The Traveler

Issue date: 10/6/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Larry Ash Sandra Day O'Connor spoke at the UA Friday as a part of the dedication for the new School of Law building.

Former Associate Justice of the United States Sandra Day O'Connor was the keynote speaker Friday at the dedication of the School of Law building.

The dedication was hosted at the Union Mall between Mullins Library and the Student Union at 2 p.m. Friday afternoon. Other speakers at the event included Chancellor G. David Gearhart, Cynthia Nance, dean of the law school, Jim Lindsay, chair of the UA board of trustees and Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel.

Justice O'Connor began her speech with commentary on the new law school, asserting that the school "gained around 64,000 square feet and an espresso café to keep everyone well caffeinated." She expressed her best wishes for the law program, and hopes that it would "inspire new and interesting scholarship and inspire students to help to secure fundamental liberties for all people."

Justice O'Connor's speech centered on the law school's history of integration, as one of the conference rooms in the new law school is named after the six pioneer African-American students who attended in the school's early years. The UA was the first university in the south to allow integration of their law school without mass protests or violence. The school was still segregated, however, O'Connor said, as the African-American students had to use different books, restrooms and received private instruction apart from the other students.

O'Connor then referenced two of the most important Supreme Court cases in regard to desegregation of education: Plessey v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. At the time of Plessey v. Ferguson, the case which established the idea of separate but equal, O'Connor noted, there was only one vote of dissent in the Supreme Court, in which Justice Harland said "the constitution is color blind."

"Justice Thurgood Marshall once told me he thought his life had not succeeded in producing equality." O'Connor said. "But when I look around today, I believe he achieved it."

According to O'Connor, "Progress often begins with failure." Just look at the economy she joked. O'Connor talked about her journey to the Supreme Court, from graduating in a time when only 3 percent of law school graduates were women to not being able to find a job in California except an offer as a legal secretary, if she could type well.

Continued...

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