Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will visit Cornell Law School as its Distinguished Jurist in Residence during the week of Oct. 22.

"Justice O'Connor's extraordinary life in the law began long before her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court and has definitely not ended with her retirement," says Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law and a former law clerk for O'Connor. "She continues to serve as a beacon on important issues of the day, and the Law School is honored that she will be here to share her wisdom and insights with the Cornell and Ithaca communities."

O'Connor is expected to judge a moot court competition, visit with various Law School student groups, teach a class at Ithaca High School and deliver an open lecture on the importance of an independent judiciary.

O'Connor and Schwab also will present a faculty workshop spotlighting an article they are co-authoring on the future of affirmative action. The springboard for this is O'Connor's opinion for the Supreme Court in the Grutter v. Bollinger case, which held that the law school at the University of Michigan had a compelling interest in the "educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body," which justified consideration of race in admissions. In a part of that opinion that has been the subject of intense debate and commentary, O'Connor stated that "[t]he court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

The Law School's Distinguished Jurist in Residence program was initiated in 2005 and has brought some of the nation's foremost judges to Cornell Law School, including Judge Robert Katzmann and Judge Richard Wesley, both of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.