The Stanford Report wrote about a lecture Justice Sandra Day O’Connor ’52 (BA ’50) on Tuesday, April 22 in Memorial Church. The inaugural “Harry’s Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life” was given in honor of the late Stanford Law professor Harry Rathbun, who O’Connor says guided her towards a career in law. The following quotes are excerpts from her speech:

Long before Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, she was an undergraduate student at Stanford, stitching together what she knew from growing up on a dusty ranch in Arizona with what she was learning on the palm-tree-studded Palo Alto campus.

And it was thanks to Harry Rathbun that O’Connor shifted her studies from economics to law and began to think more deeply about how the world works.

“When I came here, I don’t know that I had a very clear philosophy of life,” she told a packed audience Tuesday night in Memorial Church. “My years here helped shape that. Harry Rathbun helped shape it. And the succeeding years have continued to do that. Am I finished with that process? Probably not. I hope not.”

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O’Connor did not discuss her 25 years on the Supreme Court. But she did bristle at the suggestion, during a question-and-answer period, that her religion guided her judicial decisions.

“Does it tell you what to do as a judge? No. Because you take an oath to follow the laws and the Constitution, so help you God,” she said. “And you ask God’s help to help you follow the Constitution and the laws, not your own personal views.”

But she did not shy away from discussing religion’s role in her personal life and echoed Rathbun’s belief that “each of us has a religion whether we know it or acknowledge it or not.”

Talking about the universal drive for people to evolve, O’Connor warned against measuring success with piles of money, big cars and second homes.

“If those are our dominant goals, then maybe we’re misreading our road signs and directions,” she said. “Achieving our potential to the maximum for Harry Rathbun—and I must say, for me, also—means taking seriously the concept that we live in an orderly universe and that we must obey nature’s order, including being loyal and devoted to God.”

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“I had no idea how tough it would be to get a job,” she said, adding that most of her law school classmates had just returned from serving in World War II.

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“Anyone who engages in public life has to get a very thick skin,” she said. “You’re going to have arrows and darts thrown at you. That’s OK. Develop a thick skin and go on. Nobody’s free from criticism and shouldn’t be. Just learn to deal with it. You can.”

She also told the audience that there is no need to sacrifice a family for a high-profile and committed career, saying she managed to balance her job and her family.

“I wanted to have a family, and I’m glad that I did,” she said. “Was it easy? No. Will it be easy for you? No. Is it worth it? Yes.”

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