O'Connor Unleashed

Thanks to Chuck for the following article. I have never met Chuck, so I won’t vouch for his character. I also don’t recommend that anyone buy an apple from him. Quite frankly, you should probably stay away from him; I’m getting a bad vibe. (Henry, where do you find these people?)

Nevertheless, he just notified me of a delightful encounter between former Justice O’Connor and Georgetown. I searched for a full transcript, but all I could find was the following summary by Nina Totenburg (NPR) on Raw Story (http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Retired_Supreme_Court_Justice_hits_attacks_0310.html).

Sadly, I have found no major network or paper which covered the speech. Indeed, I tried several Google combinations and got nothing. When I Googled the terms O’Connor, Georgetown, and the only quote Totenberg cites from the speech (which is an obvious one for networks: “really, really angry”), I got 79 results. Many had nothing to do with the Justice; those that I checked all credited NPR. I also searched NYTimes and Washington Post for anything involving the Justice (I just searched for “O’Connor”) since 2006 began, with very few results. Odd at best, shameful at worst.

Thanks again Chuck, even if you are a terrible person.

-W.

Retired Supreme Court Justice hits attacks on courts and warns of dictatorship

RAW STORY

Published: March 10, 2006

Via NPR. Rush transcript by RAW STORY. Listen to the audio report here.

Supreme Court justices keep many opinions private but Sandra Day O’Connor no longer faces that obligation. Yesterday, the retired justice criticized Republicans who criticized the courts. She said they challenge the independence of judges and the freedoms of all Americans. O’Connor’s speech at Georgetown University was not available for broadcast but NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg was there.

Nina Totenberg: In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn’t name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O’Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress’ onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O’Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O’Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.

It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn’t help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn’t name him, but it was Texas senator John Cornyn who made that statement, after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge’s home. O’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with.

I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.