Other transcripts

Transcripts

November 27, 2002

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor interviews United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
In-Studio Guests:
Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor;
United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

>> Michael: Good evening, welcome to a special edition of "Horizon." I'm Michael Grant. Tonight, we bring you an interview done by Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor of her mentor, United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

>> Ruth McGregor: We're here this afternoon with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has consented to be interviewed as part of the Arizona state court's history project. Thank you, justice O'Connor.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, I'm glad to do it because both you and I have played a little part in the history of the courts in Arizona.

>> Ruth McGregor: Thanks. We're going to talk mostly about the time that you were a judge and in the state government in Arizona, but before we get to that, let's go back a bit to your growing up on a ranch in eastern Arizona. A lot of us have had a chance now to read your book, the lazy B, and you talk about some of the lessons you learned there. Were there some things you learned growing up on the ranch that helped you in your later years as a lawyer and as a judge?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, I suppose everything we do is related somehow to what we learned as children. In looking back at what the lazy B might have taught, perhaps a certain amount of independence, a certain amount of self-reliance, the notion that if you do a job, you better try to do it well, as well as you possibly can, and the notion that nothing's too tough to tackle if it has to be done. Go ahead and try it.

>> Ruth McGregor: You left the ranch and Arizona when you were just 16 to start school at Stanford University, and then stayed on there and went to law school at Stanford.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Right.

>> Ruth McGregor: When did you decide law might be your career and what made you decide that?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: I never made that decision, actually, but I took a class as an undergraduate student at Stanford from a professor, Harry RATHMAN, who was attached to the law school but taught an undergraduate class. I took that class and absolutely loved it and was so impressed with him. He was truly inspirational. It seemed to me that part of his effectiveness as a professor and as a person stemmed from his legal background and his ability to marshal his arguments and speak effectively. I thought because of him and how effective he was that maybe I should apply to law school. I'd finished my major, the requirements for my economics degree, in three years, but I needed extra -- additional credits that I could apply to getting the undergraduate degree. So I asked the law school for early admission, and was accepted to my surprise and applied the first year law school classes as credits for my undergraduate degree and having finished a year of law school, I really liked it and thought I would continue and try to get my law degree, but I didn't really know where it would lead or know anything about the practice of law. I went into it rather naively, I would say.

>> Ruth McGregor: We've all heard about your difficulties in getting a job, although you graduated third in your class. Would you tell us something about the legal positions that you held -- the positions as a lawyer.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: That I've had?

>> Ruth McGregor: Yes.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: They were hard to come by, and my story is rather typical. My colleague on the Supreme Court now, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tells a very similar story about getting through law school and then having very limit opportunities. She ended up teaching. I ended up, finally, getting a job, my first job as a lawyer, in the district attorney's office in San Mateo county, California. So it was in the public sector. And it was in the public sector that women first found opportunities to work as lawyers in those days. It turned out that it was a great place to be because lawyers working in public sector jobs, such as Attorney General's offices or county attorney's offices ended up having a little more responsibility sooner than those who were going to the private firms where they might be doing drudge work for a number of years before they handled anything on their own. Jobs in the public sector often involved things that people cared about. They seemed to be current issues and issues of importance to the public. So I loved my first job and so enjoyed all my jobs in the public sector.

>>Ruth McGregor: Much -- almost all of your career has been in public service in one way or another.

>>Sandra Day O'Connor: Most of it. After my first job in California, my husband was drafted, was sent to Germany. I took a job as a civilian lawyer for the quartermaster corps in Fran, further, Germany, doing government contract work. I enjoyed that very much. I worked with some German lawyers and other people in that office handling a number of major contracts for all armed forces in Europe at that time. When my husband was discharged and we returned to Arizona in 1957, again the law firms weren't hiring women lawyers, and I met a young man when we were studying for the bar exam down in Tucson, a young man from the east who was coming to Arizona, didn't have a job, and we decided to open a law firm together, and we went out to Maryvale, Arizona, which was that little development that John long first started, and it grew very rapidly. We were at Indian School Road and 51st Avenue, something like that. There was a shopping center there and we rented space in the shopping center, and our neighbors were a grocery store and a television repair shop and the liquor store and the dry cleaners, things like that. We just took walk-in business, whatever we could get, in that shopping center. And it wasn't the kind of problem that usually finds its way to the United States Supreme Court --

>> Ruth McGregor: You in never got to argue before the Supreme Court?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Never did. But I did get to argue later on when I was in the Attorney General's office in a number of the state courts, including the court on which you now sit, the state Supreme Court, and we petitioned the Supreme Court a time or two for certiorari from that position, but the court never granted our case.

>> Ruth McGregor: I remember your telling one story about -- you took some criminal defense work, as I recall.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: I did. That was before the days of the public defender's office and the trial judge handling criminal cases, faced with an instant gent criminal defendant, would just have to make appointments of a lawyer from the community.

>> Ruth McGregor: I think it was in 1969 you were appointed to the state Senate, is that right?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Yes, I think that's about right.

>> Ruth McGregor: Then you ran for and were reelected a couple times but there you were the first woman in the country to be elected Senate majority leader.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Yes, I had been in the legislature just a year, and we had a general election, and I was elected again, and my colleagues have a meeting to effect their leadership, the Republicans had a one-seat majority in the Senate at that time, and so the Republicans held their caucus, and to my amazement, selected me as the majority leader.

>> Ruth McGregor: Did you think of that as being significant for women at the time?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, I realized after I was chosen and did a little research that that was the first time that had occurred in the United States, but I was more interested in just trying to get the job done for the Republican majority in the Senate at that time, because with a margin of only one, it was difficult, and what I found was in those years that most of the legislative proposals we had could be supported by a bipartisan majority. We didn't divide along closely drawn political party lines except on a few key issues, and that was very healthy, because most of the time we were able to function as legislative bodies should. And it was only a few issues where the lines would be drawn purely on party lines. I think there's less of that today, bi-partisanship, than there was then, somehow.

>>Ruth McGregor: Did your work as a legislator affect your later work as a judge? Did it affect the way you approached things?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: It certainly made me appreciate the fact that legislative bodies tend to work by trying to seek compromise and often by knowingly passing laws that had defects in them, realizing that courts were going to be faced with filling out some of the gaps and resolving some of the ambiguities. When I was serving as a legislator because of my legal background I spent a huge amount of my time just trying to improve the quality and the language of the bills that we had before us to make them clearer or to express more carefully the concepts that were supposed to be embodied in those laws. There was a lot of sloppy drafting, and probably still is.

>> Ruth McGregor: Could be.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: So I was quite struck with how often laws are passed with known defects, and I see that today at the Supreme Court when we're asked to interpret laws passed by Congress. Often there are still those gaps and ambiguities and deficiencies that I saw in the Arizona legislature and often there are things -- they are things that are the result of the compromises that legislators make to get something passed.

>> Ruth McGregor: Right. You stayed in the Senate then until 1974, and then you decided to run, Arizona was electing trial judges still then, in for the superior court. Did something in particular happen, or what did happen to make you change from the legislative to the judicial branch?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, I had served in the executive branch of government when I was an Assistant Attorney General, a job I loved. That was great. And I was doing that when I went on the state Senate. So that was the legislative branch. I was in a safe, quote-unquote, legislative district. I could have been re-elected presumably indefinitely, but it seemed to me it would be a wonderful experience to try the judicial branch of government as well and have the privilege of serving in all three branches. I had undertaken as a project, when I was in the state Senate to try to push forward an amendment to Arizona's constitution to provide for a Missouri-type plan for selecting judges.

>> Ruth McGregor: That's merit selection?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Yes. And Arizona had had a constitutional provision requiring for partisan elections of judges at all levels, and it seemed to me as a close observer in Arizona of the political scene and of the judicial branch that we might be better served by a merit selection procedure, that in the long run we might end up with some significantly better qualified judges overall, and I pushed for that change. I could get the proposal out of the Senate, but never out of the house of representatives, and so I participated in forming a statewide committee to seek an initiative measure, and we put a ballot proposition before the voters and gathered the necessary signatures to put the proposition on the ballot, and that proposition was on the ballot in the same election when I ran for judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court.

>> Ruth McGregor: And you were elected and the initiative was adopted?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: The initiative by a narrow margin passed, and I was elected to the bench at that same election.

>> Ruth McGregor: What do you remember as being memorable about your years as a trial court judge?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: It was like sitting on a soap opera all day, every day. We heard the most amazing series of stories from people with all kinds of cases. When I sat on the civil bench there was a wide range of issues that came before the court, and some were sad stories, and you'd feel like shedding a tear but, of course, tried not to. Some stories you heard would strike me as humorous, but I tried not to laugh. And some stories were just a little bit boring and you didn't want to go to sleep. But it was much like a soap opera, and so much time in the courtroom. It was hard to get five minutes break, and I sometimes had one jury out deciding a case and would swear in the next before the first jury came in. It was so busy to try to manage that case load.

>> Ruth McGregor: That would be hard. Although you enjoyed your time, obviously, on the trial bench --

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Yes, I did.

>> Ruth McGregor: In 1979 you, through the merit selection system, were appointed to the Court of Appeals. Again, what happened to make you want to change there?

>>Sandra Day O'Connor: Well, actually, it was before the commission had been implemented to receive applications and to make recommendations, and while merit selection had been passed, it just hadn't been thoroughly implemented before there was a vacancy on the Court of Appeals, and the governor, who was then governor Bruce Babbitt --

>> Ruth McGregor: A Democrat.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: A Democrat. -- proposed my name for the Court of Appeals position. And I was very surprised.

>> Ruth McGregor: But you were willing to move to the appellate bench?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Yes.

>> Ruth McGregor: Did you see that as a new challenge?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Absolutely. I had not had any occasion to work at the appellate level where you work as a collegial body, where decisions are made typically by three judges, sometimes by more, and that was a new experience for me. As a trial judge you're making all the decisions yourself, those that aren't made the by jury, and on the Court of Appeals, everything that's done is done as a group decision by a COLLEGIAL body, and that was a good experience, and my colleagues on the Court of Appeals at that time were so splendid. They really were. We had some very good judges. We had ray HERR, who was a wonderful legal scholar, we had ANO Jacobson who was very skilled at what did he, and we had judge jack OGG from Prescott, who is absolutely one of the finest most delightful men I have ever known. And we had judge Eubank, with whom I had worked in the Attorney General's office. So it was a marvelous group of people. I had a wonderful time getting to know those people and working with them. It was great.

>> Ruth McGregor: After just two years on Arizona's intermediate court, you learned that you were being considered for the United States Supreme Court.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: It was more like three years, I think.

>> Ruth McGregor: Three years, ok.

>> Sandra Day O'Conno: Yes, I did.

>> Ruth McGregor: And would you tell us just a little bit about the nomination and confirmation process and the things that stand out as the most amazing things about them?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice potter Stewart decided to retire, and that was going to create a vacancy on the court. He made that decision at the end of the term in the late spring -- June, I suppose, and not long after that, William French Smith who was the United States Attorney General, telephoned me in Arizona and introduced himself on the telephone. I didn't know him. He asked if I could come back to Washington to talk to them about a vacancy. Now, I am quite sure he never specifically said on the U.S. Supreme Court, but I certainly understood that that was what it was, and, of course, it was, and I did, in fact, make a trip to Washington, and he asked me to meet him at the Jefferson Hotel where he and his wife had rented space, they were living there and I had dinner that night at the hotel with William French Smith and his wonderful wife Jean. That was our first meeting. I liked them both a lot. We had a very nice evening and a good conversation. Unbeknownst to me, he had previously sent two of his deputies to Arizona to make extensive inquiry about me --

>> Ruth McGregor: No one had told you --

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: No one had told me that, and they had done a lot of.

>>Sandra Day O'Connor: snooping around. So he knew a lot about me already. And then he said, could I go to a hotel suite the next day at another hotel and meet with some of president Reagan's close advisors. And I said, fine. And he said, well, we just as soon nobody knew you were going, so why don't you be there about 9:00, and I was, and went up to the suite that had been reserved, and I met in turn with all of the people working with president Reagan in the oval office, his closest advisors, and each one of them sat down and asked me all the questions they wanted to ask, and we each had visits, and at the conclusion of that time, Attorney General Smith said, could you come by the White House tomorrow and meet with the president? And I said, fine. How do I get there? I'd never been to the White House. And I didn't know Washington D.C. He said, well, I'll ask my secretary to pick you up, and she drives a green Chevrolet and she'll come by Dupont circle at a certain hour. So I stood out on the street corner at Dupont circle, and his secretary picked me up in her car. We drove to the White House. We're ushered in. I was greeted by Michael DEAVER, who assisted President Reagan, and sat in his outer office until it was time to go into the oval office, and when I went in, all of the people with whom I had met the previous day were assembled there, and it was clear that they had been speaking to the president about me. And then they sat kind of to the side, and president leg un and I had a conversation -- president Reagan and I had a conversation that lasted perhaps 35 minutes or so, and not much of it was addressed to life's great issues. He was pretty interested in my ranch background and fixing fences, riding horses and a few things like that, but he did ask questions of substance as well, and we had a very pleasant conversation. But then it was time to go, and I said good-bye to the president and the other people who were there and left, and I went to the airport to fly back to Arizona that afternoon, and when I got on the airplane, I said to myself, that has been the most interesting time to go to Washington D.C., which I had never done before, to meet with the president's close advisors and to meet with the president himself in the oval office. That was fantastic. But thank goodness I don't have to go do that job, because I really didn't think I would be asked to serve. It seemed so unlikely to me when there was already someone from Arizona on the court, William Rehnquist. And I just -- and we had been in the same law school class. Typically the court doesn't end up with two members there from the same state, and certainly not one as small as Arizona. And so I breathed a sigh of relief and came home, and I don't think it was a week later when the president called me. And I was at my chambers at the Court of Appeals. Sandra, I'd like to Announce your nomination to the court tomorrow, and I was thunder struck, really, and very concerned because it's a very hard job, and I didn't think that my experience on Arizona's courts, as nice as it had been, had prepared me for that. We didn't have a lot of federal law issues. Obviously the court does a tremendous amount of very challenging work, very demanding work. It had not had a woman before. I didn't want to take on a job that I couldn't handle John was more enthusiastic than I was I was. He says, of course you have to do it.

>> Ruth McGregor: He had no doubt, of course, that you could do it.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: He had no doubt. I had many doubts.

>> Ruth McGregor: But the next day the president did announce --

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Did he.

>> Ruth McGregor: -- that he would be nominating you.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Yes.

>> Ruth McGregor: Did you start feeling, there had to be pressure being the first woman on the United States Supreme Court --

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: The pressure came largely from the enormous amount of media and public attention. This riveted the nation, if not the world. It was so significant. No woman in our country had held a position at that level in government. It just had every news paper, every television station, worldwide, reporting on it, and that was a level of attention that nobody wants to experience. It was very intense. I couldn't move without a battery of television cameras following my every step. The president knew that it would be bad. He sent one of his employees, Peter ROUSSEL, to Phoenix to help with all of the media attention that was going to follow.

>> Ruth McGregor: But it didn't stop?

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: It really didn't stop until we got a second woman on the court, when justice Ginsburg finally joined me on the court and there were two of us. There was an immediate cessation of the focus on what does the one woman justice do.

>> Ruth McGregor: One of the things that I remember most from that first year with all of the attention was all of the mail that came to your chambers but how it was 99% probably plus, positive, from people so happy to see a woman there.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Most of it was. And women all across the country saw it as such an encouraging sign, that doors were opening, and they did. I mean, you were there that first year in my chambers, and it was as hard as I feared it would be. I didn't know how the court worked. And none of my law clerks did, either. None of my staff did. And we had to try to figure it out. Do you remember?

>> Ruth McGregor: I do remember. I remember we had -- I always tell people not only were there not any -- not only did we lack a filing system, we didn't even have filing cabinets when you got there.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Right. I remember all of us, you and the other clerks and me, sitting on the floor of the chambers with stacks of petitions for certiorari and briefs and other papers and trying to figure out how to handle them.

>>Ruth McGregor: And we did it wrong. We put them in numerical order. They took them in the order in which they were ready.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Exactly. So we were in kind of a mess for a long time.

>> Ruth McGregor: Justice O'Connor thank you so much for taking time to talk with us as part of this state courts history project. We really appreciate your input. Thank you.

>> Sandra Day O'Connor: Thank you.