This started as a comment on someone else's diary, in which the question was posed why O'Connor is "doing this to us" by leaving the court. By the time I'd written myself out, that diary was off the page. (My answer in the comment title was, "I dunno -- because she's a scrofulous idiot?"). Here then is my full response, in my own diary.
I have no warm fuzzies for Justice O'Connor whatsoever... (continues on flip)
She is only appealing compared with someone like Alito (or Brooks-Bros-riot Roberts, for that matter), in the way one would rather have psoriasis than smallpox.
In her disgusting performance on Bush v. Gore, not only did she commit treason to invalidate the votes of perhaps thousands of Floridians and install Bush in a bloodless coup d'etat, but in the process she uttered perhaps THE stupidest oral argument question ever asked by a sitting justice (to the effect of, "why can't they [voters who did not cast a vote that was read by the voting machines] follow directions, for goodness sakes?") (As I recall, David Boies tried politely to inform her that this was legally irrelvant if the intent of the voter could be discerned, while somehow avoiding screaming at her something like "you blithering idiot you have just revealed that you have no understanding whatsoever of the entire legal question before you, FOR GOODNESS SAKES...").
She had so little imagination as a justice that though she somehow realized that it might be a problem for women to have to get their husbands' permission to get an abortion, she could not realize that a waiting period did in fact also impose an "undue burden" for many poor women.
She installed Bush, against her own legal principles (if she has any coherent ones), against the law, against the consitution, against the basic principle of democracy that you have a fair election by counting all the votes you can. For that act alone, she deserves the undying contempt of everyone who loves democracy, and who loves the law. From that act, it should surprise no one, came a president who governs from a decidedly minority electoral power base, who sees no legal or consitutional restrictions on his powers at all, and whose idea of suitable supreme court appontees elevates those who nod approvingly at such a lawless and omnipotent executive.
If O'Connor had a saving grace, it was that she was so incompetent and narrow in her legal understanding that she was inhospitable to anyone with big ideas, including the Scalias among her own political kin. But if the man she appointed to the presidency ultimately prevails, as he is earnestly trying to do, in destroying the consitutional republic of the United States as we know it, then no one will ask in ten or twenty years about all her 5-4 opinions and "practical" legal reasoning, because the Court itself will exist, if at all, only as some vestigial body, adding a meaningless legal imprimatur to the acts of disctators, akin to the courts of Stalin.
I agree with the sentiment of the question, "how could she do this to us (stepping down)?" in this way: having seen the recklessness, the war of deceit, the through-the-looking-glass economics, the loss of a whole American city, the sheer incompetence, the compulsive lawlessness of George Bush, even Sandra Day should have recognized her horrible mistake, and should sit on the court in penance until Bush leaves office or she leaves this world. Her incompetence has proved more benign than what any successor from Bush is likely to do, and she herself has now written eloquently about the consitutional limits of executive power, again showing a minor penchant for the winning phrase, that war "is not a blank check" for unchecked powers.
But she did not choose this path of staying on, and I would assume she could not. Because, in the end, the mediocrity of her judicial legacy, which on the Rehnquist Court served as comparative, if inadvertant, wisdom, is partner to the mediocity of her attachment to the law itself. HOw else explain that someone could say "no blank check" and then, by stepping down, hand over such a check herself? In the end, I just don't think she cares enough.
Some have pointed out her stated reason for leaving, that her husband is sick. Normally this would inspire sympathy or at least pity in me. But I find I have none for her. We all make sacrifices in the cause of duty. Down the road apace from her seat at the Court is Walter Reed Hospital, where I believe lie the legless, the armless, the people who will never fuck again, never see again, never go to the bathroom by themselves again ever because of the monstrosity she ushered into the White House. They are there because they served their country under the leadership of fools she helped put in power, and these unwanted legacies of service will be with them forever. Perhaps she can have a care for them too, as part of her own service, and her own duty.
So yes, I would rather she stayed on the Court for now. But I would hope that in years to come, her true legacy will be recognized for what it is, and her opinions will lie dust-covered and unread, and if her name is mentioned at all, somone will mutter, yes, wasn't she the first woman on the court? Too bad she helped kill an election and bring in that would-be Mussolini Bush! Thankfully those days are behind us now. For goodness sakes.