O'Connor Says She Will Stay For Next Term
Supreme Court Justice, 73, Denies Retirement Rumors
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 7, 2003; Page A03
Those who may still be wondering whether Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has any plans to retire from the court can breathe a bit easier: The 73-year-old justice has offered her clearest public indication yet that she plans to remain at her post.
O'Connor replied, "Well, I assume so," when George Stephanopoulos asked her on yesterday's broadcast of ABC's "This Week" whether her silence on the issue of retirement means she will be on the court for at least the next term, which begins Oct. 6.
O'Connor has been the focus of intensifying retirement rumors since November 2000, when stories surfaced in Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal that her husband, John O'Connor, told friends on election night that she was frustrated at the prospect of a victory by Vice President Al Gore, since she had hoped to retire under a Republican president.
But when Stephanopoulos asked her whether those stories were true, O'Connor replied, "No, sir."
"They were just wrong?" Stephanopoulos asked.
"Yes," O'Connor said.
O'Connor and Justice Stephen G. Breyer spoke with Stephanopoulos during a joint July 4 interview in Philadelphia, where the two justices were taking part in ceremonies marking the opening of the new National Constitution Center.
The court's just-completed term included landmark rulings on affirmative action and gay rights, in which conservative dissenters, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, aimed verbal barbs at the majorities, of which O'Connor and Breyer were part, that ruled in favor of race-conscious admissions and against a Texas law banning homosexual sodomy.
Breyer said, though, that the justices have all learned to take such rhetoric in stride.
"If I'm really put out by something, I can always go to the person who wrote and say, 'Look, I think you've gone somewhat too far here,' " Breyer said. "But it isn't, it doesn't hang on as a personal matter, because we get on quite well, personally."
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