Cezary Salad

Ever since I finished my high school civics class, I haven’t much thought about the importance of a civics education; after all, the basics of how our government works – the three branches, checks and balances, how a bill becomes a law – seem so obvious that the very subject shouldn’t perk one’s ear.

Not so when it’s coming from Sandra Day O’Connor, a 24-year veteran of the supreme court and the first woman to grace the nation’s highest bench when she was picked for the job by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Fresh from scooping up a Presidential Medal of Freedom in August 2009, O’Connor joined the United States Senate Youth Alumni Association (of which, fair disclosure, I am a member) for its annual gathering this weekend to receive an award for outstanding public service.

O’Connor didn’t sugar-coat the obvious: in recent years, American judges have faced increasing attack from politicians, well beyond what she’d call the “healthy criticism” an independent judiciary should welcome and expect in our free-speech society. She did not provide any examples, but one need only recall the last year’s accusations of racism and elitism leveled on current associate justice Sonia Sotomayor to realize that O’Connor has a point when she laments that politicians far too often choose to score “cheap points” with the public by decrying “elitist judges.”

The points are scored because the public accepts the criticisms as legitimate, even though they risk damaging the independence of the American judiciary. It was the absence of judicial independence in Colonial America, O’Connor said, that made the founding fathers reach for a system where Supreme Court justices were appointed by the President and approved by the Senate: one of the hallmarks of the system of checks-and-balances that protects the citizens from over-reaches of power by the government.

“Americans can’t understand the need for judicial independence,” O’Connor said, “until they understand the checks and balances in our political system.” In other words: basic civics.

And in this regard, she warned, America is sorely lacking: “Do you know what’s missing from public education?” she asked. “No more civics.”

She blamed this deficit on the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, the educational reform legislation championed by President George W. Bush. She didn’t go into details on this point, but the Act’s focus on standardized testing in math and science has frequently been criticized as a disincentive for schools to adopt a broader curriculum that also includes other important subjects, such as civics.

The consequence is almost comically dire. Only one out of seven Americans can identify John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, O’Connor said, while “two out of three can name at least two of the Three Stooges”.

To give John Roberts a hand in catching up with the Three Stooges, O’Connor has launched a civics education website – www.OurCourts.org – aimed at middle schoolers. For example: does a right to bear arms mean you can wear a sleeveless t-shirt or own a gun? Kids can find out for themselves by surfing the site.

She said she’s rolled-out the website in 38 states now and has just enlisted the help of recently retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter to introduce it to his fellow residents of New Hampshire.

Supreme Court justices stepping in to fill the civics education gap left by the No Child Left Behind Act? That’s what I call judicial activism - at its fiest.

P.S.: Other highlights from the evening included Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine remarking that it was – in the parlance of today’s youth – an “epic fail” when a law firm O’Connor applied for in the 1952 declined to offer her a job outside of a secretary position. “I certainly never thought I would end up as a Supreme Court Justice,” O’Connor said during her remarks: “A lot of people were surprised,” she added, “and that law firm that was only interested in having me as a secretary was surprised too.”