Letter to Margarette Dye regarding SEAALL membership, March 19, 1986

A letter from Sandra O\u27Connor to Margarette Dye providing an updated address for the SEAALL membership list

07-01-1983 Memorandum to the Conference

With reference to the effective date of the judgment, Frank Lorson suggested the following language could be added as the last sentence of the per curiam if the Conference so desires

01-05-1983 Justice O\u27Connor, Concurring

JUSTICE O\u27CONNOR, concurring

Professional Competence and Social Responsibility: Fulfilling the Vanderbilt Vision

In our laudable attempt to train law students to think like lawyers by teaching them legal method, we must not lose sight of the fact that questions of professional responsibility cannot properly be resolved with the same legal framework of analysis. Rather,we must see that as professionals with almost exclusive access to our system of justice, we have moral responsibilities totally outside the scope of the legal rules, and not amenable to analysis in terms of legal method. It is time to return to consideration of the moral and spiritual foundations of our legal system. It is time to train our law students to face the hard issues with a conceptual framework that transcends legal reasoning alone. It is a mistake to think that moral philosophy and value inquiry have no place in law offices or law schools. Laws reflect, and sometimes even help to form, the moral beliefs of society. To neglect the moral basis of law is to neglect the lifeblood of the norms that establish social order and preserve liberty. Lawyers who are truly sensitive to their role as moral agents in society will view their responsibility to the public as a necessary consequence of being entrusted with exclusive access to our cherished system of justice

10-21-1985 Correspondence from O\u27Connor to Stevens

You describe Agent Robillard\u27s testimony as involving an implied prior representation of which the declarant disclaims present knowledge, on the grounds that his qualification as an expert implied that he had a valid reason for reaching that conclusion at the time of his investigation. But the question reserved in Green involved an express prior representation specifically introduced bythe prosecution as substantive evidence. I see nothing in our cases that would justify embarking on the difficult and questionable enterprise of deciding when there has been an implied representation. In any event, in this case, Agent Robillard openly admitted at voir dire that he could not recall which reason was the basis for his conclusion. App. to Brief in Opposition A-1-A-2. That admission would seem to preclude finding any implied representation. Thus, unless the Confrontation Clause required the trial court to refuse to qualify Robillard as an expert witness because of his lapse of memory, your analysis would not affect the resolution of this case