Talk:Sandra Day O'Connor
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[edit] Speaking Style
I was listening to some tapes of oral arguments and heard O'Connor speak with a kind of a lisp. does she have one? or is it just the recordin? Kiwidude 05:18, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
When I saw her speak in person, she did not appear to have any kind of lisp. This, of course, is my personal impression.
[edit] Photo
What a funny photo of O'Connor swearing in Gonzalez. Either Alberto Gonzalez is really short or O'Connor is really tall. And how about O'Connor's hand gesture??
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- it is a very funny and a great one. Kiwidude 05:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Class rank
It's stated that O'Connor graduated toward the top of a Stanford class in which William Rehnquist was valedictorian; however, the Rehnquist article currently tells us that Stanford didn't rank its law students in 1952, citing this article.
- The article does say that O'Connor was one of ten students selected for the Order of the Coif. Presumably this indicates that, at least by the criteria used by the Order, O'Connor was in the top tenth of her class.
[edit] O'Connor's retirement: when effective?
Regarding when O'Connor's retirementwas effective....
- Ok, how about this one. As congress didn't pass a law increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices above 9, it would not have been legal for Alito to be sworn in and begin the work of the court without O'Connor's retirement. Gentgeen 09:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
The press release does not say that O'Connor is no longer a Associate Justice. It may be a matter of mere hours until O'Connor issues a press release wishing Alito well and bidding farewell to the Court, but until she actually does so, Wikipedia's policy is to not contain unverifiable statements. JonathanFreed 09:46, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
- I applaud Wikipedians' efforts to keep Wikipedia up-to-date. However, O'Connor's actual retirement is not yet verifiable. We may only need to wait a few mere hours until O'Connor issues a press release wishing Alito well and bidding farewell to the Court, but until that or something similar confirms O'Connor's retirement, it is not verifiable. All we have now at this moment is a statement of intent, but that is not any more significant than was George H. W. Bush's pledge of No New Taxes. (Indeed, because Article III states that O'Connor holds office "during good Behavior", it is appropriate to say that she will be merely abstaining from votes, and that she could retake her seat at any time if she so desires. However, I sincerely doubt that she would instigate such a constitutional crisis!) JonathanFreed 10:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
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- You're wrong. According to her retirement letter of July 1, 2005, her retirement was effective upon the nomination and confirmation of her successor. That happened yesterday morning. At that time, she had not withdrawn her resignation, and it became effective. You're simply disrupting this article to prove a point. Gentgeen 10:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
- We have both cited the same letter. It contains a statement of intent and therefore only verifies her intent and nothing more. It is an inference that she is currently retired and is a "former" member of the Court. Is it a valid inference? Almost definitely, but it is still an inference. An example of an explicit verification would be a post-Alito-confirmation statement by O'Connor that yes, she is retired and is a former member of the Court. Examples of implicit verification would be her consistent absence from Court proceedings or her lack of objection to being knowingly-characterized as a retired and/or former member of the Court. I have not seen anybody provide a corresponding citation. Because content "must be verifiable", I feel obligated to edit again, though I will certainly try for a NPOV statement that is acceptable for all. This is, I believe, in line with Wikipedia's guideline about being bold. JonathanFreed 12:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
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- You were, in fact, wrong. O'Connor announced to the CEO of her employer that she would retire upon the completion of certain conditions. Her resignation was accecpted by the CEO, at which point it became a legally binding agreement. She never renounced her retirement, and the CEO never terminated the retirement agreement. As soon as the conditions specified in her retirement letter were met, she was no longer a member of the Supreme Court. As evidence of this, her successor was sworn in as an Associate Justice. Under Title 28, Part 1, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1 of the United States Code, the number of Supreme Court Justices is fixed at 9, so if she was still an active justice, the act of swearing in Alito would have been illegal. Further action by O'Connor was not required. Further evidence can be found in the hundreds of news reports stating that O'Connor has retired. In fact, she's starting a new job tomorrow, something that would be frowned upon by a sitting justice. Gentgeen 19:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
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- FYI: Per policy, I am responding to to Gentgeen's tone on his talk page, not here. I will respond to his arguments here at a time of my choosing. Until then, interested parties may wish to read the related discussion in the archive. JonathanFreed 02:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
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- From the beginning, my primary concern has been about what constitutes verification and whether Wikipedia should have stated that O'Connor was retired before her retirement could be verified, and not whether O'Connor was-- for all practical purposes-- retired as of January 31, 2006. Significantly, Wikipedia's policy regarding verifiability has changed since my original edits; it now includes the statement that "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth".
- Regardless of the policy version and as I've stated before, O'Connor's letter of July 1, 2005 is merely a 'statement of intent' and therefore does not constitute verification that O'Connor was actually retired as of Alito's confirmation.
- Likewise, O'Connor's committment to start a new teaching job at the University of Arizona in what was the future was not verification that O'Connor was retired as of Gentgeen's post (above).
- Alito's swearing-in and 28 USC 1 is also not verification that O'Connor is retired because they do not prevent O'Connor from continuing S.C. work as long as no more than nine justices vote in any one case. Though that seems unlikely, it could happen in a case where a justice recuses him or herself. Interestingly, CNN has reported that O'Connor is "maintaining a small office in the [Supreme Court's] building ... and she will also have a law clerk at her disposal." Also, the Federal Judicial Center[1] says that she is in "senior status"[2], which presumably means she is still an Associate Justice, albeit a "senior" Associate Justice.
- Gentgeen also cited "hundreds of news reports" in his 19:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC) post as verification that O'Connor has retired. Under the old verifiability policy, I did not consider those to be appropriate verification because those statements could not have been based on anything but inferences regarding O'Connor's retirement. Why not? One reason is that O'Connor "offered no farewell speech or public statement"[3], and we therefore had no way of verifying the truth of those news reports. For verification, we needed to wait for an explicit statement from O'Connor that yes, she was retired, or wait for implicit verification, for example, her consistent absence from Court proceedings or her lack of objection to being knowingly-characterized as a retired and/or former member of the Court.
- Under the new verifiability policy, I agree that the "hundreds of news reports" that stated that O'Connor has retired are verification that O'Connor has indeed retired, as long as the news reports are from reliable sources. However, we should be mindful that even usually-reliable sources get stories wrong.
- So, Gentgeen: what specifically in my previous edits did you disagree with? I assume, in good faith, that you did not mean to say that "I" (in general) was wrong, and instead you had something specific in mind. JonathanFreed | Talk | 07:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Is It True?
Is it true that O'Connor told Ginsburg to "shut up and be quiet" when she spoke out of turn?
No. I've read substantially all the literature on relations between the Justices and all indications are that Justices O'Connor and Ginsburg always got along well. If anything like this had happened, it would be discussed somewhere. Did you have a specific source in mind? Newyorkbrad 04:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] What happened to the photo?
what happened to the photo that was at the beginning of this article? i know it was deleted but any reason why? i'm going to put it back until there's a definitive reason. Kiwidude 00:43, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "This is terrible"?
Did she really say "This is terrible" on election night 2000? [4] [5] Since she didnt resign for another 5-6 years it kind of cast some doubt on it, yes? Ewlyahoocom 21:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
- I don't know about that. In Edward Lazarus' book Closed Chambers it it said that Justice Kennedy was the Justice who most wanted to take jurisdiction over the case. In fact, Lazarus says that Kennedy is the author of the per curiam opinion of Bush v. Gore.<<Coburn_Pharr>> 12:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I am doing a report on Mrs. Sandra Day O'Conner for my american history class..... Thank You....
[edit] Justice O'Connor and senior status
I realize that FJC says that O'Connor is on senior status, but I think that is unsupportable for reasons given here. Senior status and retirement are different; senior status is defined by statute, and includes certain duties and responsibilities that O'Connor does not (to my knowledge) undertake. Nor does her resignation letter give any reason to assume that she retired under the auspices of §371(b) rather than §371(a). Simon Dodd 15:33, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you for referring us to the discussion at the Supreme Court article. Everybody, if you have anything to say about this subject, please comment there, so that all of the discussion will appear in one place. --JonathanFreed | Talk | 05:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Republican or Democrat?
I can't tell...what is she?
Republican. Newyorkbrad 04:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
-both
umm.........
She was nominated by Reagan, a Republican, but she's a moderate Republican. She has gone the other way in some cases. --Nishkid64 22:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
- She was a Republican when she served in the Arizona State Legislature and has always been enrolled as a Republican. Her voting record as a Justice, whatever one might think of it, doesn't change that. Newyorkbrad 23:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
- Is her political party all that relevant? Aside from the typical rule that Justices typically seek to have their replacements chosen by presidents of the same political party that appointed them, we don't typically speak of Republican Justices or Democrat Justices. It's not as if we speak of a political party having control over the Court in the same way that we speak of a political party having control over Congress or the Presidency. ---Axios023 03:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] When did she die?
when?!?!?!? please answer.
Uhh...she didn't die. Maybe you've mistaken her with William Rehnquist? --Nishkid64 22:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Nope -- not dead yet. "Senior status" is the technical legal term for when a federal judge retires. ---Axios023 03:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Prosecutor, not District Attorney
Sandra Day O'Connor was never a District Attorney, so that category does not apply here. She was a prosecutor, however, so that category does apply. The two are not one and the same.
- Um... "prosecutor" is a generic term for a lawyer that represents the government in criminal cases. "District attorney" is the term some jurisdictions (not Arizona) use for the office of prosecutor; frequently this person is elected. "District attorney" can also refer to anyone who works for the elected official.
- In any event, shouldn't someone verify that she actually worked as a prosecutor before putting her in the wikicategory? As the story goes, the only job she could get as a graduate of Stanford Law School in the 1950s was as a secretary in the San Mateo County District Attorney's office. If this is the source of the wikicategorization, then she doesn't qualify as a prosecutor because she didn't work there as a lawyer. ---Axios023 05:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] honorary doctorates
In addition to the honorary degrees listed, she received an honorary doctor of laws from The George Washington University Law School during a graduation ceremony sometime in May 2003 (I was there). There may be others - somebody might want to do some research and comprehensively list them. -VJ 20:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
