Sandra Day O'Connor was never the justice that progressives now pretend she was

It's mere days since her passing and already Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is speaking to us from the great beyond.

And who would have guessed it — she’s railing against the court’s conservative majority.

That’s quite a turn for the once Republican lawmaker appointed to the High Court by conservative icon Ronald Reagan.

Or perhaps not.

Heaven has a way of turning Arizona Republicans into the reliable mouthpieces of the progressive left.

Would conservatives have upset O'Connor?

Arizona center-right leaders such as Barry Goldwater, John McCain and now Sandra Day O’Connor go to heaven and suddenly go native.

Which is to say, they start to talk more like the liberals who still occupy planet Earth and whose conception of heaven has filled it with lefties and reformed Republicans such as O’Connor.

On Monday, for instance, we learned from an Arizona Republic story that “some of those who knew” O’Connor, who “worked with her, and followed her career,” tell us she would “not want the court to be seen” in its current light.

That is to say, a court accused of taking favors and gifts from outside influences. These are accusations leveled at mostly the conservative justices and namely at embattled Justice Clarence Thomas.

“I don’t want to put words in her mouth because that would be presumptuous,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

Instead, Tobias put thoughts in her post-mortal brain.

“I’m sure she would be distressed by all these issues, the questions of ethics. I think she always had the highest of standards and was exemplary in that way. I’m virtually positive she would have been distressed by that.”

She might have a more nuanced opinion

I wonder.

Tobias is no friend of the conservative bench. He has written essays eviscerating Donald Trump’s picks for the federal courts and lavishing praise on Joe Biden's more progressive choices.

Further, Sandra Day O’Connor knew Clarence Thomas. She served with Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas was a friend of hers.

I’d say it’s possible, in her eternal repose, that she understands what most of us can see with our own eyes — that Clarence Thomas has been the most reliably conservative voice on the Supreme Court in 100 years.

Any conservative paying Thomas to vote conservative is essentially paying the sun to rise. They’re burning money.

Maybe critics see their own disappointment

Gary Francione, a Rutgers University law professor who clerked for O’Connor in the 1982-83 term, is quite certain O’Connor frowns upon today’s justices.

“However naïve you may think this is, she believed in the concept of a judge calling balls and strikes and nothing else.

“I think she would be really disappointed with what’s going on in the court as it is now.”

O'Connor upset both sides: But remained the adult in the middle

Not surprisingly, this mirrors Francione’s own dark view of court conservatives.

Now an animal activist, Francione writes on his website that the majority of today’s court is “extreme right-wing.”

He accuses the conservative majority of all lying about Roe v. Wade to win confirmation. And he particularly has an ax to grind with conservative justice Samuel Alito, whom he calls a “misogynist.”

Other questions to ask O'Connor

While we’re all communing with Sandra Day O’Connor, I have a few more questions to ask her.

Ask her what she thinks about the person who leaked the draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, an act of treachery that Chief Justice John Roberts called “absolutely appalling.”

Ask her what she thinks of the liberal activists who gathered outside the residential homes of conservative justices to protest the Dobbs decision that struck down Roe.

Ask her what she thought of Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Congress dragging its feet for weeks before providing adequate protection for the justices at their homes.

Ask her what she thought of the pro-abortion rights activist who showed up at Brett Kavanaugh’s home with a Glock and a knife.

She might sound like a Republican on this

Ask her what she thinks of all the Democrats who have worked to marginalize the court with the following comments:

• “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said.

• “(The court) is creeping dangerously to authoritarianism,” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said.

• “The extremists on the Supreme Court are out of touch, out of control, and facing a growing legitimacy crisis,” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said.

• “The Supreme Court is now just a 9-person legislature, slinging takes and making law with cases that are basically made up,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said.

I don’t have a direct connection to O’Connor, but I’m guessing if you ask her the right question, she might start sounding like a Republican again.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com. 

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sandra Day O'Connor is not the justice that liberals imagine