being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us.

The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member - male or female. They were all kind and welcoming.

We don't accomplish anything in this world alone.

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.

It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. Thats set out in the Constitution.

The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution and the Court is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it. And I'm not sure the recent generations have done that good a job of learning about it.