Newly retired justice visits Oklahoma for cowboy event

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Newly retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke out against current Washington leadership during a weekend visit to Oklahoma City. <br/><br/>In an interview Saturday

Sunday, April 23rd 2006, 11:22 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Newly retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke out against current Washington leadership during a weekend visit to Oklahoma City.

In an interview Saturday with The Oklahoman, O'Connor said that in her lifetime she has never seen so many attempts to strip the courts of their power, to retaliate against judges for decisions, to peel back judicial funding or to take away the court's right to rule on controversial issues.

A democracy can crumble into a dictatorship without a proper judicial branch to check government power and overturn unconstitutional laws, O'Connor said.

``I'm not sure that all of our legislators and executive officeholders today understand that,'' she said. ``And it is a great concern to me. So I am making efforts to make sure that our citizens understand these concepts and care about them.''

O'Connor hosted the 45th annual Western Heritage Awards at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

The justice said her gritty childhood on an Arizona ranch primed her well for a tough but rewarding career as America's first female supreme court justice. Now that she's retired, she is speaking out publicly on national political issues, a liberty that was confined mostly to her court opinions when she was a sitting justice.

O'Connor, who was nominated to the court by President Ronald Reagan, said she has joined two national organizations in hopes of bolstering civic education. Those groups are targeting state officials who have some power to change the way their schools operate, she said.

``Not too many years ago _ certainly in the '50s and '60s _ our public schools taught civics and government at most levels,'' she said. ``If you don't teach those concepts to every succeeding generation, they're not going to know it, or understand it, or understand how, as citizens, they have the power to be part of it and to affect change.''

While she devotes great effort to advocating change, she declined to speculate on the future of the Supreme Court. Since her retirement, President Bush has appointed two new justices to the court. As with any group of nine people, she said, group dynamics can switch wildly with the change of just one person.

She said she has full confidence in the qualifications of the new justices and will wait _ with everyone else _ to see what the legacy of the new court will be.