Unknown Speaker
Justice O'Connor here, here

Unknown Speaker
I've made these mistakes before

Unknown Speaker
we're ready

Stewart Schwab
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm absolutely I'm Stewart Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean of the Cornell Law School. And I'm just so pleased to introduce this session today. Both Biddy Martin and Sandra Day O'Connor our first

Biddy Martin, To my far left, has been provost at Cornell University since July 1 2000. The Provost being the university's chief educational officer, and Chief Operating Officer. And Provost Martin is the first woman to hold this position at Cornell University. She's been on the Cornell University faculty, however, since 1984, in the department of German studies, having received her PhD in German literature from the University of Wisconsin. Now on my near left, is Justice Sandra Day O'Connor She was the 100 and second person appointed to the United States Supreme Court. And as we all know, that was a first, the first woman appointed to the court. Prior to that she was a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals. She was Majority Leader of the Arizona State Senate, among many other positions. Justice O'Connor received her undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford University. And I'm very grateful and delighted that she was able to visit Cornell this week as our distinguished jurist in residence. Now, on a personal note, these two women have been among my very few bosses in my entire professional life. I think as I recall, when I was a groundskeeper at the tennis courts, it was a man who was telling me what to do, but stand there and very few others and both have been very supportive and a pleasure for me to work with. I had the good fortune to report to Justice O'Connor as her law clerk in her second term on the Supreme Court. And now as law school dean, I have the good fortune to report to Provost Martin. Now in between that period of my time as a law clerk in my time, as Dean, I did serve on the faculty but as any right thinking tenured faculty member believes I didn't report to anyone during that, that that time. But this afternoon, we have asked Justice O'Connor and Provost Martin to engage in an intimate conversation about women in leadership positions. In part, we've asked them to respond to questions assembled by the Women's Law coalition here at the Cornell Law School of faculty and others. Now, we recognize that this conversation is being observed by over 300 people, but otherwise, we want it to be Like casual, informal fireside chat. I present to you Provost Martin and Justice O'Connor.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you. Okay.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you, Stuart. I suppose the first question should be how best to handle this employee.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, we'll debate that later. All right. We'll see how it

Unknown Speaker
goes. Good. I want to thank Stewart Schwab in the law school for inviting me to chat with Justice O'Connor and tell her what an honor it is to be on the stage with you. Well, it's nice to be here with you. Thanks. Good. Let's begin by asking Justice O'Connor how her visit to Cornell has been.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Busy. But I came here about 20 years ago, I think, and Stewart Schwab was already on the faculty at that time. His family was a little bit smaller. He's had a few more children in the intervening years. But Cornell is special. I went to Stanford. And we always think of Cornell as the Stanford of the East. And I think Cornell thinks of Stanford as the Cornell of the West. And you know, there is a link because when I'm standing Stanford's benefactors, decided to give them money to build a university. They came up and talked to people at Cornell first, and it didn't quite gel, and they ended up starting that university out on the west coast. And the first president of Stanford came from here, it was David Starr Jordan. That's right, who came to Stanford and he was a wonderful first president. And the two universities are not dissimilar at all. They both have high academic standards and separate campuses that are very agreeable, and there are many similarities. So it's fun for me to see the Stanford of the east on various occasions.

Unknown Speaker
One of the one of the questions that members of the law coalition really wanted to have asked is about Stanford and specifically whether you considered alternatives to law when you were an undergraduate at Stanford or any other point in your life, or how you decided.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I didn't know. I was the product of a ranch life. I my parents had a cattle ranch in a very Remote, arid region. It was half in Arizona, half in New Mexico along the southern part of the Gila River. And it just was kind of a different life. We weren't near a town. And when it came time to go to school, eventually they decided to send me to El Paso, Texas, to my maternal grandparents, so that I could enter school in El Paso. Because there really wasn't one nearby. And I did that and went from kindergarten through high school in El Paso.

My grandfather died after a couple of years and my grandmother, then, was there. And she had married very young. She was young enough to have enough energy to tackle a job of having a youngster in her household. And she was interesting in some ways, not well-educated. She never went to college because she married very young. And her husband was in the cattle business. And my parents met because of that.

My father's parents had a ranch, the one I described, and they died when he was just ready for college. And my father had wanted to go to Stanford, but the lawyers who were settling the estate said, "No, we need somebody to go out to the ranch while we try to settle the estate. So you go out and keep it going." And he was 18 years old, 18, 19, and he went out to that remote, godforsaken place, and he never left. He died in his own bed at the Lazy B ranch in his mid 80s.

And he bought some bulls to put on the ranch. And he bought them From W.W. Wilkey, that was my mother's father. And he said he got my mother as part of the deal. Because Mr. Wilkey, when he went to El Paso to take the shipment of bulls, invited me to dinner that night at his house. And my mother and father met that night at the Wilkeys' house. And there is such a thing as love at first sight. They fell in love that night. And he went back to the ranch with the bulls, and they started writing letters to each other, these wonderful love letters. And at the end of about two months of that, my father had written my mother saying, "We can't possibly get married, I've added up my assets. I have 36 dollars and 29 cents, and I have no prospects at all. You have to find somebody else. There's just no way we can get married." And the letter up, but they went off and got married in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

And my mother came out to that ranch and went in the four room adobe house. No indoor plumbing, no running water. And the Cowboys slept on the screened porch. I mean, it was kind of an isolated life. My grandmother, who had been having the school all those years, was very unhappy. And she said, "Now Ada Mae," my mother's name. "Don't ever learn to milk the cow." In other words, don't get too involved in ranch life. But my mother didn't learn to milk the cow, but she learned to do lots of other things. And that was my life.

And when it came time for college, there was only one application I sent, and it was to Stanford. And that was where I wanted to go, I'm sure, because in the back of my mind was my father's hope that he could go there. The problem was that my high school principal had forgotten to tell me when the college entrance exams were given, and I had missed them. And Stanford said, "Well, we can't take you, you didn't take the exam." And so my college principal in El Paso called the admissions office at Stanford, and said, "Now you have to take her, she'll do just fine. You give her the exam when she gets there." Well, that was in the middle of the last century. And Stanford must have been harder for students because they said, "Okay." And I went off to Stanford, and my parents drove me out there and left me, and I had to take the exam, and they decided I'd passed, I guess. So I stayed at Stanford.

And I really liked it. And one of the courses I took as an undergraduate student at Stanford was a class given by a law professor named Harry Rathbun. He was a marvelous, marvelous man. And he taught this undergraduate course. He was just inspiring. And because of him, I decided, "Oh, maybe I should apply to law school." And I had finished my major requirements in three years, but I needed some class credits to get my BA degree. And Stanford said they would credit me with law school credits if I were admitted to the law school. So I applied for early admission to the law school at Stanford. And to my surprise, they took me, my senior year of undergraduate study was my first year in law school. And I really enjoyed law school. I thought it was terrific. It was so amazing to me to all of a sudden start understanding why certain things were as they are in our world, and they derived from legal principles that I knew nothing about. I thought our tort was a dessert made in France.

Unknown Speaker
It was.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
So anyway, I ended up in law school. And I loved it. It was great. Just great.

Unknown Speaker
So no other career, you never were tempted to run the ranch yourself?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I, well that's what I wanted to be. When I was a child. I was going to be a rancher. But I ended up later, much later, having a brother and a sister, and my brother was willing to take on the job of running the ranch. So I probably wouldn't have done as good a job as he could have anyway, so I became a lawyer.

Unknown Speaker
Next Best Thing, to being your next best thing. I loved your book about growing up on the ranch, the Lazy B, and I wondered if you wanted to say just a little bit more about growing up in the southwest. I highly recommend the book, the descriptions of day-to-day life on the ranch, and the impact of your parents on you, with their very different personalities are just beautiful. Wonder if you want to say a little more about going up there.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well it was very remote, and my companions as a child were my parents. And luckily both my parents, my mother was well educated. My father never did get to college, but he was so intelligent. And they were both very well read, they kept a good library and my mother taught me to read by the time I was three or four. And I just, reading was my life. And as a child, my friends were the books that I had. And the cowboys, we had some cowboys out there, and they tended to be these characters, many of whom couldn't read or write, but that was okay. They knew a lot of other things a lot better than we did. And they were great companions, too. I learned how to play poker from Alice Radha, and they taught me how to ride, and we had to work on the ranch. I had several horses, and I loved that. I was on horseback every day out there. And what you did learn on the ranch was that everyone was expected to pitch in and help with the work. And little girls were no exception. And when you were expected to do something, you had to do well, and nobody was ever going to come up and say, "Oh, good job, Sandra, well done." If you did it well, you didn't hear a word. But if you did it badly, you heard a lot. And so that was kind of the ticket. You had to be independent and to get the job done and to do it well. And the other thing, I guess, it was important on the ranch was that the solution didn't have to be elegant. But they had to work. It had to be practical. Didn't matter if there was some elegant solution. They had to work. And a good sense of humor didn't hurt the cowboys like that. And we all do. So, I guess a sense of independence and hard work, and I hope a sense of humor helped make it all work.

Unknown Speaker
Sounds as though it did. I am, I was thinking about you after reading about water on the Lazy B when I read the New York Times Magazine yesterday, which was about the water shortage in the southwest. So what was it like?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
The big issue that the world faces over this century in which we're now living, whether you know it or not, is water. That's it. It's much more important than oil because we have to have water to live. We have to drink. It grows our plants, and we have to eat. There is not enough usable water on the planet today for the population that we have. And if you think there have been disputes over oil, you're just wait till they start over water. The Middle East is starved for water. There's one country that has it. That's Turkey. And I don't think turkeys much inclined to share it with everybody. In the Southwest. water is scarce, but it's scarce in a lot of places in the world. And we have a lot of illness today, and deaths around the world caused by people drinking polluted water. And one of the great things we can do is to try to teach people how to clean up the water sources. They have to make it usable. But you watch my words if any of you want to go into something that matters Water?

Unknown Speaker
Well, I was wondering, I thought it might be a naive question, but I wondered if you'd have an opinion about it and what will

Unknown Speaker
what role the judiciary might actually end up playing? And oh, we'll end

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
up presiding over lots of litigation over the water. Yeah. But those of you who can help clean it up and distribute it better are going to be the heroes.

Unknown Speaker
Let's talk about some of the questions people raised about your experience as a woman and the only woman to haven't done much of many of the things that you did from law school. Well, from the ranch, I assume, right up through through the current moment. One of the questions people asked was aside from your rejection from law firms after graduating at the top of your class at Stanford Law School, have you in addition to that, experienced other forms of discrimination as a woman in your career or in

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't know it was just really hard to get a job. I liked law school. I wanted to work Were you. And when I graduated, I had good grades and everything was fine. But I could not get an interview with a law firm. Much less than job. They didn't want to talk to me. But that was 1952. And when I went to law school, 1% of the law students nationwide were female. Today, it's a little over 50%. So I have lived through a total revolution. It's amazing. But when I graduated in '52, law firms just didn't hire women. Now there were a few tiny firms, a husband, wife, or a father, daughter or a brother, sister. But that was about all it was.

And I finally asked an undergraduate woman friend of mine at Stanford whose father was a partner in a big capital. Your law firm, talk to your father and see if the firm will give me an interview. She did. And he did. And I made a trip to Los Angeles to be interviewed. This was after my graduation from Stanford Law. And we had a nice chat and the partner looked at my resume on this day, you have a fine resume here, very fun. But Miss Day, we've never hired a woman lawyer at this firm. And I don't see the time when we will. Our clients would not accept it. But Miss Day, how do you type? And I said, Well, there and he said, if you can type well enough, we might be able to find a spot for you here as a legal secretary, if you'd like. And I said, No, thank you that I really wanted to work as a lawyer. So that was the end of my law firm exploration.

We were living in, I was living in California at the time. And my first job as a lawyer was in the public sector. I talked myself into an opportunity in the county attorney's office in San Mateo County, California. I had met my husband to be in law school. He was a year behind me. And we plan to get married in December before his graduation and we both like to eat so one of us had to work and that was me. And I did want a job as a lawyer. And I persuaded the county attorney to take me on. But with the understanding that I wouldn't be paid anything because the supervisors hadn't given him any money for another slop. And that my desk would be inverted his secretary was because he didn't have any office space, but that was the deal. I struck. No pay, sat sat with Secretary but that was okay. I got my foot in the door.

And I loved my work. I immediately got great assignments, giving legal advice to different county officials and commissions and boards. It was great. And effort two or three months, I think the county attorney was appointed the county judge. And my supervisor was made the county attorney and it opened up a real slot, a salary, an office, everything. So it all worked out. And so it was just a time when the opportunities for women weren't there. I didn't even think of it is discrimination as such. I mean, I just wanted the job I wanted. I was focused more on that than thinking about how I'd been injured.

Unknown Speaker
It didn't have to be an elegant solution. You thought about the rain.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
had to work. See that's Exhibit A Exhibit A from the Rams. Yes. I didn't care if it was elegant and had to work and for me That arrangement at the county attorney's

Unknown Speaker
office did work. Well in the majesty of the law. You have a really eloquent section on changes in women's roles and legal rights for women over the last century or longer. And I really enjoyed that section. I know that you went to Seneca Falls, DN. Now on Monday of this week.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I was privileged to go with a group of marvelous women professional women up to Seneca Falls. And this is the spot where that first conference was held in the Wesleyan Chapel, they're called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. And now it's just one broken down with a roof over it that the US Park Service has, but they're going to reconstruct, I think, the bowl. And we got on the internet, a copy of the speech that Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave up there in 1848. At the end of the conference, they had about 300 people in attendance. And one of our group read parts of it while we stood there, by that wall of that chapel. She read it with feeling, and it brought tears to our eyes. It was so moving. I want you all to look up that speech, and it will resonate with you. Even today, it was amazing. And that was the start of getting women various opportunities, such as the right to vote, which didn't come until 1920. It took a long time to get there.

Unknown Speaker
You You wrote that getting The appointment or getting the call about an appointment to the Supreme Court. It's like a bolt of lightning.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
It's a, you can't really anticipate that. I mean, look at all the years since our nation was formed, and we had a Supreme Court. I was appointed in 1981. And I was only the hundred and second justice, which is kind of amazing if you think of it. I think John Roberts is the 15th Chief Justice. We've had very few, if you think about it. It's been a slow development.

Unknown Speaker
One of the questions that the law coalition asked me to to put to you is this. You mentioned that now over 50% of law students are women. And we know over time in this country and then others when more women have entered a profession, the profession has undergone what many have called the feminization of the profession. to such a degree that wages and prestige go down in that profession, one of the questions is whether you think there would ever or anytime soon be a danger of the legal profession undergoing such a shift.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't see it at present for one thing. salaries and law firms are higher than ever. They're certainly higher than those of federal judges. And I don't see them going down. And the statistics on women in the legal profession are interesting. I don't quite know what to make of them. Some of you can figure it out maybe 50% of the law students, women in the profession, in the law firms and the practice of law, perhaps as high at times of 40% 35% 40% women, but after two years of work, it drops to about 20% women. Now think about that, and have partners in law firms after a period of time 15% women, so something is occurring there. You're not saying that feminization of the legal profession by any stretch, there is this drop of women in the profession? And I'm not, I don't have the answer. Some of you can do the research and find out. Perhaps it's because women are having families and dropping out for a while. I don't know what's going on. Maybe they're finding it not as satisfactory as they had hoped. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker
That's certainly happening in other professions, especially science, we know but that leads me there aren't many women in the science field so very few and too many drugs. popping out once they start, I wonder if this brings us to the question of work life balance. And I know you've been asked a lot about how you manage to do everything you've done. You, you did different things in different periods of your life. I wonder if you have advice, especially for women in the legal profession.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I wanted to be married and have a family as well as to practice law. I always wanted to work from the time I was a little child, I wanted to work work worth doing. It didn't matter to me ever, how much I was paid. I wanted to work at something that mattered. And I was privileged in my life to find that all along the way. I'm very grateful for that. But maybe one reason was because as with the county attorney, I didn't it didn't matter if I was paid or not. I wanted to do that. job. And I did have work worth doing. But it's hard when you have children and a family. They take a lot of time. And at the time I had two children. And then three. Part of that time I was working in the attorney general's office in Arizona as an assistant attorney general. I was the only moment of course, and I wanted to work part time because of the children situation. And they had never had any work part time so they weren't prepared to do it.

So again, you have to do something practical. I made myself indispensable to my state clients. I was doing legal work for different state agencies and boards and I did such a good job. They couldn't stand it if they didn't have me. So then I told the Attorney General Look, I will work for you two thirds of the time at one half the salary, but I have to add a little more time for my family. And because by that time, my state clients were so determined that they needed my help. The Attorney General made the decision that okay, he would let me work part time we got a good deal financially and every other way, I think, but I got a little more time. And that was a big help to me.

And I don't know, today it's a little easier for women because a good many law firms will let women work part time in the law firm. And today we have computers I didn't in those days, you can take work home and do something on the computer at home, it makes work from home a little more practical and feasible than it was in my day. But it is not easy having a family and a job. It just isn't. I never had any time for myself at all. I mean, there wasn't any time to go to the spa or have my hair done or anything else. It just it was work and family. And that was it. And you have to have a little babysitting help along the way or you're not even going to be able to do that. I thought it was worth it. And I'm glad that I made that choice. But I was blessed by having a high level of energy. And not everyone has that. I think I inherited it from my mother. She was amazing. And I'm very lucky to have felt that I never dragged around saying I'm sometimes I can't move.

Unknown Speaker
Yes, that is unusual.

Unknown Speaker
that's highly unusual. Actually, when I was reading your books, I wasn't I was thinking, this woman inherited high energy I get your law clerks weren't able to keep up with you. They were. Let me ask you a little bit about your law clerks. We have a question about how many women law clerks you've had. How are law clerks chosen? Why do you think there aren't more women among the clerks. Do law clerk applicants apply individually to each justice?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
For the most part, most of them apply to all nine, although I'm aware that on occasion, some applicants do not apply to everyone. But I would get several hundred applications every year from law clerks, and people are self-selecting. They know they're not good prospects unless they've been outstanding students, unless they've written and published some articles and point to different things in their background that make them really stand out. And I think Stewart had a Ph.D in economics before he ever showed up on my doorstep. I thought that was pretty good. We could use that. And I had lots of law clerks who had Ph.Ds in other fields: psychology, chemistry, economics. Some language, I can't remember what it was. Music. I mean, everything. It was amazing how these young people had developed expertise in other fields. And I always liked that, because I knew we'd have an interesting time together. And you look for people who publish things, and you could read that and see how good they were. And I was blessed by having some fabulous law clerks.

About half of my law clerks were women. I haven't made a total count. But in 25 years, I had 100 law clerks for a year. And I think that half were women. Because once or twice, I had three women and one man. Once or twice, I had three men and one woman. But for the most part, it was two and two. And that worked pretty well. Now, not all chambers operated the same way. So I think a couple of years ago, the statistics of the court were just dismal. Absolutely dismal. This year at the court has 15 law clerks who are women, and that is not half, but it's better than it was two years ago.

Unknown Speaker
And what's your explanation for the dismal record?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, it's not a dismal record. Oh, but it's not It's not the total, right gender neutrality, either, right. And I cannot tell you whether the applications also show fewer female applicants. And there's no way that I can collect that data because they apply individually different chambers. I'd have to go chambers that chambers and say, ah, let me look at all the applications. I don't know if I could compile it. So I'm not sure when it counts for it.

Unknown Speaker
One of the things that distinguishes your career, among many things is is all the work that you did at the local level and your leadership at the state level. You're the fact that you were an elected official on all those levels and then a Supreme Court justice. Would you talk a little bit more about what impact do you think that had on your decision making and well,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I am a product of all three branches of state government. I served in all three branches of Arizona state government. There is not another justice who had that experience. I think Justice Souter served no more than six months as a state court judge. But I don't think others at the court, during the present era, had the health state elective office. Now, in the early days of the court, all the justices had state experience because we didn't have federal courts established for a while. And so all of the experience was state. But over the years that changed, and today, the typical Supreme Court Justice is one who has served on the Federal Court of Appeals.

Now, I hope very much that in the future, presidents will not look to that as the only source of supreme Court justices. I think we've had great justices who never served one day as a state judge or any other kind of a judge. William Rehnquist, who's our immediate past Chief Justice, never was a judge, state or federal. And I think that he was a wonderful Chief Justice. We've had a number of other justices who were remarkable, who had no experience at all as judges. It's probably a good thing for the Supreme Court to have considerable diversity of background.

Unknown Speaker
But say a little more about the difference you think state experience makes?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, a Paul case issues of federalism. I'm a product of state government in many ways, and I'm aware that states are fully capable of addressing many of the same issues that are addressed at the National or federal level, and of developing ways of dealing with these issues. I think it was Felix Frankfurter, who, as a justice on the court, described the states as laboratories for the benefit of our nation, because they have the capacity to address issues that the whole nation faces, and do it in different ways that may turn out to be better and more effective. Now, let me give you an example of that today.

Now, we're all concerned about carbon emissions and how we're going to curb it and we're all aware of that automobiles are a huge source of carbon emissions. The State of California has adopted some programs to curb and deal with Auto emissions that are innovative and are vastly more strict than anything at the federal level. California is trying different things. Now that's a good thing for the country. We want to see that in operation. California is a big state, and we'll be able to look at it and see what works, and maybe adapt it at a broader level. I think it's great to let states work on some of these things and then develop it. We saw some of that with the welfare reforms that were made. A few years back, some states began to do it first, and then we adapted from them.

So I'm strongly in favor of letting states operate as the framers of the Constitution intended them to operate. When the framers wrote the Constitution. They left in place, the separate state court systems with their three branches of government and their sovereign powers. What the framers thought they were doing was creating a national government of limited powers? Well, as we've seen, with over 200 years, the national government doesn't seem so limited in its powers today does it? It does just about anything it wants to do. But the original concept, certainly was otherwise. And at least we know that the framers wanted the states to continue to have their sovereign powers and to be able to exercise them. And I personally think that's a very good thing.

Now, what we the term we use to talk about the relationship of the federal government with the states is federalism. And we had this notion that the government closest to the people, the states and within the states, the counties in the cities, that government close as to the people is the best because citizens can be more participants at that level. And that's why the balance of power in the federalism discussion is so important. And William Rehnquist, our late chief justice, was also a product of Arizona. And he, too, tended to view the role of the states actually, much as I did. It's fascinating to look around the world. Now, the most interesting development around the world of the last century was the development of the European Union. And we had nation states in Europe that were at war, most of the time. And World War One, World War Two. I mean, it was endless. And all of a sudden, we got the creation of the European Union. It has now expanded, I don't know what, 27 nations, something like that, which is incredible. And these nations are at peace with each other, that is glorious. But you know what issue is bothering them now? It's federalism. Only they don't call it that. They call it devolution.

They created, with treaties, the European Union. And they're trying to figure out how power should be devolved of a nation state members to make it work. They want to devolve powers down to the nation states and figure out the balance that works best for the European Union, but with some reserved powers for nations. In our country, it was bottom up, because it was the people who agreed to the Constitution, a national government of limited powers, but the broad powers left with the states. We call that federalism. And you can see it also in the United Kingdom, they are trying very hard to devolve powers, to give powers from the crown, the queen, the central authority, out to Scotland, out to Wales, out to other segments of Great Britain. And it's hard to draw those lines and make those boundaries. But I think it didn't hurt to have a member of the court who was kind of interested in federalism issues, and I was.

Unknown Speaker
It's too bad actually that the right for women to vote in the western states didn't become a federal rights sooner.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, it came first in the West. You know, Wyoming was first but actually the legislators thought they were playing a joke when they gave women the right to vote Miami. That didn't turn out. It didn't turn out to be so funny that the women liked it

Unknown Speaker
was not funny. Let me ask you a few questions about about your Supreme Court. Several people have asked Whether with hindsight, there's any decision that you would make differently today.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
As a judge, even as a state court judge, I made a decision early on that I would put all my energy and effort in up front. And if I had a case, work as hard as I could, at the beginning of the case, to decide it correctly, and then decided and then not look back. I've known judges who have agonized later over decisions, they continually look back and say, Oh, if I just done this and so innocent, so it would have been better. Maybe I shouldn't have done this. Maybe I shouldn't have done it. That's not how I worked. So I try very hard not to look back and see chaos. My past as a result of something I've done, and I still make that effort. However, there is one case out there that's causing a lot of trouble. And I was one of the votes for it. It was Minnesota vs. Fight. And it has to do with state judicial elections. I'm not gonna tell you any more about it, you can go look it up if you're in law school.

Unknown Speaker
Well, I think I know the answer to this next question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. And that is about the decision and Bush v. Gore. Given that it seems, at least in the eyes of many people to have damaged the reputation of the court, do you? Do you have it did

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I do have a thought or two about that?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Please, please share the thoughts with us.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I think the main thing that people in the United States were unhappy about with that election, is that the popular vote Nationwide favored Mr. Gore. But the declared winner of the election was Mr. Bush. Now the reason for that was actually not the Supreme Court. It was our system of having an electoral college instead of a direct popular vote for president. We don't elect our presidents by a direct popular vote. we vote in each state for elect doors. And those electors then meet and they cast their votes for the two candidates. And each state has a different system of distributing the electoral college votes. The states can if they wish a state can say it's winner take all if a majority of the electoral college and state x votes per candidate why they every vote of that state goes for why a few states have a portion of their electoral college votes and say, if it's a five, four vote in this state, then we'll distribute those electoral college votes as a five for a majority make it winner take all.

Now, several times in the nation's history, not often, but a few times, the popular vote winner has lost to the other candidate because of the breakout of the electoral college votes. And that's what happened this last election. And it wasn't resolved by Florida's vote. What Florida's case ended up doing is saying, okay, we're stopping it here. You've done it. That's the end. But there were three recounts by the press. After the Court made its it ends here and the press was dying to find the vote change, and they couldn't. The votes stayed the same. So, I mean, it really, at the end of the day did not affect the outcome. It just stopped the process, which, under that particular election ended up the way it did. So I don't worry about it. I don't lose any sleep. You don't lose any.

Unknown Speaker
You know, I thought you might say that. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
Let me ask you this. Since we're on the question,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
it's very interesting, because California is debating right now whether they ought to change their electoral college vote and go to a proportional distribution. And it looks like the they're not going to do it. They're in a winner. Take all still.

Unknown Speaker
Okay. Go ahead. Well, it was going to be another question about presidents presidencies. Someone posed this question from the wall coalition. Do you think the country is ready for a woman president

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I think they may be I mean, we certainly see a female candidate by all, press account seems to be in the lead for the Democratic nomination. So

Unknown Speaker
I think so.

Unknown Speaker
You wrote very, very beautifully. I thought in your book about what it takes to make social change. And you said, really two things. And one is unity, about goals. And the other is changing the minds of the populace as opposed to imagining that social change primarily comes from legal decisions, right, executive ones. Do you think we've reached the moment where the the sentiments of the populace are so have progressed so far with respect to gender that we should worry less?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yes, probably. So. I don't worry as much I still worried about some things but less, I think we can worry a little less I think women are in positions of importance in every state in the United States. And who knows, we may have one as President. And I think women are better off than they have been in the past. Is there something left to do? Sure, there are plenty of somethings, but I think we're better off. But there are things about what you worry obviously I wonder if I could ask you about affirmative action and and that's that's an area of real concern. Admission, for example, to colleges and universities to try to get some racial diversity in our institutions of higher learning. And you know, by a very narrow margin, the Supreme Court in the router case killed that some consideration can be given in college and university admissions. To racial composition in making the decisions for admission, but that is a decision that has been hotly criticized by a lot of other people in my country. And indeed, a good many states, including Michigan itself, since that decision, have now passed laws that say, our state cannot carry out affirmative action for admissions or anything else. And so that's kind of a change. And that's an area where maybe the people themselves need to come to a realization about the importance of that. And maybe that tide can turn but right now, it's running the wrong way.

Unknown Speaker
But I assume you stand by the greater case. Well, I do.

Unknown Speaker
I do.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Having After the majority

Unknown Speaker
and not having the tendency to second guess and not usually second guessing right. I wanted to ask you a question. That's a somewhat selfish one. It's based on my interest in literature and it goes back to your background, but in your writing, you've used quotes and passages from Stegner, Oh, I know who appears to be your favorite author. And I wonder if my favorite American author, your favorite American on there, so that's true. I should ask you who your favorite German author is. Now, I wonder if you would just say a little bit about what influence you think Stegner has had on your your outlook.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Wallace Stegner grew up in Saskatchewan area of Canada, on a farm and he had a tough childhood. His father kind of wandered around from place to place and didn't do well and they had a hard time. making a living. And Saskatchewan is a tough area, heavy snow in the winter, possible droughts. I mean, it was hard. And the family left and then came west and they spent time in Utah. And then I think a little time in Colorado and the whole western region. So he is a product of the West and he loved what he saw of the West. He He was so affected by the wide open sky that we see. And I was to living on the ranch. This idea the thing that was overpowering, was this incredible sky and the cloud formations that would come and just endless sense of space. And you really got it at night. We had no city lights out there for a couple of months. miles at night. If you went outside, you would see the whole story universe out there. And the stars look so close, you could reach up and block them out of the sky. It was unbelievable to look at it. You can't imagine it because all of you live in cities all bad. And the city lights distort the view at night. You don't even see how incredible ideas and you have the sense that as human beings, we're just infinitesimal little things in this vast universe of ours. And so, Stegner appreciated that more than any other American author I read, and he would describe it, and he did such a good job. I was much affected by his writing.

Unknown Speaker
He I know the one quote you You've used a couple of times about the exposure to the open sky into the elements. It made me think the experience of being the first woman on the Supreme Court was a very different kind of exposure.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
We asked them, I suppose your role.

Unknown Speaker
I wonder if you could I remember the quote sort of vaguely that the the West teaches you who you are, what we

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
are, how it teaches us

Unknown Speaker
who we are, who the end of the day, that's who we are. And I thought, being in Washington and in the spotlight in the way that you were in happen must teach a significantly different lesson about who we are.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I wonder if you could choose here to try to stay out of the way. Yeah. You don't want to be reading about it the next day.

Unknown Speaker
Yes, that seems like a good approach. I mean, would you would you talk a little bit more about how you succeeded in doing that staying out,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
but I don't think it Did

Unknown Speaker
No, I don't either.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
But in the early days of my service on the court, everywhere that Sandra when the press was sure to go, and it was pretty miserable, I couldn't go to the grocery store. I couldn't go to a social function. I found myself standing, as you do at a reception in a little circle of people. And there was this strange long black thing sticking in the circle. And I followed it out. It was a microphone that a reporter had inserted into the middle of the conversation I'll bring to pick up conversation. We learned the hard way, my husband and I that some enterprising reporter had regularly collected all of our trash and garbage to go through it in hopes of finding letters and things that the press could use. I find these things repulsive and repugnant. I bemoan the fact that a public figure has to endure that kind of attention. And it was like that until we got the second woman on the court, Justice Ginsburg. And as if by magic that stopped, and then we could all be fungible justices up there. And now poor Justice Ginsburg is the only woman again, and I hope she isn't going through some of those things. Well, I guess we've about exhausted your time and my talent. Oh, and your talent.

Unknown Speaker
I don't think we've exhausted your talent. I think the last question that they sent me to ask you, I'll just make as a statement, the question was, do you have any idea how extraordinary you are and what a what an incredible model you've been for women and men all over the country in the world and before you say leave it at that. How extraordinary. And thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
I think we're going to hear from

Unknown Speaker
I think we feel so privileged to have been in on that conversation. I do want to thank both Martin, and especially Justice O'Connor. I don't want to say any more words because I think that would spoil the special effects of it except simply to say, I'm going to ask the audience to stay here. While to let Justice O'Connor, go help through the bat. Thank you very much.