Sandra Day O'Connor had impact on Indiana, IU

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court has caught the attention of the entire nation and her decisions on key rulings affect all communities across the country, but she has had a special impact on IU and Indiana as a whole.\nIU Law Professor Joseph Hoffmann, who served Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist as a law clerk in the mid-1980s, had a unique experience with O'Connor.\n"There is a practice in the Supreme Court that the law clerks have the opportunity to invite any of the other justices who they aren't clerking for to lunch," said Hoffmann.\nNear the end of their term he and the other Rehnquist clerks received a message that O'Connor was "really mad" that she hadn't yet been asked to lunch.\n"We, of course, did and she, of course, turned us down flat," he said.\nO'Connor also wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court's 2000 ruling against the Indianapolis Police Department. The decision struck down the IPD's practice of setting up narcotics roadblocks to catch drug traffickers.\n"We cannot sanction stops justified only by the generalized and ever present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that any given motorist has committed some crime," she wrote.\nThe high court's final ruling in the case was six-to-three, but O'Connor was known for her swing vote in controversial decisions, often casting the key fifth vote in a court split on partisan lines. \nBut, it is for her 1992 vote in the five-to-four Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA v. Casey which she will be best known, suspects Craig Bradley, an IU law professor who clerked for Rehnquist in the 1970s.\nBradley said O'Connor's resignation will likely have little immediate impact on the court since key issues like affirmative action, on which she was the decisive vote, will likely not be brought to the high court's attention again for some time. \nHe said the Bush administration would probably like to appoint a very conservative judge to replace O'Connor, but will likely have to pick someone more moderate who can get the required confirmation of the Senate.\n"I am anticipating that somewhat reluctantly they may propose someone who is not extremely conservative," Bradley said. "They may end up with someone who is like O'Connor, even though that is not their dearest wish."\nHoffmann said the nomination battle over any successor will have "very, very high stakes" because most of the potential replacements are more conservative than O'Connor.\n"Unfortunately, I am afraid that we will be in the heat of a contentious battle," he said.\nBut all of the candidates who are being floated by the media who take the newly vacant seat are experienced jurists, he said.\n"The names that I've seen are the names of serious judges, all of whom would seem to be well qualified for the Supreme Court," he said. \nBradley favors John Roberts, who is currently a justice for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and formerly a Rehnquist law clerk. The two met at one of the regular reunions of former clerks for the current Supreme Court Chief Justice. \nHoffmann said he knows Roberts as well as another contender, J. Michael Luttig, who also serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.\n"I think they're both very good people," Hoffman said. "I think they would make very good justices"