Sandra Day O'Conner: After the Bench.

A graduate of Stanford Law School, Sandra Day O’Conner after serving as an Arizona State Senator, County Superior Court Judge and state Appellate Court Judge, would be appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. She was the first female member of the Court, eventually retiring in 2006. In retirement she would serve on appellate courts as a substitute judge as vacancies and vacations left panels understaffed.

Concerned by her observation that many of America’s youth lacked the knowledge of how their government functions, O’Conner in February 2009, launched the website Our Courts to address that failing. Towards the end of that year, she founded O’Conner House, later the Sandra Day O’Conner Institute for American Democracy, a non-profit organization with the mission to advance American democracy, promote civil discourse, civic engagement, and civics education. Over the years, the Institute would sponsor world leaders, historians, authors, and legal scholars to speak at the campus. The Institute’s programs educate individuals of all ages from 50 states and six continents through its digital education platform. Its Civics for Life offering specifically address the knowledge gap of American students who received little, if any, civics education in school.

On December 1, 2023, Justice O’Conner died in Phoenix at the age of 93. Chief Justice John Roberts called her, “…an eloquent advocate for civic education” and a “…fiercely independent defender of the rule of law.”

You can access the Institute’s offerings at their website:  https://oconnorinstitute.org/

– Brother Jon Taylor, Patriotic Instructor