Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Sandra Day O'Connor
Speaker 1: was the first woman to become a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 1: Although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has eclipsed her in fame,
Speaker 1: O'Connor was the most powerful woman to sit on the Court,
Speaker 1: as the swing vote for more than a quarter of
Speaker 1: a century. A new biography of O'Connor is called First,
Speaker 1: and the author, Evan Thomas, joins me now. Evan O'Connor
Speaker 1: was the swing vote on abortion, affirmative action, Bush v. Gore,
Speaker 1: to name a few. But she wasn't wedded to legal
Speaker 1: doctrines as such. She was more practical. Explain how she
Speaker 1: approached these cases. She was the last justice to have
Speaker 1: actually run for office, how to ask for votes and
Speaker 1: be in the real world of the state legislature and
Speaker 1: in state government, so that that informed her. You know,
Speaker 1: she was from the real world. But she was intensely practical,
Speaker 1: and she always asked herself, what is the impact of
Speaker 1: the decision? Not just you know, what's the doctrine that
Speaker 1: we're enforcing here, but how's this going to play out?
Speaker 1: This is important for her in the two biggies on
Speaker 1: affirmative action and abortion, because in abortion rights she she
Speaker 1: personally found abortion abborn, and yet she was the justice
Speaker 1: who kept abortion rights alive for twenty five years. Affirmative action,
Speaker 1: same thing. She had her doubts about affirmative action, but
Speaker 1: she saw a practical need for it, and she was
Speaker 1: a decisive vote on affirmative action. You write that even
Speaker 1: before the Casey decision, O'Connor told her brother, the abortion
Speaker 1: issue is wearing me down, explained the pressures on her. Well,
Speaker 1: they she's a Reagan appointee and the author of Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 1: the famous abortion decision in the nine thought that she
Speaker 1: was going to be the decisive vote against abortion. In fact,
Speaker 1: he wrote down in a piece of paper, she was
Speaker 1: just again against the abortion. So the expectation was that
Speaker 1: she would vote to reverse. She went the other way
Speaker 1: on that because she was she's a woman, for one thing,
Speaker 1: and and deeply sensitive to the issues that face other women.
Speaker 1: And although she found abortion, something she wouldn't do. She
Speaker 1: wasn't going to take it away from others. What she
Speaker 1: did do is find a compromise saying, yes, there can
Speaker 1: be some state restriction on abortion, but they can't put
Speaker 1: what they call an undue burden on women. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a vague standard cause a lot of litigation, a
Speaker 1: lot of fighting. People are still mad at her from
Speaker 1: both sides. She's trying to work through a very difficult
Speaker 1: societal problem slowly, carefully, piece by piece. She was well
Speaker 1: aware of her place in history as the first female
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice. How did that affect her work and
Speaker 1: her relationships with the other justices, Well, she knew everybody
Speaker 1: was watching. She used to say, it's good to be first,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to be the last. And she
Speaker 1: she had to perform. She was an intermediate state court judge.
Speaker 1: She was not by moddom standards. She wasn't qualified, but
Speaker 1: there were there just weren't any women Republican judges in
Speaker 1: She was super smart and she caught up fast, in fact,
Speaker 1: within three weeks, just as Pal was writing his family.
Speaker 1: She's brilliant, so she was able to catch up. But
Speaker 1: she knew everybody was watching. She also knew that the
Speaker 1: other some of the other justices did not like her,
Speaker 1: and she had to deal with that, and she did
Speaker 1: it by not picking stupid fights. This is really her
Speaker 1: mantra was, don't you know, stand up when you have to,
Speaker 1: but don't get into fights that are just ego Jeffs.
Speaker 1: And her writing style was not flowery, was also sort
Speaker 1: of practical into the point, was that deliberate? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she's actually a beautiful writer. If you read
Speaker 1: her memoir The Lazy b about growing up on this
Speaker 1: cattle ranch, an unbelievable story. She wrests like Wallace Stegner,
Speaker 1: But her opinions were dull, as dishwar They were intentionally boring.
Speaker 1: In fact, when her clerks who drafted the opinions put
Speaker 1: in anything rhetorical or kind of interesting, she take it out.
Speaker 1: She wanted to just just the facts man. And um,
Speaker 1: you write that she disliked her successor, Justice Samuel Alito,
Speaker 1: who is a reliable conservative vote. She said, the last
Speaker 1: thing you needed was a fifth Catholic man on the court.
Speaker 1: Did she think that he was going to destroy her legacy? Ye? Is?
Speaker 1: She worried on these issues that we've talked about on
Speaker 1: abortion rights and affirmative action. He was gonna go the
Speaker 1: other way. So she worried about that. She was not
Speaker 1: somebody ever to bad mouth others, really, and she was
Speaker 1: a little bit discreet about but a little but actually
Speaker 1: surprisingly critical of him, and uh didn't it didn't really
Speaker 1: warmed him personally, and worried that she would he would
Speaker 1: undo her legacy. He hasn't yet, but the court is
Speaker 1: still an evolution. One very sad part is that she
Speaker 1: left the court because her husband had developed Alzheimer's and
Speaker 1: then she regretted that. Explain what happened, well, she left.
Speaker 1: You know, her husband had sacrificed for her when they
Speaker 1: came to Washington. He gave up a big time law practice,
Speaker 1: and she he and then he got Alzheimer's and she
Speaker 1: cared from him as long as she could. She took him,
Speaker 1: took him to her chambers. He would sleep on a
Speaker 1: bench in her front office. But finally it was just
Speaker 1: too much, and so she said, I'm going to leave
Speaker 1: the court to take care of John, to take care
Speaker 1: of He sacrificed for me. Now I am going to
Speaker 1: sacrifice for him. But within six months of leaving the court,
Speaker 1: he could barely recognize her. So she was heartbroken by that,
Speaker 1: and she said it was a mistake to leave the court.
Speaker 1: What's her relationship with the other female justices? Now three more? Well,
Speaker 1: she paid the way Ruth Bader Ginsburg comes twelve years later.
Speaker 1: They were allies. They were not particularly intimate friends. They
Speaker 1: weren't They weren't cozy, but they certainly worked together. Uh.
Speaker 1: She's less of an activist that Justice Ginsburg. But they
Speaker 1: worked on women's rights together. In fact, on a on
Speaker 1: a big one of Virginia Military Academy. Uh. The institute
Speaker 1: case had been assigned to uh to O'Connor, she said, no,
Speaker 1: you should have this one. And Justice Ginsburg said, I
Speaker 1: loved her for that. You know, she wasn't a feminist
Speaker 1: per se, but she was the first many times in
Speaker 1: her life. How did she navigate those waters? It was tricky,
Speaker 1: you know. She was not at all strident. Uh, but
Speaker 1: she wasn't passive either. She knew how to stand up
Speaker 1: to people. She had one particular nemesis, a drunk in
Speaker 1: the Arizona legislature, and she called him on his drinking
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, if you were a man, I'd
Speaker 1: punch you in the nose, and she said, if you
Speaker 1: were a man, you could well beyond. Besides being the
Speaker 1: first woman on the Supreme Court, what else do you
Speaker 1: think she'll be remembered for. She really cared about as
Speaker 1: her legacy something called ice Civics, teaching kids civics through
Speaker 1: video games reaches about six million kids a year now.
Speaker 1: She said that was a more important legacy than the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. She really cared that. She thought Americans didn't
Speaker 1: know any civics. She really cares about civics and civics engagement.
Speaker 1: She wants to teach kids. That is a legacy. Really,
Speaker 1: she really cares about. We only have a minute here,
Speaker 1: but I remember she did come to Supreme Court arguments
Speaker 1: when one of her cases might have been at stake,
Speaker 1: one of her precedents. Yeah, she she wanted to be seen.
Speaker 1: You know. She was subtle, but she would say to
Speaker 1: other women, you know, be out there. Uh, put on
Speaker 1: a show, make them see you. You know, she could
Speaker 1: be aggressive when she had to be, but she could
Speaker 1: be very polite and careful and non confrontational. She knew
Speaker 1: when to be which one. She knew when to pick
Speaker 1: her fights and when to step back. Thank you so much. Evan.
Speaker 1: It's a great book. It's called First Biography of Sandra
Speaker 1: Day O'Connor, the first female justice on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso.
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