Justice O'Connor's Website on Courts is Under Construction

In a Fox News interview conducted by Chris Wallace Sunday, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor revealed that she is developing a website to introduce children to the American court system.

WALLACE: So what do you hope that this Web site, which I know you're still building — what will it accomplish?

O'CONNOR: Well, in many, if not most, high schools today, civics education is no longer required. And I don't know how long we can survive as a nation if we don't teach every generation how our government is structured and works.

I regard that as a very important thing for our public schools to teach. It's critical for every generation to learn it. You don't inherit that knowledge through the gene pool.

Indeed, when we got a Bill of Rights giving every citizen the right to due process of law, to freedom of speech, and freedom of religion and so on, the only way that can be enforced is to give courts the power to overturn actions by the legislative or executive branch that impinge on those freedoms. And that's how it has to be enforced.

So if you start imposing sanctions and punishment on judges for particular decisions within their jurisdiction, we have a problem.

WALLACE: But some of the critics would come back to you and say the reason we're critical, the reason we want to put these restrictions on, is because judges are overstepping their bounds.

O'CONNOR: Well, that's fine. They're free to say that. But to take a particular judge and try to impeach them for some decision, or take other sanctions of that nature, goes clearly against the constitutional structure. We don't do that.

What we're going to try to do is to create an interactive program that will be found on the Web site, on one's computer, and make it fun so that the student using it can play the role of judge and decide an actual issue, and then compare it with what might actually have happened.

I mean, there are going to be all kinds of ways to use this so that the learning process will be engaging and fun.

I'm pretty certain this is a first for one of the Supremes but you never know about Justice Scalia ... he may be blogging on golf or hunting or hunting golfers.

Hat tip to Mitchell Rubinstein, editor of the Law Professor Blogs Network's latest blog, Adjunct Law Prof Blog. Check out Mitch's blog! [JH]