Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy.
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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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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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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
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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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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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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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As a citizen, you need to know how to be a part of it, how to express yourself - and not just by voting.
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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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Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.
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I don't know that there are any short cuts to doing a good job.
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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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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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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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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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Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.
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Commitment to the rule of law provides a basic assurance that people can know what to expect whether what they do is popular or unpopular at the time.
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The Constitution does not protect the sovereignty of States for the benefit of the States or state governments as abstract political entities, or even for the benefit of the public officials governing the States. To the contrary, the Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals.
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The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.
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I didn't want to be out of order answering any questions.
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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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What was a problem was the excessive amount of media attention to the appointment of the first woman and everything she did. Everywhere that Sandra went, the press was sure to go. And that got tiresome; it was stressful.
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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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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.