Obsessive Law Student

Yesterday started out so well. It was beautiful on I-71 North as I headed from Cincinnati to Hometown. I was in the middle of an amazing rendition of "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" with Aretha Franklin, complete with flailing arms motioning out the window, when the truckdriver next to me honked his horn. I briefly stopped - uncertain of whether he was praising my car-dancing or whether he thought I had been making an obscene gesture his way. I decided I should probably stop the dancing. Well . . . as soon as the song's over. So, when Aretha finished, I resisted the urge to his the reverse button on my CD player and start the song again. Instead, I flipped on the radio. NPR was doing music rather than news, so I flipped to AM. I usually prevent myself from listening to AM, unless it's Air America, because I tend to get annoyed. Very annoyed. When the "scan" button fell on some conservative talk radio station, I heard, "Next, we'll talk about the nominating process. And SomeImportantConservativePerson will discuss Justice O'Connor's legacy on the Court." "Justice O'Connor's legacy?" I said out loud, although I'm not sure to whom I was talking, since I was the only on the car and Aretha was on standby. "Surely, they mean Justice Rheinquist's legacy, right?" But, they had cut to commercial, so I hit scan to find the next talk radio show, one that would hopefully tell me what was going on in the world (I had left in the morning without flipping on the news - assuming if anything super sensational had occurred either my mom or Modern Esquire would have called - little did I know trusting them!). Nothing - I was in a random dead spot where this was the only talk radio show in my

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a crier. When I think of Baby Sis stepping off a plane at Hometown Airport, I tear up. Sometimes I even let the tears leave my eyes. Put on Travelling Soldier or What if Jesus Came Back Like That (I was recently given a mixed C.D. with this song on it, which is why it's on my mind), and I'm a big bubbling baby. Hotel Rwanda? Cried through the final three-quarters of the movie and right now Bono struck the chords on "One" at Live 8 (well, the Live 8 broadcast for HomeTown TV station) and my eyes almost instinctively dampened. But, before yesterday, I'd only cried over political events three times in my life. The first was when I was in the sixth grade and our city didn't pass a school levy. (In Ohio, this is devastating for schools since property taxes cannot increase with inflation and the primary means for school funding is tax levies.) I felt so betrayed by the people in my city, especially those who had ensured their own kids had busing and extracurricular activities while they attended our public schools only to vote against the tax levy as soon as it was someone else's kids, that I burst into tears at the local Democratic Club. I was in the sixth grade, though. You have to give some level of sympathy to a sixth grader who can't imagine that political life could get any worse.

The second time I cried over a political development was when I discovered the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore and that Gore was conceding defeat. I found out about the two defeats one right after each other from the English language news channel in Japan. I had been waiting for the English news for two hours since I returned from home. I had had to answer questions all day from teachers and students about "when will we have a President". I flipped on the news to discover, to my dismay, that George W. Bush would actually be sworn in as President. Devastated, I cried. At the time I wasn't sure I was crying because it was George W. or because I disagreed with the decision or because I was just genuinely homesick. I eventually chalked it up to homesickness - I mean, surely, with such a close election, W. was going to have to be on his best bi-partisan behavior, right? Ugh.

The third time I cried was when W. won his second term. This was an all out bawl session as I drove home from our Democratic "victory" party at a friend's house. I hadn't cried in front of my friends, although I'm certain many of them wanted to cry as well. I hoped in the car, called my mom, and weeped into the phone, something like, "Mom, it wasn't supposed to be this way! How could this happen? What's wrong with people?" My mother, as she often does, informed me I was overreacting and that I needed to stop crying while I was driving. She then said that we, as a country, had survived many things in our two-hundred-plus years and that we would survive this as well. It didn't really make me feel any better, but at least I stopped crying. And, that only lasted a few hours before I was crying up a storm again.

But, yesterday, I cried over a political development for that fourth time. It wasn't a full-on bawl session, as it was during the early hours of on Nov. 3. It was just a few tears that sprang to my eyes and down my cheeks before I realized exactly what was going on. One of my heroes was stepping down. And it struck a chord deep inside. I was only three-ish when Justice O'Connor stepped on the Court and since I was in the fourth grade I have known who she was and what she meant to women in the U.S. In the fourth grade, we were required to do book reports on 'important' subjects, and I started doing biographies of important women. Nadia Comaneci. Elizabeth Blackwell. Susan B. Anthony. Gloria Steinem. And then, Sandra Day O'Connor. I had known since I was eight that I wanted to be an attorney and my father had always told me I could, in fact, be anything I wanted to be. I didn't know any female attorneys, though, only five male ones. Finding Justice O'Connor's biography was the moment when I knew he was right. She had broken one of the most important glass ceilings women faced - she had joined the highest Court of the United States and had the power to shape the laws we dealt with daily. Okay, when I was in the fourth grade I didn't fully comprehend "glass ceilings," but I was aware that at one time, my mother was told her only options were to become a teacher or a nurse, and she believed that. I was aware that my elementary schools (I attended four in six years) only had one or two male teachers but very few female administrators. Justice O'Connor's biography signaled to me that those days were over. I was only partly right - we still have a ways to go before men and women are equal, but the days in which young girls are told they can be one of two things and young men are told women should never be their bosses are, in the vast majority of places, over. And that was freeing to me.

Since becoming a law student, I've found that I often struggle through issues in manners similar to Justice O'Connor. I won't lie - not even now that she's retiring - and say I find her to be the best writer on the Court. I like Souter and Ginsburg for that. And yes, if I ever agreed with a single thing he said, I might find Scalia a brilliant writer (I haven't read the eminent domain decisions yet, given this little thing called the bar, so I may find that I do agree with him on something). But, O'Connor brings a balance to the Court on many of the most divisive issues the U.S. population faces. You may disagree with her, but you can't ignore her . . . and perhaps that will always be her greatest legacy.

Oh, and did I mention that I view this resignation as the greatest defeat to our civil liberties since Bush was first elected? I'll save the rest of that thought, though, for a later post (maybe).