Sandra Day OConnor Quotes - Page 4

Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.

[G]overnment 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.

For students, understanding the separate and unique functions of each branch of government can help them understand how different kinds of government officials can help solve different kinds of problems.

I like to think that the court will continue to be held in high regard by the public. I think it should be.

Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.

I think people know very little, really, about the court, how it works and its history. And both of those things are important in our country, but they're not things that most citizens know much about.

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.

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.

I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

Historically courts in this country have been insulated. We do not look beyond our borders for precedents.

The No Child Left Behind Program was an incentive to the schools to get their kids up to snuff on math and science and reading.

I suspect that over time we will rely increasingly, or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues. [Doing so] may not only enrich our own country's decisions, I think it may create that all important good impression.

It is true that as you have children, there are a good many months when you don't want to be working full-time. I agree that that's an issue.

A state of war is not a blank check... when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.

What the framers of the Constitution tried to achieve when they wrote that Constitution back in the 1700s was an independent federal judiciary. They wanted federal judges to be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and to serve for good behavior.

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.

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

My concern was whether I could do the job of a justice well enough to convince the nation that my appointment was the right move.

My sense is that jurists from other nations around the world understand that our court occupies a very special place in the American system, and that the court is rather well regarded in comparison, perhaps, to their own.

being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us.

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.

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.

The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member - male or female. They were all kind and welcoming.

There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.