The O'Connor Funeral - LER Bonus Content No. 8 (12.19.23)
The Legal Ethics Roundup - your Monday morning tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics.
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Welcome to your eighth installment of Bonus Content from the Legal Ethics Roundup. In addition to the free weekly roundup every Monday morning, I regularly post bonus content for paid subscribers. However, for this bonus post in memory of Sandra Day O’Connor, I removed the paywall. Please feel free to share it widely with others. (This is the second tribute to O’Connor here at the LER since her passing. For a behind-the-scenes glimpse into her confirmation and other memories, head over to Bonus Content No. 7.)
“I wanted, since I was the first, not to be the last.” — Sandra Day O’Connor, interview at the National Portrait Gallery, 2015
Greetings from Washington DC, where I just attended the funeral service for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It was a moving, emotional experience and an important moment in our nation’s history. In this post, I share some remarks from those who delivered tributes and some photos I captured, but it is well-worth your time to watch the full service, which is available now on C-SPAN.
O’Connor passed away on December 1, 2023. Yesterday her body lied in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court.
Today, a private funeral was held at 11 AM in the National Cathedral.
President Joe Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts were among the eulogists along with Justice O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor and her biographer Evan Thomas. Each combined memories, humor, and wisdom in their reflections.
President Biden opened by recounting O’Connor’s nomination as the first woman to join the Supreme Court. She took on a job previously held only by men, and in his words “could many times do it a hell of a lot, heck of a lot better, excuse my language” than a man.
Evan Thomas shared stories that appear in his biography First: Sandra Day O’Connor, and concluded: “How lucky we were that she was the first.”
Chief Justice Roberts joked that upon learning he had been nominated to replace her, O’Connor was pleased and said the “only problem is I didn’t wear a skirt.” Roberts matched her humor: “I replied, ‘everything is negotiable.’”
Jay O’Connor revealed lots of personal memories. For example, he told us his parents took disco dancing lessons in the 1970s (no wonder Justice O’Connor and her husband John were known in DC as such impressive dancers). And he disclosed her only grade below an ‘A’ during middle and high school years was in Civics. She earned a ‘B’ — but as Jay questioned, for all the work she did after leaving the bench to advance civics education, “do you think she has earned enough extra credit?” The answer was thunderous applause of approval filling the cathedral. Jay shared three maxims he learned from his mother growing up:
If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
Get it done.
Don’t hit your brother. (Treat everyone with kindness and respect.)
He closed by sharing a fourth maxim — words his mother wrote to her sons in a letter that was not to be read by them until the end of her life: “Our purpose in life is to help others along the way.”
An extraordinary homily was delivered by the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde. More than once she referenced the poetry of Mary Oliver in describing Sandra Day O’Connor’s “wild and precious life.” She recounted an event in 2008 at Stanford Law School honoring Professor Harry Rathburn when O’Connor read Rudyard Kipling’s “If.”
“Sandra Day O’Connor had no interest in being a man,” said Budde, but that did not make her “feel excluded from Kipling’s advice.” Instead, she “walked through doors previously reserved for men and kept them open for others to follow.” Budde also drew from the words of Pauli Murray, who graduated first in her class at Howard University Law school as the only woman, also the first African American to earn a J.S.D. from Yale Law School and the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. On O’Connor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, Murray remarked: “I’ve lived long enough to see many of my lost causes found.”
Jay O’Connor told us his mother had planned every aspect of her funeral service. The overwhelming themes were justice and hope, messages she delivered throughout her life which continue on even in her passing.
I had the privilege of witnessing this historic moment because of someone else who was a ‘first’ — my husband, Wallace B. Jefferson, was the first African American justice and first African American chief justice on the Supreme Court of Texas. He joined the court in 2001, after successfully arguing two cases before the United States Supreme Court, in both of which Justice O’Connor wrote the majority opinion — Board of Commissioners of Bryan County, Oklahoma v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397 (1997) and Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998). Over the years, they became friends.
After each retired from the bench, they worked together advocating for reforms to judicial elections and encouraging students to learn more about civics through O’Connor’s iCivics program. Students who graduate from Wallace B. Jefferson Middle School go on to Sandra Day O’Connor High School in San Antonio.
Unlike O’Connor, however, who was not the last woman on her court, Wallace is both the first and the last African American to serve on his court. Yes, you read that correctly. Texas — home to more Black Americans than any other state — has not had a Black justice for more than a decade.
Texas has a somewhat better record on diversity for women on its Supreme Court, though notably still has yet to appoint or elect an African American woman. The photo below includes eight of the women who have served on the Supreme Court of Texas along with Justice O’Connor seated in the front center. Only one of them currently sits on the court - Justice Debra Lehrmann. (Justices Jane Bland and Rebecca Aizpuru Huddle, not pictured, are also currently on the court.)
Another tidbit from Texas history — in 1925 an all-women Supreme Court of Texas presided over a case involving Woodmen of the World because all of the male justices were all disqualified as members of the fraternal organization. Governor Pat Neff appointed Ruth Brazzil, Hortense Ward, and Hattie Henenberg.
And, of course, Sandra Day O’Connor got her start in Texas, born in El Paso on March 26, 1930.
If you are inclined to make a gift to honor O’Connor’s life, her family has requested donations to iCivics, icivics.org.
I'll be back Monday with another Legal Ethics Roundup. Be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss it. Until then, thank you for reading and reflecting upon the memory of Sandra Day O’Connor.