Too Bad O'Connor Left The Court

O'Connor: More Terror-Related Decisions Await Court

It's a damn shame that we do not have O'connor's voice on the SCOTUS bench at this time... Instead we have a bunch of ultra-conservatives with a religious-based ideology... even if it is only a de facto religious basis for the ideology.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Monday she believed the war on terror was only at the beginning, and the challenge of balancing national security against the protection of civil liberties will be a key issue in the coming years.

O'Connor, speaking in the tiny mountainous principality of Liechtenstein, said the United States had at times failed to strike that "delicate balance" correctly in the past, erring too greatly on the side of national security.

She refused, however, to assess whether the approach adopted by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, or the Court she left in January, has been the right one since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"If we lose sight of liberty in an effort to conquer our enemies, the price may have been too high," O'Connor told a crowd of about 100 in the city hall of Liechtenstein's capital, Vaduz. "We will have forfeited the very principles that initially prompted us to take up the battle."