BITTERMAN: A lot of these questions are from people in law school. Any tips for them?

O’CONNOR: Study hard. Don’t think it’s just going to come. And you’re not going to learn everything you need to know just by going to class, but you better go to class. Do the reading that you’re supposed to read. Become a part of how our nation functions. I thought law school was challenging, but it also opened my eyes. All of a sudden I started learning why certain things are the way they are. It’s because of legal decisions and legal action taken by our legislative branches that instruct us in what we can and can’t do. It’s just fascinating to go to law school and all of a sudden learn how we got where we are and why it’s like it is. That’s a great privilege to go to law school.

BITTERMAN: Do Supreme Court justices ever regret decisions they’ve made? If so, what can they do about it?

O’CONNOR: If you’re a person that likes to look back and say, “Oh my gosh, did I do the right thing last weekend when I went out instead of staying home and studying?” If you’re that kind of person and you’re on an appellate court, maybe you’re going to look back at opinions you wrote and ask yourself, “Did I do the right thing?” I’m not that kind of a person. I put my effort in at the front end. If I have a decision to make, I find out everything I can, pro and con, make the decision and move on. I don’t go back later and say, “Oh my gosh, do you think I was right?” But if you do, there isn’t a lot you can do about it if you’re on the Supreme Court. The decision will have been made. Maybe you can stay on the court long enough that some aspect of it would come up again sometime and you can say, “Oh, we ought to take that [case] and change that decision that was wrong.” I’ve had that happen, but that wasn’t the game I played.

BITTERMAN: As the first woman on the high court, did you encounter any awkwardness on the part of your colleagues?

O’CONNOR: No. There are nine members on the court. It’s possible that the court can divide rather evenly among the nine. At the time I was nominated, they were finding that they were divided on issues coming to the court. The members were glad to get a ninth justice, male or female. They were welcoming. We got along fine. I felt no resentment at all among any of my colleagues that I was there and I was a woman. Of course, we didn’t have a women’s restroom back on the floor where the justices were. That created a problem.

BITTERMAN: One student says the class is studying judicial activism and judicial restraint. What is your opinion on this?

O’CONNOR: It seems to me that at a Supreme Court level, whether it’s a state supreme court or the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision made by that court is going to be the governing principle [going] forward in that particular legal issue. You want to be very careful about not reaching out too broadly. In my opinion, all these decisions should be written to solve the issue that’s actually before the court, and not try to write some sweeping principles of law that are going to decide all kinds of things in the future that aren’t before you at that time. I think it’s better for judges at the appellate level to write narrower opinions that deal with the specific issue in the case and not make broad rules that you don’t know how they will affect us in the future. I think it’s best to write narrowly.

BITTERMAN: What about your views on elected versus the appointment of judges?

O’CONNOR: Many of our states elect their state judges, rather than have them appointed. When the framers of our Constitution developed our system, all federal judges are nominated by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Senate has to approve that selection by the president. That’s a good system for judges in my opinion. It has served our country well through the years.

Many states don’t follow that example. They have popular election of all their state judges. That means that candidates run and they need campaign contributions to pay for their ads and their signs. Who contributes money to them? It’s the lawyers that are most likely to appear before them in court. What kind of a system is that? You’ve got some attorney that you know full well is going to be back before that judge representing different clients. He wants to be in the judge’s good graces, so he gives him a big campaign contribution. That is not the system we should have.

California still elects some of its judges. You shouldn’t do that. You should change that. A number of our states do it for their Supreme Court all the way down. It’s really shocking to me that, after all these years, we still have so many elected judges. That’s not good. I’ve spent some time in my retirement years talking about this problem and writing a little bit about it. I feel strongly about it. I don’t think that’s a good system.

BITTERMAN: Do Supreme Court justices, given their political or party leanings, influence the outcome of cases that come before the court?

O’CONNOR: I’m sure it does at some level. If you happen to be someone who believes strongly, for example, in state rights and that more responsibility should be at the state level, and you have a decision to make that involves looking at some state law that the petitioning party before you in the court says is beyond the power of the state, you might be more sympathetic to the defense. That’s understandable. There are some issues where you may have written in other decisions about your understanding of some particular provision. Then it comes up in a later case; probably you’re going to look back at what you already said before in some other context and be affected by that.

BITTERMAN: You had a long and wonderful marriage. How did your husband, who was trained as a lawyer as well, deal with your extraordinary prominence

and success?

O’CONNOR: He was just wonderful about it. I ask myself that question. How could he put up with all that he put up with? Because it was a lot for a man to reckon with, to have a wife in a position like mine. He was just fantastic about it. He was totally supportive at every step of the process. I called him when President Reagan called me and I said, “John, the president just called and he wants to put me on the U.S. Supreme Court. What do you think about that? What should I do?”

“Well, you have to say yes!”

He was amazing. He was so outgoing and so open and so decent about accepting all these things that I did. I wish every woman who is getting married could marry someone as wonderful about letting her do what she wants to do as I did when I married John O’Connor. He was great.

BITTERMAN: Someone has written in that their 10-year-old son loves iCivics.org and describes it as “addictive.”

O’CONNOR: I’ve been concerned for a long time by the fact that schools in our country, generally speaking, are not teaching young people much about how our government works.

We’ve had our students tested against students from other countries and we don’t do very well on math and science; we’re down in the middle somewhere. We have a lot of effort going on now to try to increase the capacity of our students and teach them more about math and science. In the process schools have focused on things other than civics, which is teaching us how our government works, and how we’re a part of it, how we have three branches and how the whole thing operates.

I think it’s terribly important that we continue to educate every generation about how the government works at different levels and how we are part of it. This really matters. With the help of others I started this website called iCivics.org. We did it with games that the user plays. They play the game and in the process they learn how it works and what the principles are in that particular issue. The games are fun to play. It’s designed primarily for the middle school level, but   

    it works all the way through high school. It even works for adults if you’re a dum-dum, so get on it.

I’ve kept it free; it costs the schools nothing to use it. The young people learn a lot by playing the games and they enjoy it. I want you, as parents and grandparents, to make sure that your children’s schools know about iCivics.org.

BITTERMAN: That’s not a request. It’s an instruction.

O’CONNOR: That’s a court order.

BITTERMAN: You’ve been so influential in your career, opening up tremendous doors of opportunity. Who has had the greatest influence on you?

O’CONNOR: I just respected my parents so much. They were fabulous. I think that had to be it. They were super. They lived on a remote ranch, and who would have ever thought that their daughter would be the first woman member of the

Supreme Court?

They came back for the swearing in, and by that time my mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s. She didn’t know who was who. On the day of the swearing in, she met President Reagan and she said, “I think I’ve seen you some place before.” So I said, “That’s right,” and I tried to push her on. It was a great event for them. It meant that everyone they’d ever known their whole lives then wrote them a letter and said how interesting that their daughter went on to court. It brought a lot of mail and contact to them, and with the isolated lives that they lived it was nice for them.

BITTERMAN: When people are appointed to positions for life, sometimes the question is raised, should positions be appointed for life, or should there be a limited term? Do you have thoughts on that in the high court?

O’CONNOR: The framers of the Constitution didn’t set a term limit, and it’s worked out pretty well so far. I thought it was time for me to step down and I did, but I wasn’t required to do it.

BITTERMAN: The people you sat with on the bench – do you stay in close touch with many of them?

O’CONNOR: I do. I keep an office at the Supreme Court to this day. I agreed to sit as a judge with a number of the Federal Courts of Appeal. We have 14 Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal in this country, and I voluntarily sit with many of them on occasion to hear and decide cases in that circuit. Some of them need a little help, so I will go and sit on some cases. I’m going in a week or 10 days back to New York City, where I’ll be sitting with the Second Circuit on some cases there. I’ve kept up with what the courts are doing.

BITTERMAN: Another thing from your wonderful book is a quotation from Wallace Stegner about frontiers, because many people think of you not only as leader but also as a great pioneer.

Frontiers free people from artificial restraints and throw them into contact with clean nature, contributing to a generosity, openness, independence and courage unknown to the over-civilized. The descriptors he listed – generosity, openness, independence and courage – have all been applied to you as a public servant, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, as a distinguished American and as an educator. With our frontiers rapidly disappearing, how can we provide opportunity for people to acquire these important virtues?

O’CONNOR: Whatever we do, we have frontiers. If you’re fully employed in things with which we’re all familiar in our society, you still have frontiers in the sense that no particular profession has been so fully developed that there aren’t still frontiers out there, places you can go beyond what has been done so far. There are frontiers in every walk of life, in every profession and business. It’s good to know what those frontiers are.

If you have the capacity to try to improve or enhance those frontiers in some way, do it. Try it.

Young people particularly need to look at that when they choose a line of work or what they want to do. I think it’s fun to work in some area where there is still quite a bit of room for going forward, making new discoveries and setting new boundaries. That’s true of most things, because we learn more and then that opens still new avenues. Look at the medical field, look at the scientific field, you discover one thing and that leads to many more discoveries. There is always room for going forward.