Most in the Media Were Blindsided By Justice

In the end, it was conservative commentators William Kristol and Robert Novak who correctly anticipated the sudden resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Novak, a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, each had suggested that it would be O'Connor stepping down before the ailing William Rehnquist.

All eyes had been on the chief justice, who is battling thyroid cancer. But as she has done so often in her 24 years on the high court, O'Connor dominated the news from it.

It came as a surprise even to some of the journalists who cover her closely.

Joan Biskupic, a reporter for USA Today who has a biography of O'Connor in the works, said yesterday that she recently spoke to relatives of O'Connor who talked about work being a refuge for the jurist.

"Every way that I understood her, I never thought she would leave her job," Biskupic said.

"I didn't know until today that she was going to resign. I thought she would be reluctant to do so. . . . I think it just really shows her as an individual who is not going to listen to anyone, who can't be predicted."

Kristol decided to give it a shot. Calling it "well-informed speculation," on June 22 he wrote, "There are several tea-leaf-like suggestions that O'Connor may be stepping down, including the fact that she has apparently arranged to spend much more time in Arizona beginning this fall."

On the phone from Portugal, where he is attending an international relations conference, Kristol yesterday said that last month he called friends who were former Supreme Court clerks. There were signs, they told him. For example, O'Connor had hired only three of the four clerks she is allowed. His tea-leaf readers wondered if that meant she thought it better not to inconvenience a fourth person who would have to look for a job when she retired. The other big indicator, Kristol said, is that O'Connor had recently sold her house and moved with her husband into a condominium.

"All these things could have had other explanations, of course," he said, but "the thing that made it credible was also the increased talk about Rehnquist not stepping down.

"But if O'Connor wanted to step down, it would make sense . . . that Rehnquist would wait until she had stepped down and she had a successor. . . . Just putting all that together, then, it would seem reasonable that O'Connor would go first."

Novak, whose work appears in The Washington Post, wrote on Wednesday that "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now is considered more likely to quit than ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist."