A Supreme Court Justice Who Is Hard to Pin Down

Re “Power of the Center,” Opinion, Feb. 8: I have long been frustrated by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, even though I am grateful that she has provided that fifth key vote in many crucial cases that have kept right-wing socio-religious agendas from further polluting our polity and society.

O’Connor is a textbook passive-aggressive. Her written opinions are not the work of a brilliant intellect or writer, and her jurisprudence is not the stuff that makes the history books, either. What will make the history books is that she played hard to get in all the big cases so the court and the public would have to wait and ponder and worry over her decision. This election-fixer, who defied the public will and handed George W. Bush the keys to the White House, can’t retire soon enough.

Jeff Softley

West Hollywood

*

I see O’Connor’s “swing vote” more as a swing from right to center to left. She reminds me of a former justice, also appointed by a Republican president, who performed a similar ideological move. In 1953, the centrist Republican Earl Warren was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, but Warren shocked many with his judicial activism and liberal views. Warren, as governor of California during World War II, was a key supporter of Japanese internment. He later deeply regretted this decision and went on to become the Supreme Court’s greatest civil rights advocate.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan, the conservative O’Connor was the “swing vote” in the wildly stretched and convoluted decision in Bush vs. Gore, which handed the presidency to Bush. O’Connor was a known Bush supporter. Since that fateful day, O’Connor has leaned more and more to her left. Has the law of unintended consequences gained another example?

Daniel C. Gomez

Victorville