She calls herself “just an unemployed cowgirl trying to push stubborn old cows in the right direction,” but Sandra Day O'Connor has become an effective wrangler on behalf of an independent judiciary.

When she retired from the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2006, O'Connor quickly made herself free to get citizens involved in judicial independence issues at a time when opinion polls reflected public dissatisfaction with the courts.

The Sandra Day O'Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary was established at the Georgetown University Law Center, and she embarked on a trail of speaking engagements.

One of them was her keynote speech to the ISBA Conference on Judicial Independence and the Illinois Court System, an invitational conclave held April 10 at the Loyola University School of Law.

In addition to the ISBA and Loyola, sponsors included the William Rehnquist Center and the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

“Criticism of the courts is a sign that our democracy is working as it should,” O'Connor said, tracing disputes as far back as Thomas Jefferson's irritation with Chief Justice John Marshall.

Later, President Andrew Jackson defied a Supreme Court ruling that favored the rights of Native Americans to occupy Indian lands. And Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court with jurists who supported his New Deal policies.

The line between criticism of the courts and intimidation of the judiciary is too easily and too frequently crossed, O'Connor warned.

“The ultimate authority to protect judicial independence is in the hearts and minds of the people of this country,” she told the conference plenary. “That's where you come in.”

In O'Connor's view, education of young people about the judicial system has been largely abandoned, and high school civics is no longer a requirement.

She cited the prevailing emphasis on rewarding schools that test higher in mathematics, science and reading as “an unintended consequence” of the No Child Left Behind Act.

“How long can we continue?” she asked. “You in Illinois have to care about these things. Help us figure out what to do to educate students about the branches of government.”

Early in her remarks, Justice O'Connor noted that the increase of expensive, volatile election campaigns of judges seems to correspond with attacks on the judiciary.

In a subsequent panel, Chicago attorney Robert P. Cummins acknowledged that “we have a problem in Illinois because we elect judges,” and the cost of judicial elections results in a public perception that money influences opinions.

He went on record favoring an appointive process and judicial review, and opposing the concept of public funding of elections as impractical.

Cummins proposed a rule that would require mandatory recusal of a judge in any case that involved a contributor to his or her election campaign.

Rockford attorney Thomas S. Johnson, who chaired the panel, noted that in the 37 years since the Constitutional Convention's merit selection proposal was defeated, “judicial elections have become increasingly expensive, mean-spirited and issue oriented.”

In her concurrence, Justice O'Connor wrote that “If the state has a problem with judicial impartiality, it is largely one the state brought upon itself by continuing the practice of popularly electing judges.”

An afternoon panel on improving the state court system shifted the focus from judicial elections to retentions.

Appellate Justice James M. Wexstten, former chief judge of the 2nd Circuit, described his 2002 campaign for election to the Appellate Court as an “interesting race that convinced me not to run again.”

The process of trying to get endorsements from political officials in the 37 counties of the 5th District “is no way to elect judges,” he said. People said they voted for him, but had no idea what he was running for.

By contrast, Wexstten lauded the appointment process by which he was named recently to an appeals court vacancy from a group of 20 applicants who were screened by a committee.

On the topic of retention, Wexstten called for a performance evaluation system that will help explain to the public what attributes justify retaining a certain judge for additional service on the bench.

He suggested a need for determining minimum qualifications and finding a way to conduct judicial elections on a non-partisan basis.

Chicago attorney Gino L. DiVito, a retired appellate justice, chimed in with his view that a merit retention system is “eminently doable.”

Retention candidates “all run scared,” he said, “terrified that something negative could pop out” and jeopardize an entire class of sitting judges.

DiVito championed a bipartisan judicial retention commission process to identify those competent judges who merited automatic retention. Others would have to run on a retention ballot.