Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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Historically, it took a long time before the court took any women law clerks. Finally, it did, but the numbers have never matched very effectively the percentages of law graduates out of graduating classes. We have far more than we ever did before and it's continued to grow, but it isn't a nice match yet.
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Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.
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I finally gave up my little law practice and stayed home for about three years. You have to do what you can to keep the family going. But I wanted to get back to work. So I got another babysitter and went to work as an Assistant Attorney General.
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I think it's inevitable that some of the court's decisions will be found by a segment of the public to be not the right decision or subject to criticism.
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I loved my husband very much, and it was heartbreaking to have him develop Alzheimer's disease, and to stand by and watch him decline in his ability to take care of himself.
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The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.
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A state of war is not a blank check... when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.
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There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.
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Each justice hires their own clerks, and applications are made individually to the justices. It isn't a group decision.
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My concerns through the years increased about the concerns of an independent judiciary and how we maintain it. Certainly in the states. I'm a product of state government in my own state of Arizona. And it seemed to me that the popular election of judges was creating major problems in many states, and we had improved the system in Arizona. And I thought the nation ought to at least rethink how we select our nation's trial judges in the states.
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Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.
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A fundamental premise of American democratic theory is that government exists to serve the people. ... Public records are one portal through which the people observe their government, ensuring its accountability, integrity, and equity while minimizing sovereign mischief and malfeasance
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The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.
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Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.
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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
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Occasionally we have to interpret an international treaty - one, perhaps, affecting airlines and liability for injury to passengers or damage to goods. Then, of course, we have to look to the precedents of other member nations in resolving issues.
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Government endorsement . . . of religion . . . sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.
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Be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination, if you always strive for excellence, you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live.
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And I went off to Stanford, I was pretty young and pretty naive. And I had a professor I really loved, who was himself a lawyer.
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In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.
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We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something.
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I didn't want to be out of order answering any questions.
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We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.
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If parents instill a sense of civic-mindedness - and there is no better way to do that than by example - their children will probably follow.