BOCA RATON, Fla. — As the country mourns the passing of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a Florida Atlantic University professor is recalling his meeting with her.
Political science professor Kevin Wagner came face-to-face with the trailblazing court justice nearly 20 years ago.
He said the encounter with O'Connor has brought him a "badge of pride ever since."
"I did get the opportunity, relatively briefly, when I served as a fellow of the Supreme Court Historical Society back in the early 2000s," Wagner said.
The opportunity that Wagner speaks of was when he met O'Connor in Washington, D.C.
"I got to tell her a little bit about my background, and I had been a lawyer and was becoming a professor," Wagner said. "I still recall her judicial ruling at the time was that I was officially a reformed lawyer."
He recalled that she possessed a sense of gravitas.
"Did you take away any lessons from that conversation?" WPTV reporter Tory Dunnan asked.
"One of the things that always impressed me … is how quickly she was able to size me up and assess who I was, and that's a gift of a judge," Wagner said. "She very much knew who was standing in front of her, what to make out of them and judge who they were."
Court observers and political experts would always observe that she was instrumental in a historic debate and ruling in 2000.
"She was part of a lot of famous rulings, part of the Bush vs. Gore ruling as well. I think it's hard sometimes for people to see that judges are also political animals as well," Wagner said. "I think that's a very small part of who she was as a justice. In fact, I think that one of the truths about her absence of the Supreme Court was that she was much more successful at coalition building and working with the other justices on the court than has often been true with what we see more recently."