Slate senior editor and legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick joined Friday’s edition of Jose Diaz-Balart on MSNBC to discuss the death of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her legal legacy. Lithwick lamented that O’Connor being replaced by Samuel Alito has led to that legacy being “erased” and “vaporized” as the Court moves “very dramatically to the right.”
Diaz-Balart inquired, “Dahlia, you also covered Justice Day O'Connor during her time on the bench. What do you think her biggest impact on the Court was?”
Lithwick began her reply by declaring that O’Connor was the Court’s “swing vote” and “for a very long time, she was that centrist who determined which way the 5-4 would go on so many seminal issues: affirmative action, on abortion, on church-state, on campaign finance. It was her way that determined how the country went.”
That legacy of centrism was “in some sense because she was replaced, don't forget, by Samuel Alito, who moved the Court very dramatically to the right, there is a way in which her legacy was almost erased by virtue of who replaced her.”
Continuing with that theme, Lithwick claimed that in “So many of the areas of the law where she kind of held fast were more or less vaporized when Justice Alito took her seat and I think the other thing I would say is she was the last member of the Supreme Court ever to have held elected office. She really knew how politics worked. And that leached into so much of the way she thought about doctrine. She understood in a way that I'm not sure any of the members of the current Court understand what it is to run for office.”
Putting aside the fact that the Supreme Court isn’t supposed to be lake a legislature, when was the last time MSNBC or Lithwick-- was once claimed Justice John Paul Stevens embraced his "inner 'wise Latina woman'"-- decried a conservative having their legacy “vaporized” by somebody to their left?
Here is a transcript for the Decmeber 1 show:
MSNBC Jose Diaz-Balart Reports
11:45 AM ET
12/1/2023
JOSE DIAZ-BALART: Dahlia, you also covered Justice Day O'Connor during her time on the bench. What do you think her biggest impact on the Court was?
DAHLIA LITHWICK: It’s so interesting, you just heard two versions of the same O'Connor story, which is she was the swing vote. I mean, for a very long time, she was that centrist who determined which way the 5-4 would go on so many seminal issues: affirmative action, on abortion, on church-state, on campaign finance. It was her way that determined how the country went.
And in some sense because she was replaced, don't forget, by Samuel Alito, who moved the Court very dramatically to the right, there is a way in which her legacy was almost erased by virtue of who replaced her.
So many of the areas of the law where she kind of held fast were more or less vaporized when Justice Alito took her seat and I think the other thing I would say is she was the last member of the Supreme Court ever to have held elected office. She really knew how politics worked. And that leached into so much of the way she thought about doctrine. She understood in a way that I'm not sure any of the members of the current Court understand what it is to run for office.
