Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor speaks up against political attacks on courts.

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

ON or off the bench, Supreme Court justices tend to be discreet about the court's relationship to politics. So when a former justice breaks her dignified silence — as Sandra Day O'Connor did in a startling speech last week — the comments carry gravitas. Her words bore even more weight because she cited specific acts by politicians and warningly employed the word "dictatorship."

O'Connor, who resigned last month, spoke March 9 at Georgetown University. No tapes or transcripts were released, and the lone reporter present was Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio. Totenberg reported that in her speech O'Connor, a Republican, savaged Republican threats to punish the court for its interpretations of the law.

The courts, O'Connor reportedly said, expect at times to make lawmakers and the president angry, but the courts' effectiveness "is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts."

O'Connor then singled out by deed, though not by name, two Texas politicians for their verbal attacks upon the court for doing its job. Last year, criticizing federal and state court rulings that allowed Terry Schiavo's vegetative state to end in death, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Read whole article at Houston Chronicle