As the Supreme Court begins a new term this week, David Gergen sits down with Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice, to talk about life after the bench and her thoughts on the current state of the court.

It was July 1981. I was taking a rare vacation from my job as President Reagan’s communications director when my boss rang. “Please be in my office tomorrow at 10,” said Jim Baker, Reagan’s chief of staff. “I can’t tell you why.”

Getting to Washington from New York’s ­Finger Lakes was an ordeal—long drive, broken-down car—but as I burst into his office, the effort was more than worth it. There stood Sandra Day O’Connor, the president’s choice to be the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. I liked her immediately: She was gracious and modest but came with a direct, don’t-mess-with-me style that harked back to her days as a young cowgirl on the Lazy B ranch in Arizona, learning to brand cattle and hunt jackrabbits with a rifle. Today at 82, she hasn’t changed a bit. Slender and fit, she still has an adventuresome spirit—the same confidence and drive that propelled her from the high desert to the highest court in the land.

During her quarter-century on the bench, O’Connor became known for her core belief in civility, compromise, and the sensible center. As a moderate justice on an ideologically ­divided court, she cast the swing vote in countless 5-4 decisions. Before she stepped down in 2006 to spend more time with her beloved husband, John, who was suffering from