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The
Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court by Sandra Day O’Connor Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Pedagogic Sandra Day O’Connor’s latest book, The
Majesty of the Law, presents the Supreme Court Justice’s views on her
chosen profession and its many underpinnings. Readers looking for a behind
the scenes look at the Supreme Court will need to search elsewhere. The same
holds true for speaking out of turn on any issues still in front of the
court. Instead, O’Connor provides non-lawyers with a primer and clear
guidance about selected laws that have made America what we are today. O’Connor
does provide some insight on court life. Here’s an excerpt, Chapter 15, (pp.
132-8): Thurgood
Marshall: The Influence of a Raconteur I
was fresh out of Stanford Law School, working as a civilian attorney in the
Quartermaster Corps in West Germany while John served in the Judge Advocate General's
Corps there, on the day in 1934 that Thurgood Marshall changed the
nation. He had been chipping away at the building blocks of a separatist
society long before 1954, of course, but it was through Brown v.
Board of Education that he compelled us, as a nation, to come
to grips with some of the contradictions within ourselves. Like
most of my counterparts who grew up in the Southwest in the 1930s and 1940s,
I had not been exposed personally to racial tensions before Brown.
Arizona did not have a large African-American population then; and, unlike
Southern states, it never adopted a de jure system of segregation. Although I
had spent a year as an eighth-grader in a predominately Latino public school
in New Mexico, I had no personal sense, as the plaintiff children of the
Topeka (Kansas) School District did, of being a minority in a society that
cared primarily for the majority. But as I listened that day on the radio to Thurgood
Marshall talking eloquently to the media about the social stigmas and lost opportunities
suffered by African-American children in state-imposed segregated schools, my
awareness of race-based disparities deepened. I did not, could not, know it
then, but the man who would, as lawyer and jurist, captivate the nation
would also, as a colleague and friend, profoundly influence me. Although all of us come to the Court with our own
personal histories
and experiences, Justice Marshall brought a special perspective. His was the
eye of a lawyer who saw the deepest wounds in the social fabric and used law
to help heal them. His was the ear of a counselor who understood the
vulnerabilities of the accused and established safeguards for their
protection. His was the mouth of a man who knew the anguish of the silenced
and gave them a voice. At oral arguments and conference meetings, in
opinions and dissents, Justice Marshall imparted not only his legal acumen
but also his life experiences, constantly pushing and prodding us to respond
not only to the persuasiveness of legal argument but also to the power of
moral truth. Although I was continually inspired by his historic
achievements, perhaps I was affected most personally by justice Marshall as
raconteur. It was rare during our conference deliberations that he would not
share an anecdote, a joke, or a story. Yet, in my ten years on the bench with
him, I cannot recall ever hearing the same "TM" story twice.
In my early months as the junior Justice, I looked forward to these tales as
welcome diversions from the heavy, often troublesome task of deciding the
complex legal issues before us. But over time, as I heard more clearly what
Justice Marshall was saying, I realized that behind most of the anecdotes was
a relevant legal point. I was particularly moved by a story that Justice
Marshall told during the time the Court was considering a case in which an
African-American defendant challenged his death sentence as racially biased.
Something in the conversation caused his eyebrows to rise characteristically,
and with a pregnant pause he said, "That reminds me of a story." And so it began, this depletion of justice in
operation. "You know," he said, "I had an innocent man once.
He was accused of raping a white woman. The government told me if he would
plead guilty, he'd only get life. I said I couldn't make that decision; I'd
have to ask my client. So I told him that if he pleased guilty, he wouldn’t
get the death sentence. "He
said, ‘Plead guilty to what?’ "I
said, 'Plead guilty to rape.' "He said, 'Raping that woman? You gotta be
kidding. I won't do it.' "That's when I knew I had an innocent man. "When the judge sent the jurors out, he told
them that they had three choices: not guilty, guilty, or guilty with mercy.
'You understand those are the three different possible choices,' he
instructed. But after the jury left, the judge told the people in the
courtroom that they were not to move before the bailiff took the defendant
away. "I said, 'What happened to "not
guilty"?' "The judge looked at me, and said, 'Are you
kidding?' just like that. And he was the judge." As he neared the end of his tale, Justice
Marshall leaned forward, pointed his finger at no one in particular, and said
with his characteristic signal of finale, "E-e-e-nd of the story: The
guy was found guilty and sentenced to death. But he never raped that
woman." He paused, flicking his hand. "Oh, well," he added,
"he was just a Negro.". With the aid of this low-key narrative, Justice
Marshall made his own legal position quite clear: in his view, the death
penalty was not only cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth
Amendment, but it had never been, and could never be, administer fairly and
free of racial bias. Although I disagreed with Justice Marshall about the
constitutional validity of the death penalty, his story made clear what legal
briefs often obscure: the impact of legal rules on human lives. Through his story, Justice Marshall reminded us,
once the law is not an abstract concept removed from the society it serves,
and that judges, as safeguarders of the Constitution, must constantly strive
to narrow the gap between the ideal of equal justice and the reality of
social inequality. ;: Justice Marshall's stories served for me another
function. Beneath his wit and charm and rambunctiousness, he was an intensely
private man. There were sides to him that no one but his family will ever
know. But over the years, as he shared stories of Klan violence and jury
bias, of co-opted judges and dishonest politicians, I gained an insight—a peephole
really—into the character of a man who was at once eternally at peace and
perpetually at war. "S-a-a-a-n-d-r-a-a-a," he called out once, "did I ever
tell you about the welcome I received in Mississippi?" It was early evening in a small town in Mississippi
in the early 1940s, and he was waiting to hop the next train to Shreveport.
"I was starving," he told me, "so I decided to go over to this
restaurant and see if one of the cooks would let me in the back to buy a
sandwich. You know, that's how we did things then; the front door was so
inconvenient!" Before he could go over, justice Marshall recounted,
"a man of your race holding a pistol Sidled up. 'Boy,' he said, 'what
are you doing around these parts?' I said, I'm waiting to catch the next
train.' He said, 'Listen up, boy, because I'm only gonna tell you this once.
The last train through here is at 4:00 P.M. and you better be on it cuz
niggers ain't welcome in these parts after dark.' "Guess what," justice Marshall added, a
twinkle creeping into his eye. "I was on that train." What justice Marshall did not say, what he had no
need to say, was how physically threatening and personally humiliating the
situation must have been. Left unspoken, too, was the anger and frustration
any grown man must have felt at being called "boy" and run out of
town. It is not surprising, really, that these sentiments
were relegated to the backdrop. Unlike many national figures, justice
Marshall was not interested in publicizing the risks he had taken or the
sacrifices he had made. Instinctively, he downplayed his own role, as though
it were natural to hide under train seats, or earn twenty-four hundred
dollars a year as a lawyer, or write briefs on a manual typewriter balanced,
in a moving car, between his knees. To Justice Marshall, these hardships
warranted no comment. They were simply the natural extension of a lifetime
credo of "doing the best you can with what you've got." But to those of us who have traveled a different
road, Justice Marshall's experiences are a source of amazement and
inspiration, not only because of what they reveal about him but also because
of what they instill in us, and ask of us. I
have not encountered prejudice on a sustained basis. But I have experienced
gender discrimination enough—such as when law firms stand how one could seek
to minimize interaction with those who are intolerant of difference. That
Justice Marshall never hid from prejudice but thrust himself instead into its
midst has been both an encouragement and a challenge to me. i I asked him once how he managed to avoid becoming despondent from the injustices he saw. Instead of responding directly, he told me about the time he and his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, the vice dean at Howard Law School, traveled to Loudoun County, Virginia, to help a man on trial for his life. The man, George Crawford, had been indicted by an all-white grand jury for allegedly murdering a white woman from a well-to-do Virginia family, as well as her white maid. Despite their defense challenge to the exclusion of African-Americans from the jury, Crawford was convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to life. "You know something is wrong with the
government's case," Justice Marshall told me, "when a Negro only
gets life for murdering a white woman." After the trial. Justice Marshall said, the media
asked if Crawfotd planned an appeal based on the exclusion of
African-Americans from the jury. "Crawford said, 'Mr. Houston, if I have
another trial, and I got life this time, could they kill me the next time?'
Charlie told him yes. "So Crawford told Charlie, Tell them the
defendant rests.' "I still have mixed feelings about that
case," Justice Marshall added. "I just don't believe that guy got a
fair shake. But what ate you going to do? There are only two choices in life:
stop, and go on. You tell me, what would you pick?" Even
now, I still think about Justice Marshall's backhanded response, wondering
how one can confront, as he did, the darkest recesses of human nature—bigotry,
hatred, and selfishness—and emerge wholly intact. Although I probably will
never completely understand, part of the answer, I think, lay in his capacity
for narration itself. His stories reflected a truly expansive personality—the
perspective of a man who immersed himself in human suffering and then
translated that suffering in a way that others could bear and understand. The
past that he related - doused in humor and sadness, tragedy and triumph—was
but a mirror of himself: a man who saw the world exactly as it is, and pushed
on to make it what it can become. No one could help but be moved by Justice Thurgood
Marshall's spirit. No one could avoid being touched by his soul. As I continue on the bench, a few seats down from
where he once sat, I think often of Justice Marshall. I remember the morning
we first met, and the afternoon he left the bench. I remember the historic
lawsuits he brought, and the thoughtful opinions and dissents he wrote. I
recall his unwavering commitment to the poor, the accused, and the
downtrodden, and his constant, impassioned repudiation of the death penalty. More than that, though, I think of the raconteur
himself. Occasionally, at conference meetings, I still catch myself looking
expectantly for his raised brow and his twinkling eye, hoping to hear, just
once more, another story that would, by and by, perhaps change the way I see
the world. The
Majesty of the Law reflects O’Connor’s love of the law, and those
interested in the law will find this fascinating to read. Steve Hopkins, July 25, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the August 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Majesty of the Law.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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