Recently retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor ’52 (BA ’50) joined Justice Anthony Kennedy (BA ’58) in the March symposium “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: The Legacy of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor,” hosted by the Stanford Law Review. Speaking to a packed Kresge Auditorium audience, the two praised Rehnquist and remarked how Stanford and its location in the West impacted both their careers and the bench.

“Bill Rehnquist was a terrific chief justice because, in true Western fashion, he acted in a very humble fashion,” O’Connor was reported as saying in The Stanford Daily. “He put on no airs and held no grudges.”

And Kennedy praised O’Connor’s legacy as a moderate member of the bench, as well as its first woman.

RIGHT, THE LATE CHIEF JUSTICE WILLIAM REHNQUIST, PROFESSOR OF LAW EMERITUS, J. KEITH MANN, JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR, AND FORMER STANFORD PRESIDENT DONALD KENNEDY AT THE NOVEMBER 1981 CELEBRATION FOR O’CONNOR’S CONFIRMATION TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT.