Sandra Day O'Connor: Teaching civics

Charleston students got a civics lesson Thursday from the first woman to serve at the highest level of the judicial branch of the federal government.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor lamented the lack of civics knowledge among Americans, and she encouraged local students to learn about the way government works so they can understand how it affects them and how they can effect change.

She used an example of a case in which students and their parents appealed one state's law that set a curfew for minors. They contended it violated their constitutional rights, and they were successful in their court appeal. O'Connor told the crowd that that outcome didn't just happen. It took students' knowledge and participation to make it a reality, she said.

Too many states don't require civics or government courses as part of their high school diploma curriculum, she said, and she's spent the last three years of her retirement finding ways to help young people learn more about how government works.

She's launched a Web site to teach students about civics -- www.ourcourts.org -- and she promoted that initiative during a visit to Charleston Day School. Students from three other private schools and one public school were invited to hear O'Connor speak.

One of Charleston Day School's parents serves on a board of an international legal association that supports the "Our Courts" program with its foundation, and that connection helped the school land O'Connor's visit. O'Connor also attended events associated with the annual conference hosted by the South Carolina and North Carolina Women Lawyers Associations while in Charleston.

O'Connor told students about the professor who inspired her to apply to law school, the difficulty she had finding her first job because of her gender and how surprised she was to be nominated for the Supreme Court.

Students had the chance to ask O'Connor a half-dozen questions, and those questions ranged from her most memorable case to the most significant case decided in her lifetime.

In response to a question about the hardest case she was involved with, O'Connor quipped, "you're not going to be interested at all," before she began. The case involved an interpretation of federal income tax law, which she described as esoteric and troublesome. She said she didn't like dealing with that law because it was easy to make a mistake that wouldn't fit with the rest of the law when writing an opinion.

In this case, which she didn't cite by name, she was assigned to write the opinion without having a court majority agree on what the ruling should be. All of the justices eventually agreed to support her opinion, and no one suggested any changes.

She said her most memorable case was the one involving the 2000 presidential election of George W. Bush and questions about how votes had been counted in Florida. The case effectively resolved the election of Bush, and O'Connor said there was much fanfare and "hoopla" around that case.

"I'm glad that's over, to tell you the truth," she said.

As for the most significant case in her lifetime, O'Connor cited the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that declared separate but unequal unconstitutional and changed the way the country's schools operated.

Reach Diette Courrégé at 937-5546 or dcourrege@postandcourier.com.