O'Connor on the Temporary Disabled List

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor arrived at a D.C. speaking engagement Wednesday in a wheelchair, and she walked to the podium on crutches. O'Connor, 77, did not tell the audience the reason, shrugging it off with a laugh as a "temporary deficiency, I trust." But she told attendees beforehand that her hip gave her trouble during a recent overseas trip, and she had an MRI this morning to diagnose the problem.

O'Connor, who retired in January 2006, was the keynote speaker at a conference at the Law Library of Congress on the impact of Strickland v. Washington, the 1984 ruling that established standards for assessing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in criminal cases. When pressed, O'Connor lists the decision, which she authored, as the one with "the greatest effect" of any she wrote in her 25 years on the high court. The conference was sponsored by the Constitution Project. George Washington University School of Law, Holland & Knight, Jenner & Block and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr supported the event.

Footnote: When Legal Times photo editor Diego Radzinschi tried to take a photo of O'Connor in her wheelchair, a plainclothes Supreme Court police officer accompanying her waved him off and would not let him take the shot -- even though it was a public event, and she was in full view of many of the several hundred people in attendance.

Comments

a lovely lady. i can understand.

[Scott Forster]

I think she was the worst justice in my lifetime. Her reasoning was always shallow and her opinions were always totally result oriented. She could never give a straight answer to anything.