As if I didn't already have enough reasons to adore Justice O'Connor...

Additional reason to adore retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor No. 605,081: She's kind of sort of a gamer chick. Or at least she's collaborating with some folks on a video game. Okay, admittedly, it's an educational game for kids and those almost always suck and always have back to the day when I was a kid. I don't care. Let me have the happy thought, 'kay? I suppose I always knew that if there was ever a Supreme Court Justice who was up for an all-night LAN party fragfest, it would have to be Justice Sandy. Because Justice O'Connor is a badass.*


Additional reason to adore retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor No. 605,082: Because she says shit like this while she's promoting her video game:


"We hear a great deal about judges who are activists -- godless, secular, humanists trying to impose their will on the rest of us. Now I always thought an activist judge was one who got up in the morning and went to work."


Slam!


If I find out Justice O'Connor's new game has ninjas, she's going to have to take out a restraining order against me.


Seriously, though--or more seriously, because my tongue is only partly in cheek--she really is and was my favorite SCOTUS Justice. I didn't always agree with her opinions, but I almost always knew why I didn't agree with her when I disagreed with her--I mean in a kind of thoughtful way, as opposed to a "What the fuck, it hasn't been 1789 for more than 200 years, now I think I'm going to go slam my head into a cinderblock wall until the pain stops" kind of way. People knock Justice O'Connor's opinions for being too this or too that--"too case specific" or "too emotional" (I even remember one law professor implying her opinion in Casey was "too cosmic," though I'm not entirely sure he meant that as a negative, really). I almost always found the O'Connor opinions that were allegedly "too whatever" to be a bit on the wise side, actually. Justice O'Connor, I think, understands both the limitations and responsibilities of a judge in a way that some smart-aleck theoreticians really don't; along with that, I think she also remembered Emerson's aphorism about foolish consistencies†--unlike some purportedly wise men who think they have the One Good Theory That Dictates The Outcome Of Every Case. (Not, mind you, that these folks are really that consistent, foolishly or otherwise, since they also seem to be the Justices most likely to make themselves hypocrites by deciding cases along nakedly partisan lines even when their pet theories of Constitutional interpretation might dictate a different result.)


Anyway, let's close by restating our premise, as that's what I've heard you're supposed to do when writing topically and what all. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is awesome and I love her. The end.





*Yes, I know she says she doesn't play videogames. That's because she's fronting. I mean, come on, she probably gets a hard enough time from Republicans already without them knowing how much time she's spent in the past several weeks playing GTA IV.


†"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," quoth Mr. Emerson.




Comments

Janiece said…
Now I'm going to have to have include her in my same-sex Nerd Love list, instead of in my women I admire list.

Yeah. She's the shit.

We loves her, precious.
Nathan said…
And she's so much HAWTer than that Bader Ginsburg chick.
I missed seeing Justice O'Connor when she was here speaking to the law school, for which I am very sorry.

I did get to see Justice Ginsburg and Justice Rehnquist though.

Although I enjoyed Justice Ginsburg's talking, I really liked seeing Rehnquist. He was an excellent speaker, and had all kinds of attitude.

He opened saying that we were lucky that Virginia had never sued us, because he didn't our statehood would hold up under scrutiny.

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