Unknown Speaker
civic education is kind of going on the back burner. I have to get into a 13 year olds mine is have to make it kid friendly.

Unknown Speaker
One of the greatest challenges is getting the kids to connect

Unknown Speaker
to the past the present and the future. A lot of kids get turned off with history. They always tell me every year is all about dead people because old people in kind of voiceprint

Unknown Speaker
Social Studies is a good subject because you get to learn about your past in the future. Maybe that stuff can be used for something good. Like the amendment. They made them so long ago, and now they're still using them because they work three

Unknown Speaker
of the Constitution was made as a whole different country because it listed many of our rights. we overlook it on everyday basis.

Pat Morrison
I'm Pat Morrison in the Crawford family forum.

And those were the voices of students at Cesar Chavez middle school and Linwood North View High School in Covina, their teachers as well as we are here at a very special event. with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor talking about civic education. How often in the movies or on the news, you hear someone say, I'm going to take that all the way to the Supreme Court. And yet of the three branches of government, people have some misunderstandings about all of them. And maybe the court in particular, the least understood or the most missed, understood. And because an informed citizenry is the basis of democracy, that can be a problem. So we're delighted to welcome Justice O'Connor, who served at the top of the judicial ladder, and is here to talk about some educational programs to help us understand better how government functions to help us all become better citizens. Justice O'Connor, thank you for being here.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, my pleasure, and I hope we can have a good conversation today. I look forward to

Pat Morrison
the the justice of course was the first woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court of Canada hundred

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
91 year 191 year old

Pat Morrison
And of course since then three other women have been appointed to the court. And but you were alone for 12 years before Justice Ginsburg
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
joined I was and I go now to Washington pretty often and I still keep an office at the Supreme Court and I still sit on cases on federal courts of appeals throughout the country. So I'm still sitting but not on the Supreme Court. And to sit there today and look up at the bench and see three women on it is incredible to me. I just can't get over it. It looks great.

Pat Morrison
Justice O'Connor has been very concerned about civics education, which is why she's created iCivics. It was launched as Our Courts, became iCivics last year, has been played over 2 million times since then. It's computer games from middle school and high school students and teachers to learn about civics how their government works and their own stake in it. So here's a question that we got from Jasmine Brown. She teaches eighth grade social studies with the aid of Justice O'Connor's iCivics material at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Lynwood.

Unknown Speaker
what sparked her what sparked her interest to create the iCivics program? Because it's exactly what I

Pat Morrison
needed it led led to this process.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, what led to it is in the years that I served on the court, my colleagues there and I were aware of an increasing number of statements from people across the country and proposals in Congress of the United States and proposals in state legislatures to somehow affect judges, there was lots of criticism of judges. They were called secular godless humanists trying to impose their will on the rest of us. I mean, that's a typical complaint. And so you're How do you deal with this if it exists? It's a lot of lack of understanding about the role of courts in general. I guess it's not surprising because courts do their work away from public places for the most part. We see legislators in action sometimes if we pay attention to the news, and we see the other branches of government and operation every day, police on the streets and so forth and so on. But unless you're have a case in court, you're not going to get in a courtroom. Or perhaps you're called as a juror, but not the young people. They wouldn't have been old enough to be called. So there is a lack of knowledge and understanding in general about courts. And I thought that it would be helpful perhaps to start a website and engage young people in learning about all three branches of government. I started with the judicial branch. But it quickly became apparent, I better not forget those other two branches. They do matter, I have to say, what are the

Pat Morrison
what are the most common misunderstandings that you encounter about courts or about what about the courts first and then about government in general,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
like there's a total lack of understanding about what they do. And I think many Americans at all ages don't really understand what it is the courts do and how they work. So that's understandable, unless you've been a litigant record, not many of us add. Very, very few need them, but otherwise you don't go and they're there. If you're a jerk, then you learn something about it. And the if you get a chance to be a jerk now, when you grow up, you young people do it. Say yes, and go down there and you will have a very interesting experience. It's a great way to see what it is courts really do. And most The courts are involved deciding criminal cases. If someone is accused of a crime, they are entitled to a trial in court if they want it. If the person who says that's right, I did it unhealthy way you solve it right then and there without our trial. But if the person says, nope, I didn't do that. I'm not guilty of that, then they're entitled to a trial. And they are entitled to a trial before a jury if they want it. If they don't want a jury trial and may want to go to trial before the judge. That's all right. But most defendants who say they want a jury trial would prefer to go to trial before a jury rather than the judge. And that's when you really need to learn and understand the role of the courts. It's a very important role in our country.

Pat Morrison
How does iCivics work?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
It's a website and I should explain first, that we got public schools in this country. Not until about the 1830s. When people began to say, look, the framers of our constitution wrote a marvelous constitution. They gave us a remarkable system of government. We're proud of it. But we need to teach all our young people what it's all about. So they can be part of it so that they can be knowledgeable citizens in and make use of it. And we need public schools they send and that started a movement to get public schools. There weren't any public schools when our Constitution was written, nothing. I mean, you can educate the kids at home or maybe some little community group got together, but we finally got public schools and for many years for at least a century, the school started their number one goal is to teach young people how the government work. What does the constitution say? How does it work? How am I affected as a citizen? Well, with the passage of time, after we got public schools, some of the states started saying, well, we don't really need to teach about civics. I mean, we don't need to do that. We don't need to make it a requirement. Everybody understands that. And we saw more and more schools dropping in today, there are 20 states in the United States that no longer make the teaching of civics and government a requirement.

Pat Morrison
Okay, out of how many states everybody out of how many? All right, good

Unknown Speaker
for you too many.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
But see, that's too many states that aren't doing it at all. And even the states that are teaching civics today are not necessarily making it engaging. Now I grew up on a radio In a remote part of Arizona, we didn't have a town or a school or anything. And when it came time for me to go to school, my parents sent me to El Paso, Texas, to live with grandparents. So I could go to school there, which is what I did. And we had civics every year, I got so tired of it. And all we learned about was Stephen F. Austin, Texas hero and so forth. And I got pretty tired or bad after eight years or so. So it can be a subject that isn't engaging. And so when I felt that we were having this gap when schools and states were stopping teaching civics, that maybe it was a gap I can help fill. And I thought, because I think it's so important, just crucial. And so I talked to some of my colleagues on the court, and we've talked about what might be done. And the idea of creating a website came up how many of you go to a website, sometimes on a Computer. We that's what we all do these days. So we thought a website might be helpful. And we started with one just dealing with the judicial branch, because that's had been where I was working. And I was used to that. And that's how we began. And we thought, did you know that young people in those middle school grades spend an average of 40 hours a week in front of a screen. Now, it might be TV, or it might be computer or some combination of the two. That's a lot 40 hours. And I only need about an hour for me to teach something. So we decided to target that and to target and I love middle schoolers. That's what I also wanted to target. And I'll tell you why. By the time you're in middle school, fifth through eighth, and sometimes nine. You're Head and brain Earth's biggest they're going to be okay. They're there. You've got your brain. You've craft your head. It's fastened on tight.

Unknown Speaker
We Oh,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
yeah, we hope so. And at middle school level, the young people are still interested. They're engaged. They want to learn about things. They're not bored teenagers, they're eager to learn. Okay, I like that. And the hormones haven't totally kicked in yet, like they do

Pat Morrison
in high school when I see you all looking at each other out there.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
So, to me, that's the ideal audience. And that's what I tried to gear it to and we started and then I thought to get them engaged. You know what the young people do when they get online on the computer, if they aren't texting each other. They like to play games. Okay, I can live with that. We can teach by making games to teach. So that's what we did, and targeted middle school and I just thought that was a good solution to a lot of problems.

Pat Morrison
How many of you here have done the iCivics game online? Let's hear some applause what good bad Look at that.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is with us along with students of a half dozen schools. In the Crawford family forum talking about AI civic civic education, you can find a link to the I civics web page and see a slideshow of those classrooms using the iCivics program on the website at KP cc.org on Pat Morris, and we'll be back in just a second.

Unknown Speaker
These students come in with this perception that the government does nothing because our students aren't voting yet. And they don't think the government affects them. One of the things that I have them do is say what does the government do for you? And a lot of them sit there and stare at each other. You'll eventually get a student says oh well 300 News lunch. Oh, well, what about school? Then we start piling into fixing the roads, police and the fire and parks by having them realize that they are affected by government now that's a big eye opener for them. And what else does the government do? How has decisions of the past Brown versus Board of Education Roe v. Wade affected them now?

Pat Morrison
I'm Pat Morrison in the Crawford family forum.

with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor talking about her eyes, civics program and all things educational about the judiciary and government. That was the voice of Marissa Samuel. She's an advanced placement government teacher at North View High School in Covina. And what you just heard Justice O'Connor is probably pretty classic, pretty characteristic about how students think that government is so detached from their lives.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I know but it is, you know, it's some level of government in your state that says you have to go

Unknown Speaker
to school.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Did you know that I mean, that's why you have to go to school. may set the number of days that you have to go and the hours that you have to go and the conditions there. I mean, government is involved in every aspect of it, and they decide what has to be taught. So you're, once you start school, you're personally involved with government in many ways, and you're not even aware of it. You just think, Oh, I'm going to school. I don't. What's government got to do with? It has a lot to do with it. How did you put together the contents of the civics? Well, I got the Genius Award winner GMG. And I got all this group of teachers who were fabulous from all over the country saying what we had to focus on and we got a couple of games produced. And I was pretty excited with it.

Pat Morrison
We're talking about the iCivics program that has expanded out from just teaching about the judiciary. We're going to be hearing questions from some of some of the students who are actually here today joining us as well, but I'd like to to hear you Your epiphany when you realize that some of the attacks on the court and just the undermining of the concept of government were becoming dangerous to the processes. You spoke to the Ninth Circuit Court here, concerned about what you alluded to at the beginning that people simply use the court as a punching bag.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I became very concerned about all the attacks in Congress, in state legislative bodies and around the country and all the things that were being said about judges that I thought demonstrated lack of understanding and knowledge. And a number of my colleagues on the court agreed with me, they thought it was a real problem. And we, I had I got help from some of my colleagues on the court, and we put together a conference and we invited important, well recognized speakers from all across the country to come to that conference. I think we had about 150 people layer and very distinguished people and we put on a program designed to focus on what was being said around the country? What was being exhibited? And what were their thoughts? Did they think people in our country understand what courts do? And if not what we what should we do? It was a very good conference. It was wonderful. And it was really as the result of back that I am my colleagues who had helped me put this together thought, well, maybe a website could be put together that would help focus on what it is courts do, and judges do, and try to correct misunderstandings and try to provide a basis of knowledge for young people. And that's how we started, we got a little support to put together some games dealing initially just with courts, and frankly, it was terrific. And we decided, well, there are those other two branches on

Pat Morrison
you know, I don't know if we came in all three of those scenarios ideal.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I've served in all three To tell you the truth. So we decided We better include the other two too. And that's what we've done. And we've had to go back and get additional people who are good at producing games and additional advice from our group of teachers who understand what's needed. And I'm very pleased with the result.

Pat Morrison
Some of the people have been critical of the courts are people who should know better. These are people who are in government themselves. And they've proposed things like elected federal judge ships and getting rid of that's

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
not going anyplace the framers of the Constitution, ladies, the framers of our constitution provided that federal judges will be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. And it has worked very well for our nation. Andrew Jackson was not elected President of the United States a few years back. And he was a we call him a populist. He believed in popular decisions about government. He said, Look, as states we don't have to have a point of view Judges, we ought to elect our judges. And he went around the country trying to get states to change to election of their state judges. And the first state to go along with that proposition was Georgia. And we ended up with a hodgepodge. And a number of states and the United States do this day, elect their judges. That's what we did in Arizona, among others. And I thought, a big mistake. So when I thought in the state legislature in Arizona, we drafted an amendment to Arizona's constitution to provide for a merit selection system. So we went to a merit selection system in Arizona and still have it and the quality of our judges really went up. Now you have that in California, for the most part, not totally, you've got a hodgepodge of California do, but many of the courts in California are our American merit selection system to and all your

Pat Morrison
appellate courts are one of the question It's come up about you talk about transparency with the court is maybe a taping for broadcast, you know, video the the proceedings of federal courts in general, the Supreme Court in particular,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
it's up to the court if it wants to allow cameras in the courtroom. At the supreme court level, every oral argument is tape recorded and it can be available at very night. Instant. So, and there's a written record of every statement that's made in the court and all the quiz all of that is available. So it's hardly secret. The one thing that's missing is television. We don't get back, but your program isn't televised. So you don't object a bad I'm sure.

Pat Morrison
Can I be Can I be the fourth branch of government? What can I be the fourth branch of government?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, just what do you have in mind?

Pat Morrison
I'll settle for what the founders have to say.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yeah. And they didn't they didn't have much say about

Pat Morrison
the what difference Do you think it makes in the quality of the judiciary Having judges appointed and even lifetime appointments versus that election process you talked about,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I just think what we have experienced at the federal level and among the states that use Merricks election, is that you get better qualified judges, you really do. It's odd how when you have a totally election process, sometimes the voters just focusing on the last name. Brown is much more likely to be elected than somebody named. Abramovich, for instance. It's funny people go for certain simplified names as opposed to something more complicated, even though it might be that Mr. Brown is a terrible candidate, and the other one is a good one. So you can run into problems with elections just for the crazy thing about the name of the person.

Pat Morrison
How do you think the change has been in the courts with the addition of more women minorities to the bench.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't know that women decide anything differently than men. I doubt that they do. But what is important is that we are an electorate, we are people in the United States and 50%

Pat Morrison
are women.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Like it or not, there they are. We women kind of like to see women represented in our legislative bodies and in public office. And yes, even on the bench in courts, we like to see that. And I think that's what matters. It isn't that there's some difference in the way women and men decide cases or that they'd reach different results, but we were comprised 50% women or we like to see some in office where it matters.

Pat Morrison
Here's the question from one of our students, who is high school senior and

Unknown Speaker
I'm a senior at North View High School. I'm 17 years old and I live in Covina. Justice O'Connor, what were the biggest challenges you had to overcome to become a Supreme Court justice as a female?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I never intended to be a Supreme Court justice. I never had it on my list my to do list. I was in Arizona, and I served in all three branches of Arizona's government and at the time, I was chosen by President Ronald Reagan. To fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. I was serving on the Arizona Court of Appeals. And I didn't have it as a goal to sit on the US Supreme Court. It just happened. And I think the whole nation was surprised but so was I.

Pat Morrison
You got something like 60,000 letters in your first year? Were these all sort of You go girl letters?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I think there were a few I remember a letter from some disgruntled sounding man saying, back to your husband, I'm kitchen woman. Wow, you don't belong here. And so you know, you've got kind of a mixed bag, but I think most of the letters were very positive.

Pat Morrison
We had talked about some of the influences on the court and the political the politicization, the partisanship that has been pressured on the court. And and the question that comes to my mind is about the hearings, the televised hearings that are kind of a grueling process now for the Supreme Court Justice nominees.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
You're talking about that. The confirmation confirmation hearings, yes.

Pat Morrison
From the

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
former federal judges, including Justice of the Supreme Court. The process is that the President makes the nomination subject to Senate confirmation. Now the senate can do what it wants. It can go into session and not talked about nominee at all. Just go into session and say Do we want this person yes or no. In the early days of the country, that's what happened all the time. In the early days, the people nominated were often people that the senators knew Anyway, there weren't that many people in the country in those days. And you might have a nomination sent over on Monday. And on Wednesday, the Senate would vote up or down. And that was that. But it was at a time when about the time justice Frankfurter was nominated to the court. There began to be more discussion about the justices and whether they should have been confirmed. And then some of the members of the US Senate start started saying, Oh, we got we gotta call them in and talk to them. But that didn't happen first. First. They have them submit written statements to the Senate. The nominees, they started that way with asking the nominee to present written statements covering certain topics ban, some of us senator said, Well, we ought to call a man and be able to ask them a few questions. And that began, and it has never ended. Now, it now with there is TV coverage of those hearings. And with that, the senators on the committee love it, my Lord, do you know how much money it costs the senators when they're running for office to be on TV? Oh, a fortune. Now here, they can hold these senate hearings and the longer they prolong them, the better and they can be in front of the public on television day in and day out for as long as they can extend the earrings. They love it.

Pat Morrison
It's not going to go away. And they get to ask questions. Doesn't matter what the answer is, but they're asking questions on TV. Yeah,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
may get their staff to help them right area diet questions, so they look pretty good. There you go.

Pat Morrison
Should that be done away with what you should that process that televised process be done away with

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
the call? going to happen. You think the senators would drop that? Not a chance, not worth

Pat Morrison
talking about? Here's a question about the responsibility of a Supreme Court justice and a decision making. My name is Reuben, like me, Cesar Chavez Middle School, how does it feel knowing that your decisions would affect the whole nation, if not just a certain group of people? How does it feel to have that responsibility in your head?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
You can imagine it is an enormous responsibility to know that you are one of only nine votes on the United States Supreme Court bench, deciding an issue that in some cases, is an issue that everyone every citizen in the United States cares about. And a decision that will affect things for men on and that's a huge responsibility. And what it means is you have to be as well informed as you possibly can be About the arguments pro and con and about the precedents in the past, previous Supreme Court decisions that have touched on that precise area of the law, you have to understand thoroughly the arguments on both sides and think about a card it is a huge responsibility. Get we take it seriously,

Pat Morrison
given that there are fewer than 30 amendments to the Constitution. I think that's right, you will correct me if I'm wrong there. It's suggested that it's a pretty flexible document, then there's that scale of thinking that it is a document that is perfect, and that applies to every circumstance, literally, versus the more figurative interpretation. Where do you find yourself on that?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
So in the first place, it only deals with certain federal principles it doesn't deal with every day, things that affect you in the state of California or county. in which you live or things like that. It's limited to issues of federal law. And it's just it's a very big responsibility that the court has to try to reach sound, appropriate decisions based on the President's now, we are a common law country. Not many people know what that means. Great Britain is a common law of country, and we patterned our lead legal system after that. And in a common law country, the decisions of a Supreme Court become binding precedent on subsequent courts, you aren't deciding the issue all over again, in when it comes up in a different context, that becomes part and parcel of the law, the decision of the court. And so over a period of 100 years, you have a lot of decisions that have become part of the law, and you have to understand that man, so every time I The court has to decide some issue of federal law. It's adding to that structure that's binding forever more unless the court changes its mind later on once in a while it does. And

Pat Morrison
I want to ask you about that in a little bit. But people will say, look that when the founders were around, there weren't computers, there weren't cars. So how does the constitution apply to now?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Same as it applies to anything else same as it applied to somebody riding horseback back in the 1800s. Same deal. Doesn't matter. Sandra dates and the issue of federal law

Pat Morrison
Barry are Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman justice on the Supreme Court and the creator of the iCivics program, which many students, actually millions of students now play in the classroom to learn about how government works. And to dispel some of the misunderstandings about government. There's a link to the iCivics web page and a slideshow to classrooms using the program on the website at kpcc.org. We'll be back with our students in Teachers here in the audience in the Crawford family forum. I'm Pat Morrison and the Crawford family forum with students and teachers. We're talking to former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the Supreme Court, who's created the I civics program to teach young people a justice age about how government works. Thank you again for joining us.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
My pleasure.

Pat Morrison
We have a question from again from a student. She's 17 years old about how the court does its business and you in particular,

Unknown Speaker
my name is Nancy Nava. I'm 17 years old. I'm a senior at Northfield High School. How has it been difficult separating your personal beliefs for making decisions on a case?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
People often ask me that kind of question. Well,

Unknown Speaker
what if the

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
legal answer is something that as a person you don't agree with? You don't think that's right. You know, that doesn't trouble me at all. What's binding is the Constitution of the United States, whether I agree or not, whether you agree or not. Not if it says that that's what it is. And if the Supreme Court in prior decisions, has said, This is what it means, even if I don't like that, I'm bound by it. So it doesn't trouble me. I agree when I take an oath of office to serve on the Supreme Court to abide by the constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God. So it doesn't matter if I don't agree. That's fine.

Pat Morrison
Are there cases where you've had that carrot, one character on one shoulder, one character on the other the Constitution in the personal case, both talking in your ears?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
what I'm telling you is, the personal doesn't matter. I put a stopper in that.

Pat Morrison
Here's another question from a student more about the long term impacts of court decisions.

Unknown Speaker
My name is Lucy Cavalli, I'm a senior in high school in Covina has it been difficult to decide on taking a course case when you know we'll have a long term impact,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
it isn't more difficult to decide you it's the same issue whether it has a short term impact or a long term, all the decisions of the Supreme Court have an effect a long term impact, and they're going to remain a statement of what the laws unless and until a subsequent court, overturns it, or if it's a matter for congressional action, a subsequent Congress makes a different rule. So that's, we understand that that's okay. It's all right. rules of the game. You play some games, you play tennis or rugby or soccer or football, their rules and you may not like it, you may not like how it affects you, but we follow them Don't be same deal on courts. How

Pat Morrison
maybe you can explain for all of us how courts the decisions may change The impact over time whether it's a law that comes out of Congress like mccain feingold, in which your subsequent case the McConnell case upheld the regulation of soft money. Now we've had subsequent decisions like Citizens United, how courts can change their minds, in a way the interpretation over the course of decades,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
The Supreme Court can change its mind over time. The most prominent example arises out of schools, that's what you're interested in. And for a long time, it was held by courts, including the Supreme Court that it was all right, to segregate schools on the basis of race. Make all African American students go to one school, and all other students and other that was upheld for years as being perfectly within the meaning of the Constitution. And eventually, the us supreme court concluded in brown versus Board of Education, that that was wrong. That was just wrong.

And it was high time that Court made that decision. And it was a decision that was hard to enforce in certain parts of the country. It got very traumatic. In fact, troops had to be sent to Little Rock, Arkansas to open the school doors in Little Rock to students of all races, and it was high time that that happened. But occasionally, there are situations where the Supreme Court says, look, we decided x, and it turns out years later, we were wrong. So we're going to correct it. That can happen.

Pat Morrison
Of course, the word privacy doesn't appear in the constitution and yet it's a right that's being invoked in as a basis of some cases including cases like Roe vs. Wade. How do those things happen.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
But the court has to explain its decisions in writing when it makes them. And if you really want to go into it will give you a list of cases to go read. You can

Pat Morrison
read it more homework, everybody take notes. What would be the case most people would ask you about if they had you sitting there one on one?

Unknown Speaker
I don't know.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I'm not better than ideal. You've been collecting the questions

Pat Morrison
think people would probably ask about the Bush v gore case. Yes, probably. And so what do you tell people?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I tell him it was a tough case. And it was decided in the context of a national election for president and people have strong feelings about it, and probably still do, and it was it the problem is a federal election governs there are laws federal laws that restrict what states can do, as they handle the voting process. This and count the balance there. Certainly it's a federal election, and the states have to follow federal law in conducting it. And the Supreme Court found that there were several instances where the state of Florida had not followed federal law. And the court said that was wrong. The case goes back to you now, do something. And it was hard for voters to understand I'm sure it is. But it raised issues of federal law in how you account balance and what you do.

Pat Morrison
When people sometimes see jury decisions, they say, but look at all the evidence, how could they decide that? How do you explain the difference between what people may think of is going on and what actually the law says, and

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I tell them that if the cases in front of a jury, and if there is a factual determination that's required to be made, the jury can make it and you might not agree as a citizen based on what you've read? Too bad that jury

Pat Morrison
That's that's the process, as you said the courts. The courts have been around as long as the the Constitution and the probably the Articles of Confederation. I should think you mentioned the segregation of schools is one of the errors that it made. I think the Dred Scott case might show up. What else might be on that little

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
lots of the courts overturned any number of decisions over time.

Pat Morrison
And the process of amending the constitution is very difficult.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
That's why there's been so few amendments over time. That's

Pat Morrison
a good idea, because in California Constitution has like 500 amendments.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yeah, that's the problem with California.

Pat Morrison
But you think the bar should be high ideas of that very reason, to temper the passions of the public?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I just think you ought to set your parameters in your constitution. A state has a constitution you have a constitution in California. We We have one in Arizona. And they have to fit in with the National scheme of things to the extent that they deal with national issues. And we're kind of we have to follow those precepts in California, you have to act within the meaning of the US Constitution and the Constitution of California. And some tough issues can arise. You have a Supreme Court in California, that gets some of those questions, and he has to resolve.

Pat Morrison
How, how is it that maybe this is part of the civics education that you can promote that a case goes from a state case to a federal case? What is it that the federal courts look at when they say, Here's something going on in California or in Arizona? We think it has

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
course, out there looking for problems.

Pat Morrison
Oh, I'm sure they're

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
buyers, parties a plaintiff and a defendant involved in dispute, maybe it's over facts, maybe it's over a legal principle. And the parties have to be involved in a lawsuit of some kind. And if it involves a question of federal law, then the plaintiff has an option, sometimes Fiverr to file a suit in state court or federal court after make that option. And even if they don't file it in federal court, but there's a federal issue. If it's resolved in the state courts in a way that the losing party thinks violates federal law, the losing party can then apply to the federal courts and say, Look, this is the question. This is the issue. It involves an issue of federal law, it was decided by the state courts of California and it was wrong, you need to take it and correct it. Well, that can happen

Pat Morrison
as possible to do so a lot of cases that do come to the some

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
come the way

Pat Morrison
how it would seem that the ratio of the number of cases that are put to the court and the ones that you can take in any given term. It's very,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
very you're talking about this supreme Supreme Court gets thousands of petitions, a great majority are written handwritten petitions filed by prisoners serving a term of prison in some federal facility, some place for commission of a federal crime, and they kind of run out of things to do in prison. Sometimes. The prisoner can sit there and in the prisoners own handwriting, prepare a petition to go all the way to the US Supreme Court here of court take my case, this is my case. This is what happened. And this is the principle of federal law. And this is why it was wrong. Please take my case. I mean, the court gets thousands of those. Did they ever take some written hand written by a prisoner, believe it or not once in a while they do. That's impressive. frightening, actually very impressive.

Pat Morrison
What are the mechanics of the court considering a case there are nine justices on the Supreme Court and everybody wonders, do you all just sit down together for eight hours a day and order in lunch? Or how does that work?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
The process starts with the filing of a petition for certiorari, you know, fancy word, you students figure that out, and people will be impressed the filing of a petition for certiorari with the court presenting an issue of federal law, and any of the nine justices. They all receive copies of every petition that's filed, every single one. And the people on the other side of the case may, if they want, file a response. But they don't have to make, file responses that you don't want to take. This case leaders but the case was properly decided below and leave it alone.

But anyway, any of the nine justices can ask that a petition be put on a conference discussion list so that all nine justice is at a meeting of the nine have to talk about it and decide, is this a case we ought to take? And that's a pretty sensible decision to follow. So any justice can say, let's talk about this question. This is one we should take. And the person who put it on can talk and say, This is why I listed it. And all the other eight can talk about it and say, Well, yeah, I agree. I'll vote to join for a grant. Or they'll say, No, you really shouldn't take this case. It's an issue that might come that this isn't a good case, because and they'll say what they think now, it takes the agreement of at least four of the nine justices to accept a case for decision by the Supreme Court. It doesn't require a majority, that would be fine. But it requires at least four and I think that's pretty good because it enables more cases to be heard, than would be heard if you require the majority. So I think that's a really wonderful system that the court follows.

And if the case is accepted, then it's put on the calendar for the court during the term sometime. And the parties are instructed to file their arguments in written form call briefs, and they aren't brief at all. They are long. And they're filed with the court and that every justice gets copies and then the person on the other side, the parties on the other side of the case, can file their arguments in written form two additional briefs. The court gets all of them and they then a date is set for oral argument. And normally the court allows one hour for oral argument of a case and at oral argument, all the justices are in attendance unless somebody's sick, but if they are, they say all decided on the raised the record and pitching and blaming time comes anyway, all nine are involved in the decision. And they consider the briefs and we allow other interested groups or parties with permission of the court to file for end of court briefs, in addition to the parties. Many times that issue being decided by record is one that affects a lot of people around the country and other people want to weigh in. They say, gee, that's an important issue. I want to tell the court what I think. So you can have a stack of briefs like that on a case and you have to consider all of them. It's amazing. It is a lot of reading on the court, a huge amount of reading.

And then eventually, the cases ready for oral argument and the lawyers on both sides come to the court and make their oral argument. Normally an hour is a layup. But the court can grant additional time, either on the spot or in advance if you know there's going to be some complicated case, as is the case with the medical app coming up the court is allowed additional time for oral arguments already. And then the justices can ask questions of the lawyers during the oral argument. And at the end of that, if at the end of that week, the nine justices get together in our conference room, the nine of them sitting around the table, and if... The discussion starts with the chief justice, and then moves to the most Senior Associate Justice, and around the table, to the junior justice.

When I went on the court, it was 1981. And I hadn't been through this process before, and I will never forget that first round of oral arguments that I sat in. And the very first case that I participated in discussing, as a member of not having heard, read the briefs me or the argument came around the table. I was the last about, obviously junior justice. It came to me, 4-4.

How do you like that? And that happened to me many times. So it's maybe good to be there, junior justice maybe not.

Pat Morrison
We'ere taught how it works. We're talking with Sandra Day O'Connor about justice and civics and her iCivics program. You can go to the webpage kpcc.org. Find the iCivics page. I want to thank Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and our great our great audience at the Crawford family forum students and teachers from Dorsey High, Wilmington Middle School, Los Fields Elementary has been folks, North U High, Cesar Chavez Middle School and Garfield High. And thanks to Lauren Olson who produced this terrific program. John cone Elaine charge any Smith of the forum staff engineer Steve Martine. I'm Pat Morrison in the Crawford family forum. Thank everyone for coming.