Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I have to tell one little story, though, about William French Smith, a man--
Ken Starr
This is your conversation.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
But you weren't quite finished,

Ken Starr
Please.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
When I got out of Stanford Law School, it was back in the middle of the last century, long before any of your students had been born. This is why I got out of law school in 1952. And there were all these notices on the placement bulletin board at the law school Stanford Law graduates call our law firm, we want to talk to you. Well, I called every one on the bulletin. board, and not one of them would give me an interview. Not one. Well, I knew a young woman at Stanford as an undergrad, whose father was it gives them down on cracker. He was one of the warriors. And I said, talk to your dad, see if he'll get me an interview with Gibson Dunn. And she did. And he did. And I made the trip down to Gibson Dunn on crusher in Los Angeles, and met with this distinguished looking lawyer and we talked to me, Oh Miss Day, you have a fine resume here to stay. But Miss Day, this firm has never hired a woman lawyer. And I do not see that time when we will. Our clients would not stand for it. Well, I looked sort of stricken, I'm sure. So he said, well, Miss Day, how well do you type? And I said, well, so so and he said if you can type well enough, we might be able to get you on here as a legal secretary. But I declined that opportunity.

I must say that I was home in Arizona and got a telephone call from a William French Smith in Washington, DC and I had not yet met him. A distinguished lawyer from Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, or formerly. And he wanted to know if I would come back to Washington and talk to them about a vacancy, a position. And so I couldn't resist, you mean a secretarial position, right?
Anyway, I did. And so it all worked out. It wasn't through Gibson Dunn.

Ken Starr
Well, as you can see the conversation has begun. I want you to also welcome our conversationalist. Three wonderful colleagues from Pepperdine. Colleen Rafi in the middle. Carol Chase and Virginia Mills dead. You have their names in the program. So join me in welcoming the conversation.

Ken Starr
You're going to be welcome to join the conversation as well. You will have National Press Club style. Some of you have done this before. So you know the drill. You don't need extensive briefing. Right or print. If you don't know cursive print your question and they will be gathered there will be individuals, Kyle and others will be rolling up and down Jay. Anyway, they'll be coming up and down the aisles in a few minutes. We're going to get the conversation going. This also goes for our What shall I say the additional room, I don't want to call it the spillover room. But for those of you who are also watching them on our closed circuit TV, you're welcome to join the conversation. And you're going to have blue cards. So I will know that those cards are questions with are coming from that spillover room. So please, you're all welcome. We will get to as many as we possibly can in the course of the conversation. So you're welcome to join. So Justice O'Connor, Bill Smith, we gather in his honor, he made a little bit of a difference in your life,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I'd say so do about as big a differences one could make. And he told me that our President Reagan had said during the course of his campaign for 1980, that if he had a chance to appoint a qualified woman to the Supreme Court, he'd like to do that. And at that time, Bill Smith said he started to make an occasional note of a name or two of people that might conceivably be considered if there were such a vacancy. And when he wrote that name down, then he would put it on a little slip of paper under his telephone at the Department of Justice. And I guess that's where that little note was me. Somehow My name got on there, and I'm not quite sure how, but it did.

Ken Starr
Tell us about meeting bill and the dinner that you had at the Jefferson hotel.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
He asked me to come back and talk to him and then to some of the President's Cabinet The following morning and they had rented a suite at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel. So he wanted me to come have dinner with him and with his wife Jeanne the night before at the Jeff person where they were staying. So I did, and it was really delightful because they were so wonderful. And we really had a good time. And I was delighted that gene Smith had gone to Stanford his ideas. So we had some Stanford conversation on all kinds of other things. And it was a most delightful occasion really was.

Ken Starr
Judge Webster referred to, this is the paperback version, The Majesty of the Law. And by the way, when you go on eBay or Amazon, com or whatever, and get The Majesty of the Law, if you don't have it already, you will know the proceeds go to the Arizona Community Foundation. Just another sign of the kind of person the Justice O'Connor is, but in The Majesty of the Law, you talk about your on confirmation process to reflect on that especially because now we have a new president. There's a lot of talk That we may have a vacancy. Justice Ginsburg said we may have one soon, although she seems to be doing better and we're thankful about that. Could you reflect on your own process of the confirmation process?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
The process apparently typically starts by having a someone assigned by the executive branch and typically somebody out of the Department of Justice, such as you were, at that time, the investor and having that person take the nominee around to meet the key people in both houses, the leaders in both houses of the Congress, and then in particular to visit with each member of the Judiciary Committee. And the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee when I was nominated was Strom Thurmond. Now you haven't lived. If you didn't meet Strom Thurmond, he was amazing. He had been active and a leader in every political party this country had. And some we don't have I mean, he'd been a democrat and a Dixie craft and a republic gun and I don't know what all but anyway, he was a real character and he was elderly at that time, but he was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and I sat in his office when I went in to meet him for the first time. Well, man, Miss O'Connor. Let me just get the press on the phone and see if he really wants me to do this for you. And he called him on the phone call. I was right there in the office. This Preston now I have this Israel Chi here in my office and PRP, she's nominated for the Supreme Court. Now, do you really want me to help get her confirmed? Yes, Mr. President? Yes, Mr. President? Well, I'll do my best. And you know, he did. And did he ever know how to handle things? Now, I mean, you can laugh all your life, but he knew politics. And he was amazing. And he had some people on his committee who were not going to be terribly enthused about my nomination, meaning that and he did all kinds of things to work it out in the first place. He had senator Deacon Sienese wife Susie them, like, have a luncheon or a tea for me. I can't remember but--

Ken Starr
--it was a tea, according to The Majesty of the Law.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
All right. And he, she had the wives of all the members of the the male members of the Judiciary Committee. And so I got to meet them and they got to inspect me and decide whether they give a good report to their husbands or not. So that was, I think, helpful. And then strong Thurman, Senator Thurman had a very attractive wife. She had been Miss South Carolina. She was very attractive indeed. And she decided to have a tea for me. On the third day of the Senate hearing of the Judiciary Committee, well, that was a brilliant stroke. If she hadn't had that team. we'd still be in that committee today. Maybe it was going on forever. But everybody had to finish up so they could go to Mrs. For MT on the third day, but in the interim, it was it was an astonishing procedure. And now most of you have seen these things on TV. Because starting then I guess, the Senate, the TV stations started giving it gavel to gavel coverage for a Judiciary Committee hearing for a Supreme Court nominee. And the senators love that. I mean, it's free for them. And they're there all day, every day looking area died and asking all these tough questions. I mean, it's perfect for them. So there's no way that's going to diminish in time. I mean, the Constitution is very brief as it is on most things, the president shall appoint with the advice and consent of the Senate, the federal judges, so that's always says and it really is up to the Senate what it wants to make a bed. And the other thing that Strom Thurmond did was to have a luncheon himself for all the judiciary committee member and he had john and me there. And he had all these wonderful products from South Carolina at the luncheon. And he seated me at a table with every member of the committee who was having second thoughts about having a woman and particularly me on the Supreme Court. So we had a nice lunch and together so he was an old fox when it came to getting things done.

Ken Starr
Final question from yours truly about your time on the court. I have been trained not to use the term of--I'm getting the look--swing justice, swing justice, I'm not to use that term.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Now. That's true.

Ken Starr
Therefore let me quote from the name of a recent book about you,

Ken Starr
Queen's Court: Judicial Power and the Rehnquist Era. There, though, oh, she's tapping her thumb. That reflects on your time on the court and your role on the court, which was obviously a consequential role on the court?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I think the role of every justice every member of that court is a consequential role, narrowly nine. And so everybody has an important role. And many of the cases are pretty tough to decide. Many of them are cases that will not be unanimous. And that's all right. I mean, these are tough issues. If they weren't, the court wouldn't have to take them. The issues the court takes are the issues on which the lower federal courts and the state Courts have reached conflicting holdings on the proper answer. If there weren't a conflict, the Supreme Court wouldn't have to take the case. So what the Supreme Court hears are cases where you can typically make a very good argument on either side. And that means that the process of hearing and deciding the cases is fascinating. And I often results in disagreements among the justices themselves about the proper answer. And that's fine. I mean, that is the system. Now, a good many courts around the world that sit in as collegial bodies like we do, disagree as often as the Supreme Court of the United States, but they publish only one opinion for the court. And those disagreements remain silent when it comes to public knowledge. But I think it's remarkable and a healthy thing in our country. That We're willing to publish the separate writings of the members of the court. And if there's a dissent Fine. Let's hear it. And let's see what the arguments are on the other side. And let's understand it. And if it's on a statutory issue, the dissenting opinion can often point an avenue for the Congress to take another look and make changes if Congress wants to make changes. So I think the system works, but it is not one where you necessarily are unanimous in that many cases. I think the court is unanimous, at least in the years that I was there, maybe 25 to 30% of the time, and then the others, you're going to have some divisions of opinion and that's okay.

Ken Starr
The conversation is going to be very lively, I assure you, we're about to have Professor chase join in but I want to give you a flavor of the questions that are already coming in. We have quotes from King George, Barney Frank. And then this is one of my favorites, "I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl because I'm positively honored to be in your presence.
You're truly an inspiration for women everywhere."

Ken Starr
This is gonna be fun. Professor Chase.

Professor Chase
Thank you, Dean Starr. Justice O'Connor. I would like to personally welcome you back to the law school. In the mid 1980s. I had the privilege of hearing you speak at the Pepperdine University Law School dinner. And you spoke on a day in the life of a Supreme Court justice, which was fascinating. I've wondered since your retirement. Is there anything in particular about sitting on the court that you miss or maybe more interestingly, is there any particular aspect of being an Associate Justice that you are happy to have behind you?
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I have been busier since I retired than I was on the court, to tell you the truth. And so I haven't had a lot of time to sit around and think about whether I missed it or not. I really haven't had time. But I do, of course, I it's such a privilege to get to address the significant legal issues in the country. I mean, how could you not miss the opportunity to participate and deciding some of those things? And I try not, however, to watch them too closely and to say, Oh, well, I wouldn't have decided that. I'll kick back to myself. But I do miss the contacts on a routine basis with my former colleagues. It's fun to do that. But I still when I'm in Washington, DC and I still have an office at the court. And I'll tell you why in a minute. I still go to lunch on the That the justices are meeting in the dining room for lunch so that we can have a conversation. I did that this Wednesday, and we all had lunch together. And that was fun. I like that. And I miss my law clerks. I mean, we hired these gifted, wonderful people. And of course, each justice yesterday, has many applications in front of him, and you get to pick for if you're sitting justice. And I tried to pick people that I knew I was in like the rest of my life, and I do and so I miss them. I have one male. And the reason I still have an office and one clerk is something you may not know. And that is that Congress, in its wisdom has required that retired justices sit on the lower federal courts. Did you know that? No, it says shall not me. Not only that it requires me Retired justice to certify that I've done enough for the year. And it requires our chief justice to do that. Now, come on, and neither here I know what's funny. This is ridiculous. Anyway, I'm still deciding some cases and some legal issues, but they aren't the type that is cannon fodder at the Supreme Court. And is there anything you're glad to be away from on the court? No, not really. I mean, you know, I really had a wonderful experience there and it's hard. But stimulating and no, no, I, I don't I just have gone on and I'm doing a million other things. So I don't think about it too much.
Panelist
Thank you Justice O'Connor. In the majesty of the law, you know that that approximately one sixth of the courts docket is typically comprised of Criminal Procedure case. This and in writing about why that is. So you stated that you suppose that it may be that the law of criminal procedure is just not perfectible. Could you elaborate what you meant by that and why that is the case?
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, I decided that because we have so many cases constantly on the docket trying to ask us to fine tune some principle or other
the court, I think this term is back into the Confrontation Clause issue. And that certainly comes up frequently in criminal cases. And once in a while that Supreme Court makes a big shift in doctrine. And that causes years of additional litigation to straighten that out and that's one of those issues that court a few years back change the Confrontation Clause meaning and gave it new life in areas where I had thought was settled that you wouldn't have a Confrontation Clause issue. And the Court made a major change. And that immediately brought a flood of new cases in. And that's what happens. So I guess it isn't perfectible. Reflecting on the Confrontation Clause cases, you wrote at least two very significant majority opinions during your tenure on the court, in which you carefully balanced the right of the defendant to confront witnesses against him, along with the need for the prosecution, to on occasion have to offer reliable out of court hearsay statements. And in addition, on even more rare occasion, the need to protect a particularly vulnerable witness. I'm thinking of Maryland vs. Craig Yeah, I had a case involving a little child who was the subject of an alleged criminal assault, and she was terrified to testify in the presence of the person again, The change that you refer to that occurred with the Crawford case seems to have now resulted in law where the defendants right of confrontation trumps everything else, apparently. So I joined bill Rehnquist descent in a subsequent. Yeah, that was not a change with which I agreed. And even on reflection, I probably still don't. But that's not for me to say so you had a near death. But now, this term, that court again has a case and it involves evidence in criminal cases. That, for instance, is the result of testing a DNA sample or a blood sample in the crime lab of the jurisdiction that's trying the defendant and typically across the country. They don't call the crime lab. People in to physically testify. They try to get a man as public records. And and you don't cross examine the person unless there's some issue that really tells you you're going to have to do that. And now, the case before the court, this term says, Oh, yes, in every instance. That's Confrontation Clause problem. And so it's the kind of issue that's going to keep cropping up, I guess. Sounds that way.
Panelist
Thank you very much. Justice O'Connor. I had the privilege of meeting you in my deputy assistant secretary capacity in Prague at the US ambassador's residence, you were committing your time to judicial reforms overseas. And I understand from my former colleagues at the State Department that you leave tomorrow for Ljubljana, Slovenia, and then on to Zagreb, Croatia. We have a lot of students that are interested in our global programs and good governance and rule of law and I think they'd be fascinated to hear about why you're spending so much of your time on judicial reforms overseas.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
We had an historical happening during my lifetime, maybe not an old years, but we had this huge chunk of the Soviet Union break off from the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union. And it was such a big chunk that 26 separate nation states emerged from that chunk of property that broke off from the former Soviet Union. And when that happened, it was very sudden. And here were these different groups of people trying to form governments. And this it will never happen again in your lifetime or anybody else's lifetime. This was just truly unique. And the American Bar Association president at the time, talked about Homer Maurier, who was also active in the American Bar. And they both had business overseas, some and they both made a trip over there to talk to leaders and what became hungry and what became Czechoslovakia that later split in what became Poland and other areas and they said, Do you people need some help from American lawyers and judges? Do you want help? As you set up your new forms of government? And they did? They said, Yes, come help us.
And so, the American Bar started something called the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative. Now every entity in Washington DC has an acronym if you don't have an acronym, you're nothing. The Supreme Court of the United States is the SCOTUS. The President of the United States is the POTUS. Well the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative was CEELI. So CEELI got volunteers, judges, justices, lawyers, people from around this country who were willing to go over and be volunteers in all these regions and help them form systems of government. And I thought it was an incredible opportunity. I, it was irresistible. And I definitely wanted to be part of that because it's in our interest in World Peace to have nations forum with a sensible system of government and help them do it.
And that kind of help that lawyers and judges could give focus more on the judicial branch than anything else, but they get a lot of things help from right bankruptcy laws and, you know, criminal laws in general and things like that. And the judicial changes were massive that they needed because they'd been under the Soviet system. And there are system of justice was telephone justice. If there were a case and communist government had an interest in the outcome, you'd get a phone call was the judge and you'd be told what to do. And if you didn't do it, you lost your apartment or your car or your life. It was that simple. You did what you were told, and to convert systems that had operated that way into something that we thought would meet our concept of the rule of law, which is was adequate. Yes.
Now let me get diverted for a minute. The first permanent English settlement in the new world was Jamestown, not Plymouth. It was Jamestown, that was the first permanent English settlement and to ship loads came in with people from England and they brought with them a charter signed by the king. England, and the king commanded them that in making the settlement, they would apply the English common law. Now, so we got from that we got the English language. And we got the British notion of the common law. And they'd already had the Magna Carta signed by King John, where even the king is subject to the rule of law. And this was a great gift to the world. And it was certainly something that mattered to us with the founding of Jamestown. So, you know, it's in that spirit, that we wanted to
help these countries to form something that would comply with our notions of the rule of law. Now, every one of the 26 countries formed a civil law system, not a common law system, none of them adopted the British common law tradition of following precedents. They're they followed statutory law and don't worry so much about precedent. But that's what we got. And I got deeply involved in it and still am, because we're, we've never finished the job. But the vast majority of those 26 nation states are now members of the European Union. That's how well they succeeded. And I'm proud of me. I really am. Thank you. It was a good thing.

Panelist
I was working on America's public diplomacy. And as I traveled, I would constantly hear criticisms of the United States. We haven't signed the International Criminal Court. The Senate hasn't ratified the Law of the Sea Convention then the detainee issues from habeas to Geneva Conventions to, of course, torture claims. Has the US lost its place as global leader in the rule of law?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, it hasn't. But we've certainly had a lot of criticism and some of it probably justified, but people got used to looking at us for certain things. And got a little disappointed on some of these treaty issues, the Law of the Sea and the Kyoto Protocol, which we didn't sign. But it seems to me that we have to take a longer view of this. And there were some legitimate concerns about the International Criminal Tribunal. Our nation has not signed on to that. But I just served on a commission that took a look at it and took a look at the current situation and makes various recommendations for the country. And I think over time, we're going to see a lot of interchange and probably some of these treaties are going to get signed at the end of the day, not necessarily that one in its present form. But the Law of the Sea and probably the one on children and youth. We didn't sign that because of the Senator from South Carroll. liner, who objected because it said you couldn't sentence someone who committed a murder under 18 to a death sentence. And we had some states that, including his that permitted that. And so we never signed that. But now I think the court ruled in a case that we can't execute people who were 18 or younger when the crime was committed. So there probably is no obstacle to that. But I suspect we'll see, over time, some greater involvement by our country, and maybe a little education of other countries along the way about the reasons for our hesitation and the concerns. I saw last night, a man who is the presiding judge in the international court that sits in The Hague, not the criminal court. And he and I talked about this very problem on the criminal court and he agrees there are problems and issues that maybe need to be addressed. And there's going to be another round of a conference on that very thing. And I suspect our country may well participate in that, and we'll see what happens.

Panelist
Somewhat related to that, is that there's been a lot of discussion about the court's citation of international opinion, to support decisions interpreting the Constitution. Now, you've been quoted as saying, "That's much ado about nothing."
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yes. Is it still.
Panelist
And what is the relationship between international law and US Constitutional law.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I'm not aware of a single instance in which any member of our court has relied on the interpretation of our Constitution, given by some other court not not in our country, as any kind of binding authority on how we interpret our own. That doesn't happen. So, you know, stop complaining about it to complain about reading what some court in another country has to say about an issue. I mean, we read law review articles from schools like Pepperdine, random fakes, and see what they have to say. And is that okay? I think it probably is. And it's probably okay if we read what some court and Great Britain or elsewhere has to say about some of these common problems too, but nobody's citing it as authority. So I make that much ado about.

Ken Starr
We do, by the way, have several questions that go to this. So thank you for those questions. about it. And one is very specific, saying conservatives criticize this use of extra- or transnational materials.
Audience Member
Justice, early on in your career did you have any mentors? And if you did, what advice did they give you? And how did they influence you?
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
You know, my mentors were my parents. Now I grew up on a remote ranch in Arizona, New Mexico and my companions were my two parents and the Cowboys. And we got along great. They were good mentors, I'd say. But I didn't know when women who'd accomplished anything in the nature of work out of the home because my mother just helped out like we all been with whatever needed doing it the ranch, so I don't know. When I came back with my husband. He'd been serving in the military service and the Judge Advocate General's, and we came back in 1957. And we went to Phoenix, Arizona, where my husband joined a law firm and there was a woman Joe On the trial court in Phoenix at that time, named Lorna Lockwood, and she had risen higher than any other woman in the legal profession in our state. And she later we elected the judges at that time she was elected to the Arizona Supreme Court. And the women lawyers in those days in Arizona, would get together once every month or two for lunch at the Arizona club. And we could sit around one table, it was a little bigger than this. but not much. And she would come and we would talk about things, but and there was a woman lawyer who practiced in a law firm there because her brother was in the firm and so he let her and Lauren Lockwood that where she was because her father was a lawyer, and she practiced in the firm with him. And there was another woman whose husband was a lawyer and the two of them practice so bad. That was all we had really. And I was kind of an outsider in that regard, I have to say. So it took a long time before people decided maybe it was okay for women to be lawyers and judges.

Ken Starr
You mentioned the Lazy B. We'll come right back, Virginia. I just love the way you begin this book, which again is available. There is something you quoted Wallace Stegner at the very beginning, in the preface: "There's something about living in big, empty space, where people are few and distant under a great sky that is alternately serene and furious, exposed to sun from four in the morning to nine at night." One of the things that's been said about Justice O'Connor is that she's as comfortable with Cowboys, as she is with ambassadors and heads of state,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Or maybe more so. Yeah.
Panelist
One of the observations that been made by the stars, your move from the State Senate to the Arizona court of appeal to the Supreme Court. There was such a momentum to your career. What advice would you give to young lawyers who are looking to progress in their own careers? What attitudes should they bring to their work their colleagues, the mistakes that they'll inevitably make?
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't know. I had a very hard time getting jobs as I went along. And very often, I had to take a job that really didn't look too promising to tell you the truth when I started it. But I would try to make something of it. Let me give you one small example in when we got back to Phoenix, I did water work and I had to start my own little law firm, which I did with a man I met when we were studying for the bar and we did fine but it ended up that we have three children. And my babysitter moved to California. Now this was not good. Definitely not good. And I had to stop my practice and my work for close to five years. So we got organized with those children. And I wanted to go back to work and there weren't many opportunities. And I find my got the newly elected Attorney General in Arizona to take me on as a deputy, but they didn't have any other women in the office and they didn't know where to put me. And they sent me out to the Arizona State Hospital for the mentally ill. They didn't have me committed, they just sent me out there to do a way to work. And I had an office and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. So take what I did. I had to try to make something out of it.
So I got all the doctors together and I said okay, what are about legal issues that you people are facing and Why do we need that? Maybe we could get changed that would help. But their big issue at the time is something we still wrestle with people with schizophrenia, for instance, could be put on certain prescription drugs. And if they took them properly, it would keep them calm, and they wouldn't run around stabbing people or doing some evil thing. But under Arizona's law, you couldn't release these people, even though they were on medication, because you had to find that they were no longer mentally ill, or still mentally ill, but they had to be on the medication. So without the law changed for him. I mean, that was helpful. And so you could put people on medication and get them out of the state hospital and that that was probably a good thing. And I met with all the nurses and we found some things they needed, and I met with the hospital board, and there were a lot of things they need it. And so we got all this stuff done. But the biggest need was the patient's Because they were locked up and they were losing their houses and their children and their marriages and their everything. They needed lawyers, they needed legal help. So we set up a legal aid clinic. Well, it was so successful, that the Attorney General said, maybe we could use her downtown. And so I was transferred back into the mainstream and did work for the governor and the legislature and everybody else and that was good, because that was how I learned all about Arizona state government. The treasure and the auditor in Arizona would not pay a single bill unless I have okayed it. Anyway, we got along fine.

Ken Starr
There are a number of questions we'll come right back to, about work life balance, your progression--

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
--let me go back to one thing--
Ken Starr
--please.
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
The point of the question. You may have to take a job especially in today's climate, that isn't your first choice. But the point I wanted to make is, you are smart, maybe you can make something out of it. That's a lot better. That's what I'm telling you. You have to do something to make it better.

Ken Starr
If I could intercede because there's so many questions that dovetail with Virginia's very thoughtful question. And they kind of boil down to the experience of being after this interesting career in Arizona, the first woman on the Supreme Court. There are just so many questions about that, that I want to make sure this gets asked. And one of the very intriguing questions is were the other justices welcoming?
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
They were.
Ken Starr
What were what were the dynamics of this change for the court?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yeah. When I joined the court, the court was with eight members was divided four to four and a lot of cases, they really were. It was a pretty hard-nosed split there. And so they needed a ninth member of the court just to get work done. Because if you divide four to four, the cases decided by an equally divided vote and you haven't decided anything, you have to have five people to have a binding holding for the court. So everyone welcome me and may also Oh, let me know how I can help you. But I will tell you, they are all so busy, that they don't really have time to help me in the willing, but it just wasn't there. And the one who did the most for me was Lewis pal, a Southern Gentleman if ever there was one, he was fabulous. And I'll tell you what he did for me because not a single person in my chambers had ever worked at the US Supreme Court. We didn't have a clue how the paperwork went or what we had to do and the chambers and people are too busy to hold your hand and get you through that. I divided the clerks and I each took two chambers to research and see how they handle their work. And then we pulled our knowledge and we figured out how our chambers maybe should at least start working. And Lewis pal, let me hire his second secretary. And active justice has two secretaries. And he said it was like cutting off his right arm. But he let me do it. And that was I can't tell you how wonderful it was because she knew our chambers work. And boy, the minute that happened, we survived. So that was a godsend.

Ken Starr
And one other interjection
. A number of questions are going to your background in Arizona in politics. And I'm trying to now synthesize. And did your activity in politics affect the way you approached the cases, viewed the cases that came before you as a judge, but especially as a justice? And then this kind of add-on: in light of the fact that the court is now full of appellate judges. do you think that that kind of homogeneity of background experience is a good or a bad thing?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Okay, I like both those questions. So let's talk about
my experience, having come through in part of my life, the political process, I thought was great. I valued that. I don't know how it helped me on the court, but it certainly reinforced for me the difference in the three branches of government. And judges do not have the role of a legislator, as a legislator, you can pick the problem you want to work on and say, Gee, I think we ought to tinker with the mental commitment laws and then you can pull people together and develop something and introduce it and try to get it passed as Judge, you take what comes, people file lawsuits and make come along and you can't tinker with those lawsuits and make something else out of them. You. You deal with that as a lawyer and a judge. And so I thought that was good background. Now, if you look at the history of the court, what do we have now? 110 justices in the courts history, and most of them never served previously, as a judge at all on any court course. That's in part because of the courts earlier years, when, of course, they weren't sure plucking them from all over today. For the first time. All nine justices were former judges on a federal court of appeals the circuit court, do I think that's good? No, I don't I do not The court has benefited through the years by having people with somewhat different experiences. You don't want nine clones up there. I don't think I mean, they hear all kinds of issues and I think it's better. If you have some diversity of background and experience

Ken Starr
We'll come back to Virginia. I have a number of questions that go to, so let me just pose them to you now. Would you like to comment on whether Roe vs. Wade should be overruled?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't want to comment on it. You want you to comment on it?
Ken Starr
Would you? Would you? Would you? Would you?
Would you like to comment on your current views of Miranda, you're getting the idea there number of questions that go to specific cases. Is there any specific case that you'd like to talk about?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
No! I'm not on the court anymore.

Ken Starr
As I say, we'll now return to--

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I'm not there! See, I think, for me to sit here in a public setting where people are going to read about it in the newspaper and say, such and such should be overruled or something. I mean, that's nonsense. I'm not there anymore. That's up to the current court.

Ken Starr
I think asked and answered.

Panelist
You mentioned a few minutes ago that you missed your law clerks. And how would you describe your relationship with your clerks and what role did they play in assisting you in your work?
Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
They do so much. In the first place, I put all my clerks in the so called cert memo pool. That means a pool of law clerks that, in rotation, are assigned to do research and write a memo on every petition for searching search or marry that's filed with the court. And those pool memos then are shared with all the justices. And under our system of the court, the courts agenda is set by the justices, because they have to review every petition that's filed, and the court gets close to 10,000 a year. Now, that's a lot of petitions. And you have to go over all those and you read the petition and the response if there is one. And then the just any justice can say, this is one, we gotta talk about it. And we only talk about maybe 15% of the others are just automatically denied because no justice thinks it's even worth talking about much less voting on. And so it's a huge help to have the law clerks participate in the memo pool and do some good research to help us identify the cases that we really shouldn't be taking and help us see if there are some procedural defects. At the end of the day, we if we take the case, we couldn't even reach it because of some problems. So that's a huge help. Now, then on the cases that the court takes, the parties have to do two things file their arguments in written form called briefs. And they aren't brief at all, and didn't make come for an oral argument at the court. It's very limited in time. And I always had a law clerk, and I didn't care if each one of them did it, they sorted it out themselves. I wanted a memo from one of my clerks on every argued case, because we got briefs from the parties. Sometimes the briefs were terrific. Sometimes they were pretty deficient. And so it's wonderful if you have a law clerk who can pick up slack. If you have a set of briefs, it's inadequate. You're going to get a lot more research out of your clerk. I also like the clerk to do a little basic research and see if there was some use Law Review based on the issue, often they're not, but sometimes they are, or a good text writer right on point on the subject to be decided. And I like that research. I liked it brought to me so I can consider that along with the briefs of the parties and the arguments and then they can help on opinions. They can handle all the footnotes For God's sake, if you have them. I decided not to have any more footnotes. But most of the opinions do and so it's nice to have somebody that you can rely on to check every, every last little correct citation. And they're great. And I love talking to the clerks about the issues the merits of them. I would let them weigh in with me. You know, so we talk about this thing and argue them out sometimes, that's fine.

Ken Starr
We're getting questions about the cowboy. Okay, you, don't shoot the messenger. You, you've told us about the Cowboys, and I'm a lot of work life balance, family life and so forth. But here was a sweet question. How did you meet your husband? And how did that affect your marriage to the career choice affect your marriage?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
My husband and I were both on the Stanford Law Review. And you know how there was law reduce work, we were given some article site check in the library together. And it was a long article, so we were up there a long time. And so, library was about to close. And john said, Gee, why don't we finish this up down the highway at diners shack, where we can get a beer and so I think that's what we did. And we went out every night after that. For 40 nights in a row, and John was exhausted.

So we undertake a break. But anyway, he was fabulous. And we had a better marriage because of our mutual backgrounds at Stanford and our interest in the law and it makes having a conversation pretty easy.

Ken Starr
Please jump right in.

Panelist
Students are facing big interviews coming up legal careers, and yet, you had a big interview for to be the first female justice on the Supreme Court. And I understand that a young counselor to the Attorney General flew out from the Department of Justice to Phoenix for your first big interview for this job. Maybe you could say a few words about that.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Well, he was sent by William French Smith in whose honor we are meeting here tonight, along with Jonathan Rose, to go to Phoenix and check out this, Sandra Day O'Connor. And they had a lot of research done. I didn't know that that, but they had, because I'd left fingerprints and footprints in several government agencies in Arizona. And so they had to check it all out. And then we met at my house and talked about everything they wanted to talk about. And I think John was there, he sat in on the whole thing, and it was--

Ken Starr
John O'Connor was there.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yeah. And then they had to go back and give a report to William French Smith. I guess it was okay. Because that's when he called me and said, Could you come back? But I I never believed for one minute that I would be asked to serve in the first place. Bill Rehnquist and I were classmates in law school. My husband john was a year behind us. Bill Rehnquist and I were classmates and it just and he had moved to Arizona to live in practice. And I thought it was so unlikely two people from the same law school class in the same community would be asked to serve on the corner of the same. I just I wrote it off as this is terribly exciting because I never really spent any time in Washington, DC. And I'd certainly never been to the White House. So it was exciting to meet the people and talk to them. But I did not at heart think that it could happen. That was the surprise.

Ken Starr
Life on the court during a substantive question, during your tenure on the court. Who did you agree with most and who did you disagree with most?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I can keep a lot of tabs but I can't tell you. But I think, probably, and it depends on the years you're looking at, because the court changed, but I think Bill Rehnquist and I probably did end up many, many times, on the same opinion for, in a given case. And I think probably there were not as many opinions that I joined that were offered by Justice Brennan, or even Justice Marshall. I don't think so. But you'd have to go. People have kept records of those things I do. My guess.

Ken Starr
Can you share some of the humorous moments if there were any humorous moments at the court among the justices? And then pretty personal question any favorites, among the justices

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Yes, but I'm not going to tell you. And there were there were lots of humorous things because several of them just had great sense of humor. Bill Rehnquist was he loved a good joke and a story. He was terrific. And David Souter, now, there's a surprise for you.
He never forgets a conversation. And he could have had the conversation 40 years ago, when he was a student at Harvard, and he can repeat it word for word. He is astonishing. And so he had great stories to tell us, and he remembered the funny ones. And he and Justice Breyer are often confused. Did you know that it happens frequently, when they're back in Massachusetts or somewhere even in DC, and people can't tell them apart. I don't understand that. myself, but that happens to him. And you can't imagine the funny stories that have resulted from them. Priceless. But and Justice Scalia is a pretty good storyteller. Did you ever get him to tell you when he was here not long ago, wasn't he? He's a great storyteller. So, we've had some fun times.

Ken Starr
Appropriate for Southern California this question. Since you've been on the bench TV shows like law and order and others have exploded onto the scene. Do you believe that they have affected the public's understanding of the law and of their constitutional rights?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't think that Judge Judy and the other one man, they definitely don't show it like it is. So I don't think that's been much to help.

Ken Starr
I know we're not supposed to mention the birthday but I've got several happy birthdays. Would you join me in wishing a belated Happy birthday yesterday.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I'm trying not to remember or count.

Ken Starr
And I wish we had more time. I've been given this wonderful red stop sign, which is great, very clever. But because of confirmation, a number of the questions to go to the confirmation process. If you could change the process, would you? And if so, how would you change it?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I don't even think about that. Because how can you? The Constitution is there. You're going to amend the constitution to do that? I don't think so. That's hard to do. And it says the President will appoint with the advice and consent of the Senate. And it's up to the Senate, and the senate loves to be in front of TV, asking questions. They love it. You think they're going to change that? No. Forget it.

Ken Starr
And so yeah, Let me ask one truly, lawyer's final question. You've mentioned cameras. Should there be in the supreme court?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I wouldn't say, "should." You might phrase it, "Will there ever be?" That's a possibility because attitudes change over time. And it's conceivable that some court now or in the future will conclude that they're so unobtrusive that it wouldn't matter if they can just stay there and it's okay. It wouldn't. I would not be flabbergasted if someday in the future that were the decision, but the justices don't look forward to that. And I'll tell you why. They don't want to be media stars. They don't want to be recognized when they go down to the supermarket and buy a hamburger or something. I mean, you know, it's just, it's a better life if you don't have that. So, I mean they're very reluctant to buy into that machine.


Ken Starr
Would you join me in saying thank you to Sandra Day O'Connor.