At the age of 78, you have just begun a new Web site, Ourcourts.org, which is aimed at middle-school kids and their teachers and springs from your belief that civics education has been marginalized in this country. Polls say only about one-third of Americans can even name the three branches of government, much less say what they do.

What would you like us to know about the judicial branch of our government? Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges.

Tom DeLay and other conservatives railed against judges when Terri Schiavo died. Was that painful for you? I don’t want to name names. There were some members of Congress. I was very concerned and continued to be because what it evidences to me is a lack of understanding about what the framers of the Constitution were trying to put in place.

Although you were nominated to the court by President Reagan in 1981, you became known as a centrist who disappointed conservatives and provided relief to liberals. Look, that’s your spiel, not mine. I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

You were always very practical. That’s my ranch upbringing. If something is broken, you repair it yourself and you don’t care if it’s beautiful. You just care if it works.

In 2005,