Guess what will?
What's that mango?
So you know, one thing I'm pretty terrible at is time management, right yep, Like I always have too many commitments to try to get too many things done and end up a little late on everything. But one of my heroes in this regard is Sandra Day O'Connor.
I can't say that I knew that she was known for her time management.
Yeah, she was just a force at making things happen.
Like one of my favorite examples is this one time when she was in the Arizona State Legislature and this was before she was on the Supreme Court, and it needed to pass its new budget before midnight, and everyone just assumed the thing was impossible, but O'Connor, she just insisted that they'd be done by six pm, and from her perspective, there was no other option because one of her sons was about to leave for summer camp and she promised to be home to bake the cookies in
time before he headed off.
Oh that's pretty great. So were they successful? Did they get it pushed through in time?
Yeah? Because she's amazing, Like she was just insanely diplomatic but also no nonsense and super efficient. I mean, the idea of adding unwilling sized degree and compromise feels like a force we could use right now. But the budget passed with plenty of time, and presumably Sandra's son went on to be the most popular kid at summer camp. But Santa Day O'Connor's life is a pretty amazing one, and that's what we're about to dive into.
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend mangesh Ha Ticketter and on the other side of the soundproof glass waving his homemade Scotus pennant. It's impressive. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone so fired up about the judicial branch.
Yeah, someone's been practicing his needle point.
Well. In this case, Tristan's enthusiasm is totally warranted, because today's show us about a legal legend who's truly worth celebrating, and that's Sandra Day O'Connor. She often cast the deciding vote on all kinds of deadlock political and social issues, and whether you agree with her politics or not, there's no denying the impact O'Connor has had not just on our legal institutions, but also on the roles women serve
within them. And as the first female justice, she showed the world exactly why women deserve a place on our nation's highest court.
That's right. So I've been fascinated with Sandra Day for a while, and as you know, I commissioned a story on her at Mental Floss because I firmly believe more people need to know her extraordinary story. Actually, I think if I remember this spot, I wanted to pitch a TV show on her called Sandra Day O'Connor Stripmall Attorney.
I don't know how that never happened.
I know, I mean notorious RVG gets all this attention, but Sandra also deserves to be a folk hero, and we'll get into all of that. But since you're bringing up her biggest claim to fame, I wanted to mention the acronym O'Connor came up with for her achievements. You know, she was appointed to be the first woman on the Supreme Court in nineteen eighty one by President Reagan. But rather than spell out the title all the time, O'Connor liked to abbreviate it to FWOTSC.
This kind of rolls off the telling. So was this really something she liked to go by.
Yeah, she chose it herself, but it's got a good backstory. So apparently The New York Times published an article in nineteen eighty three, and it lamented is no Washington name exempt from shorthand the chief Magistrate sometimes goes by potus, the nine men who interpret them, or often the Scotis, but the people who enact them are still for better or worse Congress.
I mean, I guess that's a moderately witty joke, right.
No, but Saturday O'Connor had her own problem with the article. In a letter to the editor, she wrote, according to the information available to me, and which I had assumed was generally available for over two years now, Scotus has not consisted of nine men. If you have any contradictory information, I would be grateful if you would forward it, as I'm sure the Potus, the Scotis, and the undersigned the FWOTSC would be most interested in seeing that.
I like that.
She schooled the New York Times and coined her own nickname in one fell swoop there.
Yeah, it's pretty great, But I'm guessing part of the reason she was so peeved by the article was that she'd already dealt with so many public slights by that point.
Well what do you mean by that?
Well, O'Connor received a staggering sixty thousand letters during her first year on the job, and while most of the correspondence was positive, she got a good amount of hate mail. Like the negative letters were generally baseless enough to brush off, and it was stuff like back to your kitchen and home, female, this is a job for men, and only he can
make the rough decisions. Just such a terrible note. Another person wrote in and said being a female justice was better suited for Marxist related feminists rather than a wife and a mother who respects the psychological component of a family. I mean, the letters just poured in.
Good Lord, I mean, I could see why she would have bristled at the time story, and especially after having to sit through two years of this stuff.
Exactly, even though she had been handpicked by the President and was unanimously conform by the Senate, there was still this large chunk of the population that couldn't stand the thought of a woman being in such a powerful position, and actually how she was picked by Reagan was pretty fascinating. We should talk a little about that in a bit.
Well, definitely, but you know, thankfully O'Connor was made of much sterner stuff than her detractors, and her childhood upbringing all but assured that.
Yeah. So, for those who don't know, sandur Day was born and raised on her family's enormous cattle ranch. This was on the New Mexico Arizona border, and it's called the Lazy Bee Ranch. It's actually named after a bit of rancher LINGO. I didn't realize this before, but apparently when a letter used on the cattle brand is applied in a crooked manner, so that the letters on its side, in this case the bee, it's said to be lazy.
Oh. I never knew that. I don't know how both of us admits that, because we're cattle ranchers.
Right, yeah, yeah, big time cattle aficionados. But the LazyB was actually this massive piece of land. It was one hundred and sixty thousand acres or roughly two hundred and fifty square miles. And because I know you prefer to like get your measurements and really to Rhode Island. Yeah, it did the math, and the rash breaks down to about one fifth the size of Rhode Island.
I really appreciate you doing the math for me on that one. But you know, we were talking about this a little earlier, and just because the Day family had so much land, that doesn't mean they were living well. In fact, the property, which had been passed down for a couple of generations, it really wasn't worth all that much when Sanders dad inherited it. It was a one bedroom house that they lived in there, didn't have electricity,
didn't have running water. They're basically scraping together enough income just to survive in this constant struggle there. But the family had an unrelenting work ethic, so they'd repair wells and raise cattle for slaughter. And the really crazy thing is that with all that acreage and about a thousand head of cattle to look after, the Day family kept
this ridiculously tiny staff on hand to oversee it. I think there were just like five full time employees year round, and another few that came on for the big roundup, so that happened each spring and fall. So it was a really really small crew, I know, for a lot of land, which is probably why say had to help out so much herself. I mean, she grew up around literal cowboys, and at a young age she was branding cattle, driving tractors, and even warding off coyotes with her trusty
twenty two caliber rifle. I mean, this is exactly the childhood that you expect from any Supreme Court justice.
I know, well not at all, but the hardscrabvel lifestyle did teach Sandra all kinds of important life lessons. For example, there was one ranch hand in particular who she credits for some of the early lessons in fairness and empathy. His name was Raphael Estrada, and he's got an amazing story too. He was this illiterate Mexican American who'd worked for the family his whole life, and he grew so adept at ranching that he could actually identify almost every
cow on the ranch just by a look. But Sandra later wrote of him, he knew he was very good at what he did, and he demanded a high standard from those around him, but he was dealt with what many would say was a poor hand in life. He was small, crippled, fatherless, a minority race in his birthland, but he played the he was dealt like a master from rostas we learned the contentment of doing the best you can with what you have.
Yeah, and you know, you hear a lot about her practicality on the bench coming from her lessons that she learned back on the farm, and it was really a deep part of who she was. But I know her father also imparted some tough wisdom in those early years. You know, there's that great story I think we've talked about this before where she learned, you know, how to change a tire when she got a flat.
Yeah, you should tell the listeners because it's such a great story and it's pretty cinematic.
Right. So this was back when Sandra was just about fifteen, I think, and this was in nineteen forty five. So she'd offered to bring lunch to her father and his ranchands. They were busy branding cattle on the far end of the property, so early that hot summer morning, she heads out in their old Chevy pickup and heads out to the desert by herself. She's cruising along this remote dirt road and she suddenly gets a flat tire. Now, she's never changed a flat before, but she understands the basics.
So she spends the next hour stranded in the heat. She figures out how to the car up, starts wrestling with the rusty lugnuts, but the things won't budge. She starts to panic for a minute because it's almost lunchtime and everybody is counting on her to get there with the food. Then she fits the wrench around each of the nuts and starts jumping on it with all her weight until finally the rust gives way and she manages to get the tire changed.
So I mean, it sounds like the success story and this lesson in perseverance.
Exactly, and that's no doubt how Sander viewed it. In fact, she proudly explained the whole story when she finally made it to where the crew was working. You know, she'd gotten up early that morning but then got stranded in the middle of nowhere with this flat tire, bunch of rusted lug nuts, but which she'd arrived late, well after lunchtime. So her father didn't share any of her sense of victory. He just kind of balled her out, saying, you should
have started a lot earlier. You need to expect anything out there.
Which he really takes to heart.
Right Well, Yes, Sander wrote of the experience later on, She said, I had expected a word of praise for changing the tire, But to the contrary I realized is that the only thing was expected an on time lunch, no excuses accepted.
And that story sounds like a folksy story a politician would sell you, but you can actually see how it made her work twice as hard and be prepared for any situation. I know that when ken Starr went to vetter for the Supreme Court, this was when she was just a nominee. He mentioned that it was like she'd
been preparing for the Supreme Court all her life. At the time, people assumed Sandra was this lightweight and that she was only on the list because Reagan had made this campaign promise that he'd add a woman to the Supreme Court if he had the chance. But when Star met her and she really did have this non traditional path to the Supreme Court, he was floored by her depth of knowledge. But let's get back to the ranch.
While her dad was tough, he clearly had this softer side as well, and he and Sandra's mother recognized how smart she was and knew that she couldn't get the formal education she deserved on the ranch. I mean, she kind of always lived in two worlds. There's a great line in that mental Flaw story where her days could start with her reading Nancy drew lying on her, and with her having to mercy kill a calf. It's sort
of incredible. But her double life grew even more extreme when her parents sent her to live with her grandmother in El Paso, Texas, and that's where she attended this all girls private school for her primary education. It gave her this view into high society and it kind of put a new polish on her. She learned how to dress and charm people and all these various social graces in addition to giving her much better access to studies.
But then, just a year after the tire incident, Sandra was allowed to skip two grades and go straight to Stanford University at the age of sixteen.
Wow. I mean again, it just points to how bright she is. I feel like the college bit of her story does get glossed over sometimes. I was looking a little bit deeper into it in our research here and it's amazing. I mean, there's these two incredibly formative things that happened to her while she's there at Stanford. Now, the first was when she met a law professor named Harry Rathman. And he was one of those professors who would hold these informal gatherings at his home every Sunday.
He invites students to talk about the meaning of life and all these other high minded matters. You might remember that Sandra had enrolled as an econ major. I didn't, but it was her encounters with Rathmann that convinced her to change course. The professor would make these forceful arguments about civic duty and the satisfaction that comes from serving
your community. And for Sandra, who'd grown up as this independent cowgirl some like twenty five miles from her closest neighbor, it really did strike a chord with her, so much so that she decided to go to law school and devote her life to public service.
I mean, it always comes down to a great professor, right, Yeah. But okay, so what's the other life changing thing that happens while Sander's in college.
Well after she graduated at the age of twenty Sandra started attending Stanford Law School, which is actually where she met the love of her life and future husband, and that was John J. O'Connor, and their courtship story is
actually pretty cute, so I'm gonna share it here. So John was a fellow law student and he and Sander were assigned a project to work on together, and they weren't quite finished when the library was closing up one night, so John suggested they finish their work over a beer at a little place he knew just down the road. And apparently they really hit it off there, because you know, not only did they do the same thing the next night, they actually went out for a solid forty nights in a row.
I never heard that. Did she ever take him home to the ranch?
Oh? She did, and it was just as awkward as you might expect. So the first time John came to meet Sandra's parents, her father was actually branding some calves, so they went down to the corral so John could say hello to him. And now the thing to know is that when male calves are branded, the ranchers generally castrate them as well.
Oh no, so I think I know where this is going.
I'm willing to bet that you do not know where this is going. In fact, I'm just gonna let Sandra tell the story herself. So, according to her, when she and John arrived, quote, my father put a few testicles on some bailing wire and put them in a branding fire, and he said, I'll just fix a few of these for you, John, And John, to his credit, took the things off the wire, popped him in his mouth and said, very good, mister day, very good.
Oh and no, sauce, I.
Would be so far down the street by that. But that is real love. And you know, Sandra obviously knew John was a keeper at that point, so it's really no surprise that they got married soon after. And that was in nineteen fifty two, which happened to be the same year they graduated from law school.
All right, well, what do you say we move off the ranch and talk about Sandra's early law career.
That sounds great, but first let's take a quick break. You're listening to part Time Genius and we're talking about the life and times of Sandra Day O'Connor. All right, mango, so I know we're leaving the Lazy b ranch behind, but before we do that, I wanted to share one last reflection on it from the woman herself, and this is from a part in her memoir where she's recounting what it was like to join her father and the
ranch crew on these roundups. You know, they had to steer cattle sleeping out on the open range alongside a bunch of cowboys. So Sander writes, it had been an all male domain. Changing it to accommodate a female was probably my first initiation into joining an all men's club,
something I did more than once in my life. After the cowboys understood that a girl could hold up her end, it was much easier for my sister, my niece, and the other girls and young women who followed to be accepted in that rough and tumble world.
Yeah, it's amazing to think she was really breaking down barriers for women from the beginning. And it's definitely true what she says about having to fight her way into the boys clubs. I mean, Sandra was one of the top students in her class at law school, and by the way, she actually ranked third in her class, with the top spot going to another future Scotus member, William Rehnquist. But when she graduated, not a single law firm was
willing to hire her. In fact, when she did finally land an interview with a California law firm, it was only because of a favor of friend's father had given her.
And is that how she got her first job as a lawyer.
No, that's not even the case. So when she went to la for the interview, the firm made it clear that they'd never hired a female lawyer before and they didn't intend to start, And instead they asked her how well she could type and offered to bring her on as a legal secretary.
No way. Yeah, it's really crazy to think about how recent a change it is to have women practicing law. It only started happening in the US around World War Two, like so many other fields, where women started taking these jobs because the men were overseas. But even then the change was exceedingly slow. Even by the time Sandra was looking for work in the early nineteen fifties, only three
percent of the country's lawyers were women. The number has risen a great deal since then, obviously thanks in no small part, of course, to Sandra, but even now only thirty three percent of the lawyers are female.
Which is staggering right, like I would imagine it was much higher. But let's get back to Sandra's job hunt. So the turning point came when she caught wind of a firm in San Mateo that actually had a female lawyer on staff. So she went to the office and asked for a job, but the county attorney there said they didn't have the budget for a new hire or
even a place for her to work. But Sandra knew this was the only place where she'd be able to get a foot in the door, so she actually convinced the firm to take her on by agreeing to work for free and to share desk space with the secretary.
I mean, you've got to admire her passion, but what a raw deal.
Yeah, and things didn't really improve on the career front for a while, so after marrying John, they moved to Phoenix, where Sandra opened a little shop. It was this walk in practice. It was in the Strip mall. As I mentioned before, it was sort of like a better call Saul situation, where people would wander in to ask off end questions about I don't know, like the legality of something their landlord did, or how to beat a speeding ticket.
And it's really kind of upsetting when you think about, like, she's this incredible legal mind, third in her class. She edits the law review at Stanford. You know, she keeps up with this for a few years, all while getting more and more involved with local Republican politics.
Yeah, and it's around this time that Sandra actually steps away from her practice for I think it was like five or six years a stay at home mom for her three boys. And I'd say stay at home, but honestly, Sanders stayed so busy with all these various volunteer, civic and community groups that it's pretty much a misnomer to say stay at home. I mean, listen to the rap sheet that I was looking at here, it says O'Connor served on the Governor's Committee on Marriage and Family, as
an administrative assistant at the Arizona State Hospital. She volunteered at a school for minorities. She wrote test questions for the Arizona Bar Exam, acted as an advisor to the Salvation Army.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like she did too much staying at home, not at all. And after the kids were a little older, she went right back to work in earnest. At first, she was a part time assistant for the attorney general because no private firm was willing to hire
her yet. But then the Arizona governor was so impressed with her work that he appointed her to a vacant seat in the state Senate, and the next year, in nineteen seventy, Sandra formally won the seat, and just a few months later, her fellow Republicans voted her in as America's first female state majority leader.
Oh, it's pretty amazing. Well, she's got all kinds of first under her belt when you look at the list, As you know, I'm always so impressed by the way she was able to apply experience, you know, as a mother and a homemaker to this role as a stateswoman. Really, actually, I'm going to quote the mental flaw story you mentioned earlier, and this is from Lizzie Jacob's riding. O'Connor knew what
she wanted to remove sexism from the books. She searched for laws biased against women and quietly worked to change them. The Republicans had a razor thin majority, negotiations were essential. She regularly hosted parties at her Adobe house, inviting leaders from all sides to eat homemade burritos, not to broke her deals, but to get to know one another. Her cooking was legendary, but it worked. She was all business.
I'd forgotten that, and I want to eat homemade burritos at Sanders House too, And you're right. It's amazing how she was able to balance all these different responsibilities without compromise. And actually that pretty much takes us up to the time when President Reagan tapped her to replace the retiring Justice Stewart.
Yeah, she was serving on the Arizona State Court of Appeals when she was invited to Washington to meet the president back in nineteen eighty one, and she really didn't want to go, but the two hit it off off right away. They were swapping stories about horse riding and the Western way of life. And as we've talked about before, Reagan had won the woman's vote by campaigning on this promise that he would nominate a woman to the Supreme Court, and in Sandra, he found the perfect candidate.
So I know there's a lot of Reagan worship for a bunch of different reasons, but one of the things I found fascinating and hearing this story was that his advisors were actively telling him he didn't have to keep his promise, like there was so much swirling at the time politically. This was even the year that he was shot in that assassination attempt, and his advisors claimed just having a woman on the list was enough to you know, appease his voters. But to Reagan's credit, he kept his word.
And of course conservatives like Philis Schaffey and Jerry Folwell they started this write in to protest the nomination. But once she was sworn in, the then fifty one year old O'Connor set herself apart not only by her gender and relative youth, but also with this level headed approach to cases. As one of her cleric saw, ron Ell
Anderson Jones later recalled, quote eternally a ranch girl. She wanted solutions that really worked and had little patience for esoteric theory that had no grounding in reality.
Well, and that's something we see from the start of her time on the bench, you know. For example, the Supreme Court heard a case in nineteen eighty two called Mississippi University for Women Versus Hogan. This was a case where a male student, Hogan was suing because he'd been denied admission to an all female nursing school, and O'Connor actually sided with the student, believing that the gender based
enrollment policy was invalid. She said, because it, you know, it tends to perpetuate the stereotype view of nursing as this exclusively women's job. And so rather than siding with the women of the college in the short term, O'Connor was taking a practical approach and think about helping them
break down the stigma that surrounded this nursing profession. And not only that, O'Connor later alluded to the ruling as a way to potentially boost the pay rates, you know, for all these nurses and thinking about doing so with this influx of male nurses. That was, you know, kind of turning the gender wage gap to the women's advantage as much as possible.
Yeah, it's pretty clever, and we should definitely talk more about some of her work on the bench. You know, she was there for twenty plus years, not to mention the legacy she left behind after retiring. But first, how about we take a quick break.
All right, mango, it's quiz time.
Now.
We've got a listener on the line, a regular listener of Part Time Genius, who actually wrote to us telling us about her love of sloths after we did a nine things on sloths, and she's on the line with us right now. Katie Coile, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
Hi guys, happy to be here.
All right, Katie, you have to tell us why do you love sloths so much? And was there anything that we missed in that episode that you feel like our listeners need to know?
You know, I think I love slots specifically because Charles Darwin and Survival of the Fit should have gotten them already, but they're still kicking and they are a relic of evolution. And once you tell people you love slops, you get slap gifts for every possible holiday. So I get a little too deep in to give up now, you know.
I feel like that's true because we've known a couple of sloth lovers and are actually especially at Mental Floss, and it did feel like anytime a special occasion came around, everyone was giving them sloth gifts.
It makes me easier to shop for, so I'm really helping everyone.
Wow, that's so thoughtful of you. And we decided to have Katie on for today's quiz because she has a very special connection to the Supreme Court. Katie, tell us what that is.
Ruth Vader Ginsberg and I are both sorority sisters. We're very good friends. Obviously.
Well that's awesome. Well, let's get started with the quiz. Number one. Justice Thirgood Marshall was addicted to Days of Our Lives and would often call a recess set one PM to watch his stories. Supreme or not Supreme?
Please let that be supreme?
It is? His wife claimed he would watch anything on TV, from wrestling to news to talk shows, but he especially loved Days of Our Lives.
One for one question number two. The Justices enjoy celebrating each other's birthdays, and for years, Ruth Bader Ginsberg's husband, Martin, made all the cakes for everyone's birthday. Supreme or not Supreme?
Supreme?
Yeah, that's true. Marty's fondness for the kitchen began shortly after RVG cooked her first meal for him.
Apparently you're doing pretty well so far, Katie. All right, let's see question number three. Since nineteen ninety six, lawyers who argue a case before the Supreme Court get a special keepsake, a Supreme Court sleep mask that reads justice is blind. Supreme or not supreme?
That sounds a little too weird. I'm going to say not supreme.
You're right. They don't get a sleep mask, but each council does get two white feather quill pens for their effort.
All right, good job, Okay, two left, number four. There's an image of Mohammed on the side of the Supreme Court. Supreme or not supreme?
You know, despite separation of church and state. I feel like that might be supreme for whatever reason.
You' doing. Amazing, Katie, It's true. While depictions of Mohammad are rare, the prophet is depicted in a relief with other lawmakers and icons of justice, including Solomon, Moses, Confucius, and HAMMARAVII.
All right, let's see if we can bring it home with the final question and go five for five. Here we go. Justice Renquist loved the musical West Side Story so much that he often wore a tiny shark pin on his robes. Supreme or not supreme.
As much as I want that to be true, I'm going to say that's not supreme.
Oh my gosh, Katie, you went five for five. You're absolutely right. He wasn't a West side story fan that we know, but he was a huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and he actually stitched gold stripes on his robe sleeves as a tribute to it. And he was also a notoriously bad dresser.
Wow. All right, so how did how did Katie do today? Mango?
She ran the table and went five for five, which gets her the big prize, an official PTG Certificate of Genius, and a part time Genius T shirt.
Congrasts, Katie, that's wonderful. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Katie.
Thank you?
Okay, Mango.
So what else do you want to cover from O'Connor's time on the Supreme Court?
Well, I was always struck by the times when she seemed to go her own way on what are typically partisan issues. I mean, don't get me wrong. O'Connor was a moderate conservative, and she tended to vote as such for the most part, but she also had a reputation for caring more about how legal matters would affect individuals than she did for towing the party line or even
rigidly adhering to legal president. For instance, O'Connor bucked conservative expectations in nineteen ninety two, and this is when the court had to decide whether it was constitutional to require women to notify their spouses before getting an abortion, and in her written opinion, O'Connor called the measure quote repugnant to our present understanding of marriage and of the nature
of the rights secured by the Constitution. Women do not lose the constitutionally protected liberty when they marry.
Yeah, I remember that. And she actually cast the deciding vote to uphold row, if you remember, and drew a lot of iron from her Republican colleagues.
Actually, yeah, O'Connor was responsible for the determining vote of a lot of five to four decisions, and this gave her a reputation as a swing vote, since you really couldn't predict where she'd come down on some of the more divisive issues. But she really hated that term.
Yeah, it's something I didn't remember, but found that interesting in doing the research for the episode. But she never liked being called a swing vote because she thought implied that maybe she liked principles and was kind of flighty or fickle in the way she made her decisions. And so she was both praised and criticized for casting these really narrow opinions, And she wasn't as interested in writing law.
She wasn't deciding a case. So she actually listened case by case, and people who have argued in front of her said they really couldn't tell which way she would go just because she she truly took each case as a learning activity.
Well, I mean, agree with him or not. She definitely had principles and I mean just look at some of her opinions during the George W. Bush administration. In two thousand, she cast the deciding vote that ended the Florida recount for the contested presidential race. But then in two thousand and four, she went against the man she helped elect
when she faced the Hamdi versus Rumsfeld case. And this was the one where the court was tasked with deciding whether an American citizen is still entitled a due process after being named an enemy combandant by the president.
So O'Connor in this one, she voted in favor of due process right.
Yeah, And in her opinions, she reminded her party that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation citizens.
Yeah. And you know, we've talked a good bit today about O'Connor's rough and tumble upbringing and her determination in the face of unfair treatment. But I did want to touch a little bit on some of her softer, more playful qualities, because you know, it's the side of Supreme Court justices that we don't really see that much of, honestly.
Sure, So what kind of stuff are you thinking of?
Well? I kind of like that even though she had the same work ethic as her father, she still took the time to relax a little bit. You know. For instance, she was an avid tennis player, so for most of the year she was on the bench, she would plan this week long vacation in July where she and seven of her friends from Arizona. They dubbed themselves the Mobile Party Unit. They'd get together to play tennis and golf, as well as go horseback riding even whitewater rafting together.
I love that. Another story I like is how O'Connor commandeer the Supreme Court's basketball court so she could hold these women only yoga and aerobics classes.
Wait, I think we need to pause for a seconds. So there's a Supreme Court there, there's a basketball court at the Supreme Court.
Yeah, it's called the highest court in the land and it's located on the fifth floor of the Supreme Court building.
I get it.
It used to be just this place for old legal journals like that's where these the story. But in the nineteen forties some courthouse workers converted into a workout area, and then it was later turned into this full basketball court. And apparently O'Connor didn't want to give up the exercise routine she'd gotten used to in Arizona, and once she found out that other women there in the building wanted a place to work out as well, she booked the gym and asked the YWCA to send over an instructor
to help them start up a class. I mean, the class really took off and they started meeting daily and they even got custom printed T shirts that read women work out at the Supreme Court. Isn't that awesome?
I loeve is she co opted what must have been a pretty male dominated space before she came onto the scene there though, it just feels fitting seeing who she is it Actually it also reminds me of an interview I read about O'Connor where there was no women's bathroom at the Supreme Court when she first arrived, and the closest one was way down this hallway, far from the actual courtroom. So once again, in trough O'Connor fashion, she just took over the men's restroom near her chambers.
Yeah. I mean, it's crazy to think about, right, but I guess it was close to two hundred years before the Supreme Court finally got a female justice, so it wasn't something they'd ever planned for.
Yeah, and it just underscores how much of a trailblazer O'Connor really was. I mean, she once remarked, it's all right to be the first to do something, but I certainly didn't want to be the last woman on the Supreme Court, and of course, thankfully she wasn't. And you know, the current sitting Supreme Court actually includes three women. Of course, there's Ruth Bader Ginsburg Soda Soda Mayor and Elena Kagan And O'Connor herself retired back in two thousand and five.
As you may remember, she was caring for her husband, John, who'd been suffering for a while from Alzheimer's.
Yeah, which, you know, it seems totally in keeping with the high value she's always placed on family, although she did continue to juggle projects well into her retirement. In two thousand and six, she started this free online civics education program. It's called is Civics. It's for middle schoolers. It basically allows students to research and argue actual cases and to take part in these mockups of realistic government situations.
And according to O'Connor, this venture to make learning civics fun is one of the most important things she's ever done.
And so how did she do that?
Well, she turned it into a video game. Oh really, yeah, So here's how she explained the idea to parade. What we know is that kids like to play games on the computer. So I set up an advisory group of fabulous teachers to tell me what we needed to focus on in a civics course, and then we had games designed that focus on those parameters. Young people spend an average of forty hours a week in front of a screen. One or two hours a week would do to teach
them civics and it seems to be working. I mean, Isivic is actually used by educators in all fifty states and about five million students use it each year.
That's pretty awesome. Well, then after a lifetime of public service, it is inspiring that she still feels this drive to help spark the next generation's sense of civic duty. You know, given her track record, it's exactly what I would expect from her. And as she once put it, I'm not accustomed to sitting around and doing nothing, that's for sure.
And now, what do you say we follow her lead and keep ourselves busy with a good old fashioned fact.
Off, you know what, Mango, I say. This fact off is now in session.
So I'm not sure if you watched the Senate hearings with Justice Roberts, but it was a little frustrating from the outside because he refused to show any of his opinions and his claim was that he needed the details of the case before he could speak about anything. And this has kind of become a fairly common and smart
tactic for justices trying to be confirmed. But what's interesting is that Justice O'Connor actually used the same tactic during her hearings decades prior, and you could tell from her opinions that she really believed that she needed the details and that they truly mattered. But one of the lawyers who assisted her for that hearing was a young Justice Roberts.
Well, there's another thing I love about her judiciary hearing, and it she took the time to introduce her three sons to the chamber. She probably listed out where they'd gone to school, what they'd majored in, their hobbies and accomplishments, you know, like being a state swimming champ and skydiving, or being like the family writer. I mean, did all of these things she took the time to do. Isn't that pretty amazing?
I love that. So one thing I love is how playful she could be. So in two thousand and one she made a guest appearance at the Shakespeare Theater in DC where they put King Lear on trial and apparently her verdict was not mad all right?
Well, did you know that she had a pet bobcat in her youth. Apparently she tamed one on her ranch back home. That's nuts.
So there was a New York Times piece that said sander Dale O'Connor was the hardest judge to clerk for. And as you might guess, she wanted to know everything and she wanted to be fully able to defend any
side of any opinion she made. So she really worked her staff, but she also deliberated an extraordinary amount over who she chose, like she picked clerks from a wide range of universities and across the political spectrum, because she both wanted rigorous candidates, but she also wanted to be challenged in her thoughts as well.
Well. I did read on the other side of that, I guess you could say is that she would really close to her clerks. She'd organized these picnics to see the cherry blossoms, or host these jack o lantern carving parties, and even asked to see pictures and get updates on all of her grand clerks, as she called them.
So here's a story that's kind of sweet and heartbreaking. Santade O'Connor cut her career short to be with her husband, who had severe Alzheimer's because she wanted to take care of him and make his life more comfortable. And when he went to a facility, he actually started a romance with a fellow patient. This is something that a lot of people with Alzheimer's do, but for her that meant supporting him through that as well. And as she put it, he was in a cottage and there was a woman
who kind of attached herself to him. It was nice for him to have someone who was there to sometimes hold his hand and keep him company. And I'm glad.
Wow, that is heartbreaking. All right, Well, here's a fun one, a very different note. Did you know Sanderday O'Connor is in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame? Id you know there was the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Well, in her bio she talks about how she learned to ride and shoot a gun by the age of eight. And for the record, she's the only Supreme Court justice in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, but you know the door is wide open for future cowgirls to join her.
I like that and I like ending on something up feet. So what do you say you take this week's trophy?
All right? Well, thanks so much. Well, if we have missed any facts about Sandra Day O'Connor, or any Supreme Court justices for that matter, we would love to hear from you. You can always email us part time genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call on our twenty four to seven fact hotline that's one eight four four pt Genius. You can also hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
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Did we forget Jason?
Jason who