The following is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian of the modern United States focusing on domestic policy and law in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. Ryan previously contributed five other posts to In Custodia Legis – The Federal Paper Chase: A New Library Guide for the Federal Courts; Federal Courts, Judge Gerhard Gesell, and the Security State; Simon Sobeloff and Jewish Baltimore; Rights and Resistance: Civil Liberties during World War I Scholarly Panel; and Reading SCOTUS: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and his Black Book.
Over three decades ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman in United States history appointed to the Supreme Court. Women make up more than one-third of the Court today, a sweeping change ushered in by Justice O’Connor and her jurisprudence. With the opening of a substantial portion of her papers to the public in April 2024 and a new Court term on the horizon, please join us on October 4, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. EDT, for a panel of distinguished legal experts to discuss Justice O’Connor from varying perspectives, from clerking for the justice to arguing in front of her. The panel will feature journalists, jurists, and judges who are described in more detail below.
To watch on October 4, click here.
Center Court: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the Supreme Court
- Kimberly Atkins Stohr (moderator), senior opinion writer, Boston Globe, cohost of Sisters in Law podcast, and host of Justice by Design podcast
- Neomi Rao (panelist), judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, 2001-2002
- Julie Rose O’Sullivan (panelist), Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor, Georgetown Law School, and former clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, 1985-1986
- Joan Biskupic (panelist), CNN’s senior Supreme Court analyst and author of Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice
- Theodore Olson (panelist), partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, L.L.P., and former solicitor general of the United States, 2001-2004
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