DOI: 10.1097/01.sap.0000177435.30847.ba
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PMID: 16106181
Issn Print: 0148-7043
Publication Date: 2005/09/01
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Excerpt
Justice O'Connor seems to be our kind of jurist anyway. Amid all of the commentary about her career, the feature that most stands out has been her pragmatic approach to decisions. What is a more surgical trait than that? And her consistent position for “choice” in women's health issues has been a byword for plastic surgeons for 2 decades of struggle over the availability of the breast implant.
With her background in the cowboy world of rural Arizona (isn't that a term they apply to surgeons?), Justice O'Connor was said to learn self-reliance where the work had to get done. “I don't know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job,” she has said. It was a trait she carried into every realm she entered, on the bench and off.
She didn't take up golf until midlife, but when she did, it was on her own terms. She hired a pro and obsessively hit bucket after bucket of balls before ever stepping onto the course. Her first actual round broke 90. “All her life, whatever she did,” said her younger brother, “...she just would do it to perfection. If you said, ‘the job is to wash dishes well,’ she would do it better than anyone else.”1 We suspect she will feel at home in Chicago with a specialty that views itself the same way.
Among the most laudatory praises of her work have been from her former law clerks whom she regarded as family. (She even referred to their children as grandclerks). Recognizing the need for balance in life, Justice O'Connor started yoga and aerobics sessions for women working at the Court. She would often gather up her clerks in the afternoon and head out to see the cherry blossoms or an exhibit at the National Gallery. Occasionally it was weekend field trips on horseback or rafting down the river. (Would that plastic surgery's Program Directors might take note.) She even cooked Saturday lunch for the clerks in preparation for oral arguments.
On the bench she was always a stickler for facts. By no means an ideologue, she was characteristically guided by a strain of empathy for those who were outside the power structure. As one who was raised without electricity or indoor plumbing, she knew first-hand the economic stratification of American life. Hard to pigeonhole in judicial philosophy, she became the unpredictable swing vote around which those innumerable 5–4 decisions revolved. As such, for the past quarter of a century she has been the most influential woman in America.
Justice O'Connor is variously described as engaging and lively with a dry sense of humor and a knack for telling stories. On September 24, we will be most eager to hear some of them.
