Presiding over a trial is a remarkable experience

“The whole experience of presiding over a trial in court is a remarkable experience. You see every kind of human emotion and human value expressed and you see people in very tense situations and you listen in detail to some remarkable problems and situations of every kind. . . . You have an inside look at crime and the kind of criminal behavior that we’ve all wrong our hands in an effort to stop. . . . There are moments of great pathos in a courtroom and there are moments of levity and there are moments of boredom.”

Sandra Day O’Connor, quoted in Joan Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), pp. 65-66 (quoting Linda Kauss, “A Day in Court With Judge Sandra O’Connor,” Phoenix Gazette, Sept. 11, 1974).