O'Connor, Sandra Day
1930–2023
Sandra Day O'Connor — Reagan's first SCOTUS appointment, the swing vote of the Rehnquist Court — built her post-retirement work around defending judicial independence and civic education through iCivics. Cornyn fits the O'Connor framework substantially well: he is himself a former Texas Supreme Court Justice (1991-1997) and former Texas Attorney General (1999-2002) with decades of Senate Judiciary Committee work, his judicial-nomination process leadership has been consistently institutional, and his certification of the 2020 election represents the kind of institutional defense O'Connor's late-career speeches called for. Paxton's record represents exactly the institutional pressure on judicial independence O'Connor warned about: the Texas v. Pennsylvania election lawsuit, the Tribune/ProPublica forum-shopping practices, and the pending State Bar professional misconduct case are the embodiment of the legal-ethics framework O'Connor championed.
Sources
- Patrick Svitek, 'Ken Paxton emerges victorious from yet another career scandal,' Texas Tribune, Sept. 17, 2023. (full list)
- Texas Tribune / ProPublica, 'Paxton files lawsuits in courts that could have more favorable outcomes,' May 20, 2026. (full list)
- Cornyn as senior Senate Judiciary Committee Republican (2015-present); record on confirmations of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson; Cornyn-Coons Sunshine in the Courtroom Act. (full list)
- State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr., professional misconduct case filed 2022 over Texas v. Pennsylvania (2020) election lawsuit; Texas Supreme Court procedural rulings 2024-2026; State Bar of Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct. (full list)
- Sandra Day O'Connor, 'The Majesty of the Law' (2003); Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992); founding of iCivics (2009); public speeches on judicial independence (2010-2020); 'Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court' (2013). (full list)