June 26, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Sandra Day O’Connor does not play video games. But she believes in their potential.
In her keynote speech at the Games for Change conference in New York this month, the retired Supreme Court justice discussed her latest project, Our Courts, an online interactive digital game and civics curriculum designed for seventh to ninth graders. The game will allow players to tackle real legal issues by applying existing laws and arguing cases against each other and against the computer.
The project grew out of Justice O’Connor’s concern about “vitriolic attacks on judges” by members of Congress and other interest groups. “These attacks have come with various attempts to try to influence judicial decision making,” she said.
In September 2006, about eight months after Justice O’Connor retired from the court, she, along with Justice Stephen Breyer, organized a two-day conference on the state of the judiciary.
The outcome of the conference, said Justice O’Connor, was a consensus that “public education was the only long-term solution to preserving an independent judiciary and, more importantly, to preserving a robust constitutional democracy.”
At the age of 78, Justice O’Connor acknowledges that she is an unlikely game developer.
“If you had told me when I retired from the Supreme Court two years ago that I would be speaking at a digital-game conference, I would have been very skeptical. I’d maybe think you had one drink too many,” she said, to appreciative laughter. “I have not had much exposure to this world.”
Our Courts is a joint effort by Arizona State University and the Sandra Day O’Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary at the Georgetown University Law Center. The interactive curriculum is expected to be available to schools this fall and the game the following year.
For more information: Go to http://www.ourcourts.org.
