Politics & Power Quote by Sandra Day O'Connor

O'Connor is doing something characteristically judicial: describing a procedural quirk in plain language while quietly flagging its enormous stakes. By calling the Supreme Court "virtually alone" in how much discretion it has, she punctures a common American myth that the Court is simply the place where the biggest legal questions naturally rise. They don't. They are chosen.

The specific intent is comparative and corrective. She's reminding listeners that "certiorari" is not a neutral administrative convenience but a concentrated power: nine people decide which conflicts become national law and which remain regional noise. In many constitutional systems, high courts are closer to compulsory arbiters, required to take certain categories of appeals. The U.S. model, by contrast, allows the Court to curate its own docket - shaping the country's legal agenda as much as resolving it.

The subtext carries an institutional warning: discretion is legitimacy's double-edged sword. It lets the Court avoid messy, premature, or poorly framed cases, and it can protect scarce judicial bandwidth. It also invites strategic behavior and suspicion. If the Court can pick the fights, critics can argue it is manufacturing controversies, timing decisions for maximum impact, or ducking issues that would expose internal fractures.

Context matters here: O'Connor, a centrist and habitual steward of the Court's public standing, is pointing to a power that sits upstream of every headline ruling. The most consequential decision may be the one the Court declines to make.