U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor praised the late Justice John Marshall Harlan '20 last night for the "legacy of respect" he built during 16 years on the nation's highest court — years defined by a states' rights advocacy O'Connor has inherited.
As an audience including Harlan's daughter, two federal judges and three New Jersey Supreme Court justices looked on in Richardson Auditorium, O'Connor highlighted the pragmatic aspects of her predecessor's record in the inaugural Harlan Lecture in Constitutional Adjudication of the Program in Law and Public Affairs.
"In his respect for tradition, the individual liberties of all people, the federal system of government, the separation of powers and the craft of constitutional adjudication itself, Justice Harlan is a model for all of us who have been given the delicate task of interpreting the Constitution," said O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
At times, it was hard to escape the parallels between the judicial philosophies of Harlan and O'Connor. Both take a minimalist, conservative approach to the law.
Harlan maintained "respect for the sovereignty and dignity of the several states," O'Connor said, in a reminder of the decisions favoring states' rights she has helped to craft over the years on the Court.
"Our constitutional scheme respects states as almost coequal sovereigns," she said. "There is a need for respectful restraint on the strong arm of the federal government."
Likewise, O'Connor mentioned Harlan's advocacy of a right to use contraception in Poe v. Ullman (1961), a precursor to her opinion upholding abortion rights in Planned Parenthood v. Casey more than 30 years later.
"He appreciated our Constitution's respect for individual privacy," she said, also commenting on Harlan's extension of First Amendment protection to obscenity and profanity.
At other times, though, O'Connor praised Harlan for qualities not often noted in the current Court.
For example, despite the current Court's reputation as a body ready to substitute the judgment of Congress and the president for its own, O'Connor said "the Constitution does not bestow upon the Court blanket authority to interfere with the political branches."
"Justice Harlan knew which branch was his, and respect for his place in this fragile system led him to advocate a deference to the other branches," O'Connor said.
O'Connor and University President Tilghman, who spoke at the outset of the event, each nodded to the other's status as a trailblazing woman.
Tilghman, in introducing O'Connor, noted how gender has shaped the Justice's life, beginning with the discrimination she faced after graduating third in her class from Stanford Law School in 1952.
"She was refused any job above legal secretary," Tilghman said. Now, she said, O'Connor "reaches out to law clerks, especially women."
When O'Connor took the podium, she thanked Tilghman, the University's first female president, in one of her few departures from a prepared text.
"I've been reading so much about you," O'Connor said. "It's nice to see for myself what a good job you're doing."
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