WASHINGTON -- Among the officials expressing fond remembrances of Ronald Reagan last week, one stood out -- not because her sentiments were different, but because of who she is: Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
It was a surprise to see O'Connor praising Reagan because Supreme Court justices traditionally haven't talked about politics or political figures, even the presidents who appointed them. Their lifetime tenures on the court place them literally above politics. They sit, truly, in an ivory tower, and their opinions are assumed to reflect a detachment from political life, even the politics of mourning.
Like everyone else, Supreme Court justices have political views, but their reluctance to express them signals a commitment to view cases as objectively as possible: In their reticence to speak out, the justices convey an awareness that they weren't placed on the court to produce fixed outcomes.
Until recently, that is. Lately, Supreme Court justices can't stop talking -- offering their own views in interviews or giving speeches to groups with partisan interests in Supreme Court cases.
O'Connor is not the most egregious offender, and her comments came in the context of mourning an important figure, but they were striking nonetheless.
Calling Reagan ''gracious, warm, easygoing," a wistful O'Connor recalled for a ''60 Minutes II" interviewer her first trip to the Oval Office and the charming man who awaited her there.
She went home to Arizona convinced she wouldn't get the job, but a few days later Reagan nominated her to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, an important landmark. She has served 23 years.
Then the interviewer, Scott Pelley, shifted to a different subject -- O'Connor's votes in actual court decisions. In a highly polarized environment, where the confirmations of even lower-court judges become occasions for ideological litmus tests, O'Connor has been an independent thinker. As the court's most frequent ''swing" vote, she arguably put George W. Bush in office, but also helped preserve abortion rights and affirmative action, two causes for which Reagan had no sympathy.
So, Pelley asked, how would Reagan view her votes on civil rights and social issues?
''I don't know, I wish I did," she said. ''He was a remarkable president, and he understood the country well. And I like to think that he would have understood that as well."
Simply acknowledging that she worried about Reagan's approval was probably saying too much, and referring to the fact that he ''understood the country well" may reinforce the suspicion of some legal scholars that O'Connor helped preserve abortion rights and affirmative action because she feared political and social unrest if they were overruled. (In future cases, advocates might tailor their arguments accordingly.)
There is no question, however, that O'Connor revealed far less of her thinking than her colleagues Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have done.
Put aside Scalia's duck-hunting trip with Vice President Dick Cheney and his refusal to recuse himself from a case involving Cheney's energy task force. The Los Angeles Times recently revealed that a year ago, while the court considered the legality of a Texas law criminalizing sodomy, Scalia gave an unpaid speech to the Urban Family Council of Philadelphia, a group dedicated to overturning gay rights.
Meanwhile, the Times also reported that Ginsburg, a Clinton appointee, lent her name and presence to the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund, which created a Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series.
Ginsburg, in refusing to recuse herself from cases in which the NOW defense fund took an interest, said of the lectureship: ''I think and thought and still think it's a lovely thing. Let the lecture speak for itself."
But since the NOW defense fund is one of the nation's leading supporters of abortion rights, it's not hard to know what the lecture will say: Protect and preserve a constitutional right to abortion.
Ginsburg expressed satisfaction with the Supreme Court's conflict-of-interest rules, which are as loose as a wet strand of spaghetti compared with those applied to other federal judges.
''In the end, it's a decision the individual justice makes, but always with consultation among us," she said.
Why, then, are the justices so willing to tolerate the appearance of political bias? Sadly, the most logical explanation is that after the confirmation donnybrooks of recent years, and after Bush v. Gore, they believe the justices' political views are such an open secret that it's no use holding back.
In the post-Robert Bork era, high-court nominees have become so aware of who are their friends and who are their enemies that the whole notion of impartiality is being undermined: If nominees weren't fixed in their ideologies before confirmation, they're hardened by the bruises they pick up on their way to the bench.
Therefore, Scalia sees no problem in helping out a conservative group and Ginsburg in assisting the liberals. O'Connor's mixed views don't give her the benefit or curse of an established cheering section, so she pines for the approval of the man who put her on the court.
In the highest reaches of the law, like the deepest recesses of the bedroom, there's danger in revealing too much.