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Sandra Day O'Connor

Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. A moderate conservative, she was considered a swing vote. Before O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was an Arizona state judge and earlier an elected legislator in Arizona, serving as the first female majority leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate.

O'Connor usually sided with the Court's conservative bloc but on occasion sided with the Court's liberal members. She often wrote concurring opinions that sought to limit the reach of the majority holding. Her majority opinions in landmark cases include Grutter v. Bollinger and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. In 2000, she wrote in part the per curiam majority opinion in Bush v. Gore and in 1992 was one of three co-authors of the lead opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that preserved legal access to abortion in the United States. On July 1, 2005, O'Connor announced her retirement, effective upon the confirmation of a successor. At the time of her death, O'Connor was the last living member of the Burger Court. Samuel Alito was nominated to take her seat in October 2005, and joined the Supreme Court on January 31, 2006.

During her term on the Court, O'Connor was regarded as among the most powerful women in the world. After retiring, she succeeded Henry Kissinger as the chancellor of the College of William & Mary. In 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Early life and education
Sandra Day was born on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Harry Alfred Day, a rancher, and Ada Mae (Wilkey). She grew up on a 198,000-acre family cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona and in El Paso where she attended school. Her home was nine miles from the nearest paved road, and did not have running water or electricity until Sandra was seven years old. As a youth she owned a .22-caliber rifle, and would shoot coyotes and jackrabbits. She began driving as soon as she could see over the dashboard, and had to learn to change flat tires herself. Sandra had two younger siblings, a sister and a brother, respectively eight and ten years her junior. Her sister Ann Day was a member of the Arizona Legislature from 1990 to 2000. Her brother was H. Alan Day, a lifelong rancher, with whom she wrote Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest (2002), about their childhood experiences on the ranch. For most of her early schooling, Day lived in El Paso with her maternal grandmother, and attended school at the Radford School for Girls, a private school, as the family ranch was very distant from any school, although Day was able to return to the ranch for holidays and the summer. Day did spend her eighth-grade year living at the ranch and riding a bus 32 miles to school. She graduated sixth in her class at Austin High School in El Paso in 1946.

When she was 16 years old, Day enrolled at Stanford University and later graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1950. She continued at Stanford Law School for her law degree in 1952. There, she served on the Stanford Law Review whose then presiding editor-in-chief was future Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist. Day and Rehnquist also dated in 1950. The relationship ended upon Rehnquist's graduation and move to Washington, D.C.; however, in 1951, he proposed marriage in a letter, but Day did not accept the proposal (which was one of four she received while a student at Stanford). Day achieved the Order of the Coif, indicating she was in the top 10 percent of her class.

Early career and marriage
While in her final year at Stanford Law School, Day began dating John Jay O'Connor III, who was one class year behind her. On December 20, 1952, six months after her graduation, O'Connor and Day married at her family's ranch.

Upon graduation from law school in 1952, O'Connor had difficulty finding a paying job as an attorney in a law firm because of her gender. O'Connor found employment as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California, after she offered to work for no salary and without an office, sharing space with a secretary. After a few months, she began drawing a small salary as she performed legal research and wrote memos. She worked with San Mateo County District Attorney Louis Dematteis and deputy district attorney Keith Sorensen.

When her husband was drafted, O'Connor decided to go with him to work in Germany as a civilian attorney for the Army's Quartermaster Corps. They remained there for three years before returning to the States where they settled in Maricopa County, Arizona, to begin their family. They had three sons: Scott (born 1958), Brian (born 1960), and Jay (born 1962). Following Brian's birth, O'Connor took a five-year hiatus from the practice of law.

She volunteered in various political organizations, such as the Maricopa County Young Republicans, and served on Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964.

O'Connor served as assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965 to 1969. In 1969, the governor of Arizona appointed O'Connor to fill a vacancy in the Arizona Senate. She ran for and won the election for the seat the following year. By 1973, she became the first woman to serve as Arizona's or any state's majority leader. She developed a reputation as a skilled negotiator and a moderate. After serving two full terms, O'Connor decided to leave the Senate.

In 1974, O'Connor was appointed to the Maricopa County Superior Court, serving from 1975 to 1979 when she was elevated to the Arizona Court of Appeals. She served on the Court of Appeals-Division One until 1981 when she was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan.

Nomination and confirmation
On July 7, 1981, Reagan – who had pledged during his 1980 presidential campaign to appoint the first woman to the Court – announced he would nominate O'Connor as an associate justice of the Supreme Court to replace the retiring Potter Stewart. O'Connor received notification from President Reagan of her nomination on the day prior to the announcement and did not know that she was a finalist for the position.

Reagan wrote in his diary on July 6, 1981: "Called Judge O'Connor and told her she was my nominee for supreme court. Already the flak is starting and from my own supporters. Right to Life people say she is pro abortion. She declares abortion is personally repugnant to her. I think she'll make a good justice." O'Connor told Reagan she did not remember whether she had supported repealing Arizona's law banning abortion. However, she had cast a preliminary vote in the Arizona State Senate in 1970 in favor of a bill to repeal the state's criminal-abortion statute. In 1974, O'Connor had opined against a measure to prohibit abortions in some Arizona hospitals. Anti-abortion and religious groups opposed O'Connor's nomination because they suspected, correctly, she would not be willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. U.S. Senate Republicans, including Don Nickles of Oklahoma, Steve Symms of Idaho, and Jesse Helms of North Carolina called the White House to express their discontent over the nomination; Nickles said he and "other profamily Republican senators would not support O'Connor". Helms, Nickles, and Symms nevertheless reluctantly voted for confirmation.

Reagan formally nominated O'Connor on August 19, 1981. Conservative activists such as the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Howard Phillips, and Peter Gemma also spoke out against the nomination. Gemma called the nomination "a direct contradiction of the Republican platform to everything that candidate Reagan said and even President Reagan has said in regard to social issues." Gemma, the executive director of the National Pro-Life Political Action Committee, had sought to delay O'Connor's confirmation by challenging her record, including support for the Equal Rights Amendment.

O'Connor's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on September 9, 1981. It was the first televised confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice. The confirmation hearing lasted three days and largely focused on the issue of abortion. When asked, O'Connor refused to telegraph her views on abortion, and she was careful not to leave the impression that she supported abortion rights. The Judiciary Committee approved O'Connor with seventeen votes in favor and one vote of present.

On September 21, O'Connor was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with a vote of 99–0. Only Senator Max Baucus of Montana was absent from the vote. He sent O'Connor a copy of A River Runs Through It by way of apology. In her first year on the Court, she received over 60,000 letters from the public, more than any other justice in history.

Tenure
O'Connor said she felt a responsibility to demonstrate women could do the job of justice. She faced some practical concerns, including the lack of a women's restroom near the Courtroom.

Two years after O'Connor joined the Court, The New York Times published an editorial that mentioned the "nine men" of the "SCOTUS", or Supreme Court of the United States. O'Connor responded with a letter to the editor reminding the Times that the Court was no longer composed of nine men and referred to herself as FWOTSC (First Woman on the Supreme Court).

O'Connor was a proponent of collegiality among justices on the court, often insisting that the justices eat lunch together.

In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second female Supreme Court justice. O'Connor said that she felt relief from the media clamor when she no longer was the only woman on the Court. In May 2010, O'Connor warned female Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan about the "unpleasant" process of confirmation hearings.

Supreme Court jurisprudence
Initially, O'Connor's voting record aligned closely with the conservative William Rehnquist (voting with him 87% of the time during her first three years at the Court). From that time until 1998, O'Connor's alignment with Rehnquist ranged from 93.4% to 63.2%, hitting above 90% in three of those years. In nine of her first 16 years on the Court, O'Connor voted with Rehnquist more than with any other justice.

Later on, as the Court's make-up became more conservative (e.g., Anthony Kennedy replacing Lewis Powell, and Clarence Thomas replacing Thurgood Marshall), O'Connor often became the swing vote on the Court. However, she usually disappointed the Court's more liberal bloc in contentious 5–4 decisions: from 1994 to 2004, she joined the traditional conservative bloc of Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Thomas 82 times; she joined the liberal bloc of John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer only 28 times.

O'Connor's relatively small shift away from conservatives on the Court seems to have been due at least in part to Thomas' views. When Thomas and O'Connor were voting on the same side, she would typically write a separate opinion of her own, refusing to join his. In the 1992 term, O'Connor did not join a single one of Thomas's dissents.

Some notable cases in which O'Connor joined the majority in a 5–4 decision were:
 * McConnell v. FEC,, upholding the constitutionality of most of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill regulating "soft money" contributions.
 * Grutter v. Bollinger, and Gratz v. Bollinger,, O'Connor wrote the opinion of the Court in Grutter and joined the majority in Gratz. In this pair of cases, the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program was held to have engaged in unconstitutional reverse discrimination, but the more limited type of affirmative action in the University of Michigan Law School's admissions program was held to have been constitutional.
 * Lockyer v. Andrade, : O'Connor wrote the majority opinion, with the four conservative justices concurring, that a 50-year to life sentence without parole for petty shoplifting a few children's videotapes under California's three strikes law was not cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment because there was no "clearly established" law to that effect. Leandro Andrade, a Latino nine-year Army veteran and father of three, will be eligible for parole in 2046 at age 87.
 * Zelman v. Simmons-Harris,, O'Connor joined the majority holding that the use of school vouchers for religious schools did not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.
 * United States v. Lopez, : O'Connor joined a majority holding unconstitutional the Gun-Free School Zones Act as beyond Congress' Commerce Clause power.
 * Bush v. Gore,, O'Connor joined with four other justices on December 12, 2000, to rule on the Bush v. Gore case that ceased challenges to the results of the 2000 presidential election (ruling to stop the ongoing Florida election recount and to allow no further recounts). This case effectively ended Al Gore's hopes to become president. Some legal scholars have argued that she should have recused herself from this case, citing several reports that she became upset when the media initially announced that Gore had won Florida, with her husband explaining that they would have to wait another four years before retiring to Arizona. O'Connor expressed surprise that the decision became controversial. Some people in Washington stopped shaking her hand after the decision, and Arthur Miller confronted her about it at the Kennedy Center.

O'Connor played an important role in other notable cases, such as:
 * Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, : This decision upheld as constitutional state restrictions on second trimester abortions that are not necessary to protect maternal health, contrary to the original trimester requirements in Roe v. Wade. Although O'Connor joined the majority, which also included Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, and Byron White, in a concurring opinion she refused to explicitly overturn Roe.

On February 22, 2005, with Rehnquist and Stevens (who were senior to her) absent, she became the senior justice presiding over oral arguments in the case of Kelo v. City of New London and becoming the first woman to do so before the Court.

First Amendment
O'Connor was unpredictable in many of her court decisions, especially those regarding First Amendment Establishment Clause issues. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, "O'Connor was a conservative, but she saw the complexity of church-state issues and tried to choose a course that respected the country's religious diversity" (Hudson 2005). O'Connor voted in favor of religious institutions, such as in Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995), Mitchell v. Helms (2000), and Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002). Conversely, in Lee v. Weisman she was part of the majority in the case that saw religious prayer and pressure to stand in silence at a graduation ceremony as part of a religious act that coerced people to support or participate in religion, which the Establishment Clause strictly prohibits. This is consistent with a similar case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, involving prayer at a school football game. In this case, O'Connor joined the majority opinion that stated prayer at school football games violates the Establishment Clause. O'Connor was the first justice to articulate the "no endorsement" standard for the Establishment Clause. In Lynch v. Donnelly, O'Connor signed onto a five-justice majority opinion holding that a nativity scene in a public Christmas display did not violate the First Amendment. She penned a concurrence in that case, opining that the crèche did not violate the Establishment Clause because it did not express an endorsement or disapproval of any religion. In Board of County Commissioners, Wabaunsee County, Kansas v Umbehr (1996) she upheld the application of first amendment free speech rights to independent contractors working for public bodies, being unpersuaded "that there is a 'difference of constitutional magnitude' ... between independent contractors and employees" in circumstances where a contractor has been critical of a governing body.

Fourth Amendment
According to law professor Jeffrey Rosen, "O'Connor was an eloquent opponent of intrusive group searches that threatened privacy without increasing security. In a 1983 opinion upholding searches by drug-sniffing dogs, she recognized that a search is most likely to be considered constitutionally reasonable if it is very effective at discovering contraband without revealing innocent but embarrassing information." Washington College of Law professor Andrew Taslitz, referencing O'Connor's dissent in a 2001 case, said of her Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: "O'Connor recognizes that needless humiliation of an individual is an important factor in determining Fourth Amendment reasonableness." O'Connor once quoted the social contract theory of John Locke as influencing her views on the reasonableness and constitutionality of government action.

Cases involving race
In McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), O'Connor joined a 5–4 majority that voted to uphold the death penalty for an African American man, Warren McCleskey, convicted of killing a white police officer, despite statistical evidence that Black defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty than others both in Georgia and in the U.S. as a whole.

In the 1990 and 1995 Missouri v. Jenkins rulings, O'Connor voted with the majority that Federal district courts had no authority to require the state of Missouri to increase school funding to counteract racial inequality. In the 1991 case Freeman v. Pitts, O'Connor joined a concurring opinion in a plurality, agreeing that a school district that had formerly been under judicial review for racial segregation could be freed of this review, even though not all desegregation targets had been met. Law professor Herman Schwartz criticized these rulings, writing that in both cases "both the fact and effects of segregation were still present".

In 1996's Shaw v. Hunt and Shaw v. Reno, O'Connor joined a Rehnquist opinion, following an earlier precedent from an opinion she authored in 1993, in which the Court struck down an electoral districting plan designed to facilitate the election of two Black representatives out of 12 from North Carolina, a state that had not had any Black representative since Reconstruction, despite being approximately 20% Black – the Court held that the districts were unacceptably gerrymandered and O'Connor called the odd shape of the district in question, North Carolina's 12th, "bizarre".

Law professor Herman Schwartz called O'Connor "the Court's leader in its assault on racially oriented affirmative action", although she joined with the Court in upholding the constitutionality of limited race-based admissions to universities.

In 2003, O'Connor authored a majority Supreme Court opinion (Grutter v. Bollinger) saying racial affirmative action should not be constitutional permanently, but long enough to correct past discrimination – with an approximate limit of around 25 years.

Abortion
The Christian right element in the Reagan coalition strongly supported him in 1980, in the belief that he would appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. They were astonished and dismayed when his first appointment was O'Connor, who they feared would tolerate abortion. They worked hard to defeat her confirmation but failed. In her confirmation hearings and early days on the Court, O'Connor was carefully ambiguous on the issue of abortion, as some conservatives questioned her anti-abortion credentials based on some of her votes in the Arizona legislature. O'Connor generally dissented from 1980s opinions which took an expansive view of Roe v. Wade; she criticized that decision's "trimester approach" sharply in her dissent in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health. (1983) She criticized Roe in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (1986): "... I dispute not only the wisdom but also the legitimacy of the Court's attempt to discredit and pre-empt state abortion regulation regardless of the interests it serves and the impact it has." In 1989, O'Connor stated during the deliberations over the Webster case that she would not overrule Roe. While on the Court, O'Connor did not vote to strike down any restrictions on abortion until Hodgson v. Minnesota in 1990.

O'Connor allowed certain limits to be placed on access to abortion, but supported the right to abortion established by Roe. In the landmark ruling Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), O'Connor used a test she had originally developed in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health to limit the holding of Roe v. Wade, opening up a legislative portal where a State could enact measures so long as they did not place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to an abortion. Casey revised downward the standard of scrutiny federal courts would apply to state abortion restrictions, a major departure from Roe. However, it preserved Roe 's core constitutional precept: that the Fourteenth Amendment implies and protects a woman's fundamental right to control the outcomes of her reproductive actions. Writing the plurality opinion for the Court, O'Connor, along with Kennedy and Souter, famously declared: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."

Commentary and analysis
O'Connor's case-by-case approach routinely placed her in the center of the Court and drew both criticism and praise. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, for example, described her as lacking a judicial philosophy and instead displaying "political positioning embedded in a social agenda." Conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru wrote that, even though O'Connor "has voted reasonably well", her tendency to issue very case-specific rulings "undermines the predictability of the law and aggrandizes the judicial role."

Law clerks serving the Court in 2000 speculated that the decision she reached in Bush v. Gore was based on a desire to appear fair, rather than on any legal rationale, pointing to a memo she sent out the night before the decision was issued that used entirely different logic to reach the same result. They also characterized her approach to cases as deciding on "gut feelings".

Other activities while serving on the Court
In 2003, she wrote a book titled The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice (ISBN 0-375-50925-9). In 2005, she wrote a children's book, Chico: A True Story from the Childhood of the First Woman Supreme Court Justice, named for her favorite horse, which offered an autobiographical depiction of her childhood.

Retirement
On December 12, 2000, The Wall Street Journal reported that O'Connor was reluctant to retire with a Democrat in the presidency: "At an Election Night party at the Washington, D.C., home of Mary Ann Stoessel, widow of former Ambassador Walter Stoessel, the justice's husband, John O'Connor, mentioned to others her desire to step down, according to three witnesses. But Mr. O'Connor said his wife would be reluctant to retire if a Democrat were in the White House and would choose her replacement. Justice O'Connor declined to comment."

By 2005, the composition of the Court had been unchanged for eleven years, the second-longest period in American history without any such change. Rehnquist was widely expected to be the first justice to retire during Bush's term, owing to his age and his battle with cancer, although rumors of O'Connor's possible retirement circulated as well.

On July 1, 2005, O'Connor announced her intention to retire. In her letter to Bush, she stated that her retirement from active service would take effect upon the confirmation of her successor. Her letter did not provide a reason for her departure; however, a Supreme Court spokeswoman confirmed O'Connor was leaving to spend time with her husband.

On July 19, Bush nominated D.C. Circuit Judge John Roberts to succeed O'Connor. O'Connor heard the news over the car radio on the way back from a fishing trip. She described Roberts soon after the nomination as "good in every way, except he's not a woman".

O'Connor had expected to leave the Court before the next term started on October 3, 2005. However, Rehnquist died on September 3, creating an immediate vacancy on the Court. Two days later, Bush withdrew Roberts as his nominee for her seat and instead appointed him to fill the vacant office of Chief Justice. O'Connor agreed to stay on the Court until her replacement was named and confirmed. She spoke at the late chief justice's funeral. On October 3, Bush nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers to replace O'Connor. After much criticism and controversy over her nomination, on October 27, Miers asked Bush to withdraw her nomination. Bush accepted, reopening the search for O'Connor's successor.

The continued delays in confirming a successor further extended O'Connor's time on the Court. She continued to hear oral argument on cases, including cases dealing with controversial issues such as physician-assisted suicide and abortion. O'Connor's last Court opinion, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of New England, written for a unanimous court, was a procedural decision that involved a challenge to a New Hampshire abortion law.

On October 31, Bush nominated Third Circuit Judge Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor; Alito was confirmed by a 58–42 vote and was sworn in on January 31, 2006. After retiring, she continued to hear cases and rendered over a dozen opinions in federal appellate courts across the country, filling in as a substitute judge when vacations or vacancies left their three-member panels understaffed. On Alito's nomination, O'Connor said, "I've often said, it's wonderful to be the first to do something but I didn't want to be the last. If I didn't do a good job, it might've been the last and indeed when I retired, I was not replaced, then, by a woman which gives one pause to think 'Oh, what did I do wrong that led to this.

Post-Supreme Court career

In her retirement, O'Connor continued to speak and organize conferences on the issue of judicial independence. During a March 2006 speech at Georgetown University, O'Connor said some political attacks on the independence of the courts pose a direct threat to the constitutional freedoms of Americans. She said "Any reform of the system is debatable as long as it is not motivated by retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with", also noting that she was "against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning." "Courts interpret the law as it was written, not as the congressmen might have wished it was written", and "it takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

On November 19, 2008, O'Connor published an introductory essay on a themed judicial accountability issue in the Denver University Law Review. She called for a better public understanding of judicial accountability. On November 7, 2007, at a conference on her landmark opinion in Strickland v. Washington (1984) sponsored by the Constitution Project, O'Connor highlighted the lack of proper legal representation for many of the poorest defendants. O'Connor also urged the creation of a system for "merit selection for judges", a cause for which she had frequently advocated.

On August 7, 2008, O'Connor and Abdurrahman Wahid, former President of Indonesia, wrote an editorial in the Financial Times stating concerns about the threatened imprisonment of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

In October 2008, O'Connor spoke on racial equality in education at a conference hosted by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. Later in the conference, she was awarded the Charles Hamilton Houston Justice Award alongside Desmond Tutu and Dolores Huerta.

Following the Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision on corporate political spending, O'Connor offered measured criticism of the decision, telling Georgetown law students and lawyers, "that the Court has created an unwelcome new path for wealthy interests to exert influence on judicial elections."

O'Connor argued in favor of President Barack Obama naming the replacement for Antonin Scalia in February 2016, mere days after Scalia's death, opposing Republican arguments that the next president should get to fill the vacancy. She said, "I think we need somebody there to do the job now and let's get on with it"; and that "[y]ou just have to pick the best person you can under the circumstances, as the appointing authority must do. It's an important position and one that we care about as a nation and as a people. And I wish the president well as he makes choices and goes down that line. It's hard."

Judge William H. Pryor Jr., a conservative jurist, has criticized O'Connor's speeches and op-eds for hyperbole and factual inaccuracy, based in part on O'Connor's opinions as to whether judges face a rougher time in the public eye today than in the past.

O'Connor reflected on her time on the Supreme Court by saying that she regretted the Court hearing the Bush v. Gore case in 2000 because it "stirred up the public" and "gave the Court a less-than-perfect reputation." She told the Chicago Tribune that "Maybe the Court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye,' ... It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."

Activities and memberships
As a retired Supreme Court justice, O'Connor continued to receive a full salary, maintained a staffed office with at least one law clerk, and heard cases on a part-time basis in federal district courts and courts of appeals as a visiting judge. By 2008, O'Connor had sat for cases with the 2nd, 8th, and 9th Circuits. O'Connor heard an Arizona voting rights case which the Supreme Court later reviewed. In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, a 7–2 majority affirmed O'Connor and the rest of 9th Circuit panel, and struck down a provision of Arizona's voting registration law. O'Connor hired a law clerk for the October 2015 term, but did not hire a law clerk for the subsequent term.

O'Connor was elected as an honorary fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2005. In October that year,  O'Connor accepted the largely ceremonial role of becoming the 23rd Chancellor of the College of William & Mary. O'Connor continued in the role until 2012. O'Connor was a member of the 2006 Iraq Study Group, appointed by the U.S. Congress. From 2006, she was a trustee on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation. O'Connor chaired the Jamestown 2007 celebration, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the founding of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The Sandra Day O'Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary, named for O'Connor, held annual conferences from 2006 through 2008 on the independence of the judiciary. O'Connor was a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Teaching
In 2006, O'Connor taught a course on the Supreme Court at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law as a distinguished jurist in residence. On April 5, 2006, Arizona State University named its law school the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law in her honor.

Publishing
O'Connor wrote the 2013 book Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court.

Public speaking engagements
On May 15, 2006, O'Connor gave the commencement address at the William & Mary School of Law, where she said that judicial independence is "under serious attack at both the state and national level". In 2008, O'Connor was named an inaugural Harry Rathbun Visiting Fellow by the Office for Religious Life at Stanford University. On April 22, 2008, she gave "Harry's Last Lecture on a Meaningful Life" in honor of the former Stanford Law professor who shaped her undergraduate and law careers. On September 17, 2014, O'Connor appeared on the television show Jeopardy! and provided a couple of video answers to the category 'Supreme Court' which appeared on the show. On the same day in Concord, New Hampshire, she gave a talk alongside her former colleague Justice David Souter about the importance of meaningful civics education in the United States.

Non-profits and philanthropic activity
In February 2009, O'Connor launched Our Courts, a website she created to offer interactive civics lessons to students and teachers because she was concerned about the lack of knowledge among most young Americans about how their government works. She also served as a co-chair with Lee H. Hamilton for the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. On March 3, 2009, O'Connor appeared on the satirical television program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote the website. In August 2009, the website added two online interactive games. The initiative expanded, becoming iCivics in May 2010 offering free lesson plans, games, and interactive videogames for middle and high school educators. By 2015, the iCivics games had 72,000 teachers as registered users and its games had been played 30 million times.

O'Connor served on the board of trustees of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution. By November 2015, O'Connor had transitioned to being a trustee emeritus for the center. In April 2013, the board of directors of Justice at Stake, a national judicial reform advocacy organization, announced that O'Connor would be joining the organization as honorary chair.

In 2009, O'Connor founded the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization now known as the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute. Its programs are dedicated to promoting civil discourse, civic engagement, and civics education. In 2019, her former adobe residence in Arizona, curated by the O'Connor Institute, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2022, the Institute launched Civics for Life, its multigenerational digital platform.

O'Connor was a member and president of the Junior League of Phoenix.

O'Connor was a founding co-chair of the National Advisory Board at the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD). The institute was created at the University of Arizona after the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords that killed six people and wounded 13 others.

Personal life, illness and death
Upon her appointment to the Supreme Court, O'Connor and her husband moved to the Kalorama area of Washington, D.C. The O'Connors became active in the Washington, D.C., social scene. O'Connor played tennis and golf in her spare time. She was a baptized member of the Episcopal Church.

O'Connor was successfully treated for breast cancer in 1988, and she also had her appendix removed that year. That same year, John O'Connor left the Washington, D.C., law firm of Miller & Chevalier for a practice that required him to split his time between Washington, D.C., and Phoenix.

Her husband suffered from Alzheimer's disease for nearly 20 years, until his death in 2009, and she became involved in raising awareness of the disease. After retiring from the Court, O'Connor moved back to Phoenix, Arizona.

Around 2013, O'Connor's friends and colleagues noticed that she was becoming more forgetful and less talkative. By 2017, back problems led to her needing to use a wheelchair, and to her moving to an assisted living facility. In October 2018, O'Connor announced her effective retirement from public life after disclosing that she had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer's-like dementia.

On May 7, 2016, her younger sister, Ann Day, was killed in a car accident in Tucson, Arizona, as a result of a collision with a drunk driver.

On December 1, 2023, O'Connor died in Phoenix, at the age of 93, due to complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness. After her death, Chief Justice John Roberts called her "an eloquent advocate for civil education" and a "fiercely independent defender of the rule of law" in a public statement. President Joe Biden said she was an "American icon", dedicated to public service and the "bedrock American principle of an independent judiciary." iCivics board chairman Larry Kramer said that O'Connor was "kind and generous" and relayed that iCivics was her "brainchild".

O'Connor lay in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court on December 18, 2023. She was memorialized the following day in a funeral service held at the Washington National Cathedral.

Legacy and awards
O'Connor was particularly remembered for being the first woman on the Court, and for functioning as the swing vote in the 5–4 decision in Bush v. Gore, which handed the presidency to George W. Bush. Overall, she began her tenure on the court as a Reaganite but would later attempt to steer the court toward decisions that better aligned with public opinion. Some argue that O'Connor's jurisprudential legacy was largely undone by the appointment of Samuel Alito as her successor.

title: Sandra Day O'Connor


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Christian Democracy (Italy, historical)
Here is the list of P2 members (I selected a non-italian site just for better "objectivity"): http://www.amnistia.net/news/gelli/lesnoms.htm

Mrs. Tina Anselmi, president of parliamentar inquiry commission on P2 was from DC.

Let's keep propaganda out of facts, please.

Presuming that enough informations are easily available on the web for a better idea of what P2 was and represented, and having seen no re-correction to the article in a reasonable time, I have to conclude that DC was effectively "tarnished from 1981 onward" (while I was ingenuously convinced that, apart from premier Forlani resigning due to a late divulgation of these lists, and ordinary political propaganda by leftists, nothing more of notable had disturbed this party about P2, to the point that Tina Anselmi, a DC, was named to judge it with the agreement of PCI).

Funny: DC "was" tarnished because P2 was projecting a golpe when the same DC was running Italy... (of course it was involved).

However, I'm not going now to censor the official version; who am I to do it?

Don't you think the Post WW2 period was important in the uprising of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy. Shouldn't that type of information be included? I am working on it right now. Bakjaewon (talk) 22:50, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Cosa Nostra
Shouldn't there be a mention of Cosa Nostra? -- Error

Piazza del Gesù
Should it be mentioned that the DC site, the P2 site and Il Gesù Jesuit church are all located in the same Piazza del Gesù? --Error 02:06, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

DC in government from 1945 to ??
According to an old book I have (from 1992) the DC had been continously in government from 1945 to that point in time. But what is the end point of this continuous time in government? Were they part of the government all the time up to the formation of the first Berlusconi-government??--Oddeivind (talk) 10:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 1994. --Checco (talk) 15:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect Link
In reference 17 where there should be a link to the letters Moro wrote critically of Andreotti is a link to a business hosting website Yepa. Perhaps we can find a link to a source of actual script of these letters. ThisisnotDavid1154 (talk) 20:20, 25 August 2016 (UTC)ThisisnotDavid1154

Party logo
It is a non-written custom of Wikipedia to have the last logo of a party in the infobox, it doesn't matter whether it is a current party or a former party, while previous logos should be included in the article's text. The last symbol of DC, used since the 1980s, is File:DC Logo.png, while the earlier one is File:DC PPI Shield.png. The former will stay in the infobox, the latter in the article's text. I hope new users understand this non-written custom and comply to it.

I take this opportunity to ask users to find the last logo of the Italian Socialist Party (carnation) in order to include it in the article's infobox.

--Checco (talk) 15:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

What are your sources? We don't find them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.45.156.70 (talk) 15:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

 * Sources? There are plenty! I have even a facs-simile electoral ballot of 1992 at home! An interesting book DC posters is Che fine ha fatto la DC? by Claudio Baccarin. Please stop exchanging the symbols. --Checco (talk) 15:58, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

 * So, you can post the images you have. At this time, your affirmations are unreferenced. I hope you understand you need to prove what are you saying, before changing the page. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.45.156.70 (talk) 16:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

 * You too, especially you as WHAT you are telling is unreferenced. If you don't remember the last logo of DC is not my problem, it is your problem. --Checco (talk) 16:03, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

All the sources you need about my affirmations. What can I find YOUR presumptive logo?--79.45.156.70 (talk) 16:07, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I told you one source. In order to see the electoral ballot of 1992 you can see:
 * Luigi Morgano, Remo Sissa, Itinerari di educazione civica, La Scuola, Brescia 1993, p. 184.
 * --Checco (talk) 16:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Ps: Please provide yourself of a nickname so that I can recognize you evry time I meet you. I will tell you my opinion about the changes you made to the articles in your talk page or in article talks! --Checco (talk) 16:22, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Please post a pic of that book: en.wiki rules about images are more free than it.wiki. Excuse me if I don't believe you, but you said "in fact that was the logo DC used in 1987 and 1992!", and at least for the first year, your affirmations are evidently false: (and in 1990 we are only 3 years before DC's disbanding).--79.45.156.70 (talk) 16:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

You can call me "NumberOne".--79.45.156.70 (talk) 16:27, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

 * NumberOne?
 * It is true that in some posters DC continued to use the shield alone, but, as I told you, in the last elections (definitely 1992 as I saw in the book I cited). I'm sorry if you don't believe me but this is your problem: I had been a respected user of en.Wiki for many years and I don't like to be treated in this way. You can see a facs-simile of the 1992 electoral ballot here. Even if your total rollbacks were completely against the rules of Wikipedia, I chose not to rollback you again in order to let you understand I'm intrested in discussing with you. I wrote a message for you in Talk:Politics of Lombardy.
 * --Checco (talk) 16:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, your source is now a good source. But I still think that a one-time logo is less relevant than a logo used dozens of times. It we are speaking about nazism, we can not give a more relevant place to Karl Donotz than Adolf Hitler, only by the fact that it was the last leader, don't you agree? NumberOne--79.45.156.70 (talk) 17:03, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not what we usually do in en.Wiki, but I coul agree with you. Let's other users' opinions. --Checco (talk) 18:07, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I generally agree with you when a party had a series of logos with quite the same duration (as PSI), but you see, here we are speaking about a 1:49 ratio..... NumberOne--79.24.129.86 (talk) 14:45, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Move?

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move. Kilo T 22:59, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Christian Democracy (Italy, historical) → Christian Democracy (Italy) –
 * Per similar cases. See, for instance, Italian Socialist Party and Italian Socialist Party (2007). --Checco (talk) 15:45, 2 June 2011 (UTC) Checco (talk) 15:45, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * See also Talk:Christian Democracy (Italy, current). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:30, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Support and comment. Christian Democracy, as the Italian Socialist Party, has been a big Italian party for decades until it was disbanded in 1994. New parties with identical names were launched later at some point, but they never reached the popularity of the late ones. That is why I propose that this page would be moved to Christian Democracy (Italy) and the other one to Christian Democracy (Italy, 1997), consistently with Italian Socialist Party (the late and big party) and Italian Socialist Party (2007) (the new and tiny one). It is so reasonable that I considered this proposal uncontroversial. --Checco (talk) 07:32, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Might Christian Democracy (Italian political party) be preferable? If a political party has a name that makes clear that it is a party, there's little need to mention more than the country, but "Christian Democracy (Italy)" could easily be confused with an article on the general topic of Christian democratic thought in Italy. Ucucha 08:05, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It might, but as my idea was and is to simplify the title, I still prefer the original proposal. Note that an article on the general topic of Christian democratic thought in Italy would be titled "Christian democracy in Italy" not "Christian Democracy (Italy)". --Checco (talk) 08:18, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment what about the disambiguation page at Christian Democracy (Italy) ? 65.94.45.210 (talk) 12:56, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course, there will be a disambiguation at the top of the main article as in Italian Socialist Party and the disambiguation (created by me!) can be moved to a different title. Note that this case is identical with that of the Italian Socialist Party and we should deal with it consistently. --Checco (talk) 13:45, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * what about Christian Democracy (disambiguation) ? -- Juanm  (talk)  21:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see any particular need for a disambiguation page, but, in case, the title should be Christian Democracy (Italy, disambiguation): what do you think? More relevant, do you agree with the requested move? --Checco (talk) 10:32, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know how this would work, it might be Christian Democracy (Italy) (disambiguation) or Christian Democracy (Italy (disambiguation)) . 65.95.15.60 (talk) 11:11, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The disambiguation page has already been moved by User:Boleyn on 11:33, June 9, 2011, so this subquestion is dead.-- Juanm   (talk)  14:45, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per teh same reasons exposed at Italian Liberal Party discussion. Even here we have a main topic and many secondary topics, and so we should structure the names as indicated in WP:DABNAME. The main topic is the old Christian Democracy in Italy (the While Whale) founded in late 1940s, the secondary ones are the ones listed in the disambiguation page -- Juanm  (talk)  14:45, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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DC ideology
Greetings, all. Allow me to dispute statements presented as fact in the article.

Christian Democracy or Democrazia Cristiana (DC) was never a centrist party. The source invoked (Derbyshire, Derbyshire Political Systems Of The World, 1989) has the party as "Christian centrist" in the sense that it was not a hard-line religious, Christian party. DC was above all else a conservative and anti-communist party (Newell The Politics of Italy: Governance in a Normal Country, 2010). Also, not a "catch-all" party per se but a party that employed "a catch-all" strategy that was supposed to "reach beyond the ranks of the Catholic faithful and allow it to successfully act as the [country's] main bulwark against communism" (Newell, ibid). Giuseppe Dossetti, co-founder of the party, was clear since the beginning that this would be un movimento conservatore ("a conservative movement"). The CIA in its reports was typically referring to the DC's "conservatism," even when qualifying it as "mild." We should also point out the various positions adopted by DC throughout its history on the defining issues of divorce (see Divorce in Italy), abortion (see Ergas, Yasemine "Feminism and the Italian Party System: Women's Politics in a Decade of Turmoil"), extramarital sex (Ergas ibid), gay marriage, etc. The Christian Democrats steadfastly stood alongside the Vatican in opposing any liberalisation on these issues. The proper term to denote DC, therefore, per sources, is "conservative." -The Gnome (talk) 18:03, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

 * I respect your opinion, but I do not think it is based on sources and, above all, lacks historical perspective. Premise: we are talking about a party disbanded in 1994, thus some of its "conservative" positions were held also by some centre-left parties in the fifty years after WWI (just think of Ireland's Labour Party or, for that matter, United States' Democratic Party—even more recently Obama opposed same-sex marriage when he first ran for President). The DC was a broad-church party aiming at the "political unity of Catholics" and, as such, included right-wingers, centrists and left-wingers—no surprise that its heirs are now active in all mainstream political parties of Italy, from the right-wing Brothers of Italy to the centre-left Democratic Party (most of the latter's leaders are former Christian Democrats). This said, the DC's political position was centrist, as it was at the centre of Italian politics, with MSI and PLI at its right and PRI, PSDI, PSI and PCI at its left, but we do not really need to define its ideology as "centrist" as the party was mainly and unequivocally "Christian-democratic". --Checco (talk) 14:10, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Christian Democracy (Italy)


text:
16th century BC

The 16th century BC was a century that lasted from 1600 BC to 1501 BC.

Events

 * 1700 BC – 1500 BC: Hurrian conquests.
 * 1601 BC: Sharma-Adad II became the King of Assyria.
 * c. 1600 BC: The creation of one of the oldest surviving astronomical documents, a copy of which was found in the Babylonian library of Ashurbanipal: a 21-year record of the appearances of Venus (which the early Babylonians called Nindaranna): Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa.
 * c. 1600 BC: The date of the earliest discovered rubber balls.
 * c. 1600 BC: Early Mycenaean culture: weapons, Cyclopean walls, and chariots.
 * c. 1600 BC: Unetice culture ends in Czech Republic, eastern Europe
 * Development of the windmill in Persia.
 * c. 1600 BC: Building of El morro del tulcán Pyramid in Colombia.
 * 1595 BC: Sack of Babylon by the Hittite king Mursilis I.
 * c. 1595 BC: The overthrow of the ruling Amorite dynasty in Aleppo, Syria.
 * 1570 BC: Cretan palaces at Knossos and other centres flourish despite disasters.
 * 1567 BC: Egypt: End of Fifteenth Dynasty, end of Sixteenth Dynasty, end of Seventeenth Dynasty, start of Eighteenth Dynasty.
 * 1558 BC: Shang dynasty of China established (according to the Bamboo Annals).
 * 1556 BC: Cecrops I builds or rebuilds Athens following the great flood of Deucalion and the end of the Golden age. He becomes the first of several Kings of Athens whose life account is considered part of Greek mythology.
 * c. 1550 BC: The city of Mycenae, located in the northeast Peloponnesus, comes to dominate the rest of Achaea, giving its name to Mycenaean civilization.
 * 1550 BC: End of Seventeenth dynasty of Egypt, start of the Eighteenth Dynasty upon the coronation of Ahmose I (Low Chronology).
 * 1530 BC: End of the First Dynasty of Babylon and the start of the Kassite dynasty—see History of Iraq.
 * 1525 BC: End of Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt.
 * c. 1512 BC: The flood of Deucalion, according to O'Flaherty, Augustine, Eusebius, and Isidore (bishop of Seville).
 * 1506 BC: Cecrops I, legendary King of Athens, dies after a reign of 50 years. Having survived his own son, he is succeeded by Cranaus.
 * 1504 BC: Egypt started to conquer Nubia and the Levant.
 * c. 1500 BC: Many scholars date early parts of the Rig Veda to roughly the 16th century.
 * c. 1500 BC: Queen Hatsheput in Egypt (18th Dynasty).
 * c. 1500 BC: The element Mercury has been discovered in Egyptian tombs dating from this decade.
 * c. 1500 BC: Settlers from Crete, Greece move to Miletus, Turkey.
 * c. 1500 BC: Early traces of Maya civilization developing in Belize.
 * c. 1500 BC: The Phoenicians develop an alphabet—see Timeline of communication technology.
 * c. 1500 BC: Indo-Aryan migration is often dated to the 17th to 16th centuries.
 * c. 1500 BC: Birth of Zoroaster (Avestan: Zarathushtra).

Sovereign states
See: List of sovereign states in the 16th century BC.

title: 16th century BC


text:
17th century BC

The 17th century BC was the century that lasted from 1700 BC to 1601 BC.

Events

 * c. 1700 BC: Indus Valley civilisation comes to an end but is continued by the Cemetery H culture.
 * 1700 BC: Belu-bani became the King of Assyria.
 * c. 1700 BC: Minoan Old Palace period ends and Minoan Second Palace period starts in Ancient Greece.
 * c. 1700 BC: beginning of the Late Minoan period on Crete.
 * c. 1700 BC: Aegean metalworkers are producing decorative objects rivaling those of Ancient Near East jewelers, whose techniques they seem to borrow.
 * c. 1700 BC: Lila-Ir-Tash started to rule the Elamite Empire.
 * c. 1700 BC: 1450 BC: Young girl gathering saffron crocus flowers, detail of wall painting, Room 3 of House Xeste 3, Akrotiri (prehistoric city), Thera, is made. Second Palace period. It is now kept in Thera Foundation, Petros M. Nomikos, Greece.
 * c. 1700 BC: Bronze Age starts in China.
 * c. 1698 BC: Lila-Ir-Tash the ruler of the Elamite Empire died. Temti-Agun I started to rule the Elamite Empire.
 * 1691 BC: Belu-bani, the King of Assyria died.
 * c. 1690 BC: Temti-Agun I, the ruler of the Elamite Empire, died. Tan-Uli started to rule the Elamite Empire.
 * 1690 BC: Libaia became the King of Assyria.
 * c. 1680 BC: Egypt: Development of leavened bread (date approximate).
 * c. 1673 BC: Sharma-Adad I became the King of Assyria.
 * c. 1661 BC: Iptar-Sin became the King of Assyria.
 * c. 1655 BC: Tan-Uli, the ruler of the Elamite Empire, died.
 * c. 1650 BC: Collapse of the 14th Dynasty of Egypt.
 * c. 1650 BC: Conquest of Memphis by the Hyksos and collapse of the 13th Dynasty of Egypt.
 * c. 1650 BC: Start of the 15th (Hyksos) and 16th Dynasties of Egypt.
 * c. 1650 BC: Possibly, start of the Abydos Dynasty in Upper Egypt.
 * c. 1646 BC or earlier: Jie of Xia is overthrown by Tang of Shang (ca. 1675-1646 BC) in the Battle of Mingtiao.
 * 1649 BC: Bazaia became the King of Assyria.
 * 1633 BC – May 2 – Lunar Saros 34 begins.
 * 1627 BC: Beginning of a cooling of world climate lasting several years recorded in tree-rings all over the world. It may have been caused by one, or more, volcanic eruptions e.g. the Minoan eruption of Thera, the Avellino eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and/or the eruption of Mount Aniakchak in Alaska.
 * 1625 BC: Samsu-Ditana becomes King of Babylon (middle chronology).
 * 1621 BC: Lullaia becomes the King of Assyria.
 * 1620 BC: Mursili I becomes King of the Hittite Empire (middle chronology).
 * 1615 BC: Shu-Ninua became the King of Assyria.
 * c. 1600 BC: Tang of Shang established the Shang dynasty.

Deaths

 * 1684 BC – Heremon, Irish legend

Extinctions

 * The last known population of woolly mammoth, preserved on Wrangel Island, becomes extinct.

Sovereign states
See: List of sovereign states in the 17th century BC.

title: 17th century BC


text:
18th century BC

The 18th century BC was the century that lasted from 1800 BC to 1701 BC.

Events

 * 1800 BC: Beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age in the period system devised by Oscar Montelius.
 * c. 1800 BC: Sedentary Mayan communities in Mesoamerica
 * c. 1800 BC: Hyksos start to settle in the Nile Delta. They had the capital at Avaris in northeastern Nile Delta.
 * 1800 BC: Adichanallur urn-burial site in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu. In 2004, a number of skeletons dating from around 3,800 years ago.
 * 1800 BC: Beginning of the Indo-Aryan migration
 * 1800 BC – 1700 BC: Decline of the Indus Valley civilisation
 * 1800 BC – 1300 BC: Troy VI flourishes.
 * c. 1792 BC – 1750 BC: (middle chronology) – Hammurabi rules Babylonia and has to deal with Mari, which he conquers late in his career.
 * c. 1792 BC – 1750 BC: (middle chronology) – Stela of Hammurabi, from Susa (modern Shush, Iran) is made. It is now in Musée du Louvre, Paris.
 * 1787 BC – 1784 BC: Amorite conquests of Uruk and Isin.
 * 1786 BC: Egypt: Queen Sobekneferu dies. End of Twelfth Dynasty, start of Thirteenth Dynasty, start of Fourteenth Dynasty.
 * 1779 BC: Zimrilim, the King of Mari, starts to rule.
 * 1770 BC: Babylon, capital of Babylonia becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Thebes, capital of Egypt.
 * 1766 BC: Shang conquest of the Xia dynasty. China.
 * 1764 BC – 1750 BC: Wars of Hammurabi.
 * 1757 BC: Mari sacked by Hammurabi. Zimrilim's palace is destroyed.
 * 1757 BC: Zimrilim, the King of Mari, dies.
 * 1750 BC: Hyksos occupation of Northern Egypt.
 * 1750 BC: A colossal volcanic eruption at Mount Veniaminof, Alaska.
 * c. 1750 BC: Vedic period starts in India.
 * c. 1750 BC: Investiture of Zimrilim (Zimrilim, King of Mari, before the Goddess Ishtar), facsimile of a wall painting on mud plaster from the Zimrilim palace at Mari (modern Tell Hariri, Syria), Court 106, is made. It is now in Musée du Louvre, Paris.
 * c. 1740 BC: reigns of pharaoh Neferhotep I and his brother Sobekhotep IV, marking the apex of the Egyptian 13th Dynasty.
 * 1749 BC – 1712 BC: Mesopotamian Rebellions.
 * Early Unetice culture, beginning of the Bronze Age in Central Europe.
 * Minoan civilization: phase II of the Middle period (MM II).
 * c. 1700 BC: The last species of mammoth became extinct on Wrangel Island.
 * c. 1700 BC: Indus Valley civilization comes to an end but is continued by the Cemetery H culture
 * c. 1700 BC: Minoan Old Palace period ends and Minoan Second Palace (Neopalatial) period starts in Crete.
 * c. 1700 BC: Aegean metalworkers are producing decorative objects rivaling those of Ancient Near East jewelers, whose techniques they seem to borrow.
 * c. 1700 BC: Lila-Ir-Tash started to rule the Elamite Empire.
 * c. 1700 BC: Bronze Age starts in China.
 * c. 1700 BC: Shang dynasty starts in China.

Deaths
c. 1750 BC: Hammurabi (middle chronology)

1764 BC: Yarim Lim 1 The Great King of Yamhad

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

 * c. 1700 BC: Median date for the building of the Phaistos Disc. Its purpose and meaning, and even its original geographical place of manufacture remains unknown, making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology.

title: 18th century BC


text:
The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California on the "mother road", along with thousands of other "Okies" seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was released in 1940.

Plot
The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison, where he had been incarcerated after being convicted of homicide in self-defense. While hitchhiking to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. Arriving at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet an old neighbor, Muley Graves, who says the family is at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. Graves says the banks have evicted all the farmers. They have moved away, but Muley refuses to leave the area.

The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's. Tom's family is loading their remaining possessions into a Hudson sedan converted into a truck; with the crops destroyed by the Dust Bowl, the family has defaulted on their bank loans and their farm has been repossessed. The family sees no option but to seek work in California, which has been described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay. The Joads put everything they have into making the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma violates his parole, Tom takes the risk, and invites Casy to join the family.

Traveling west on Route 66, the Joads find the road crowded with other migrants. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California. The group worries that California may not be as rewarding as suggested. The family dwindles on the way: Grampa dies and they bury him in a field; Granma dies close to the California state line; and both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie Rivers (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) leave the family. Led by Ma, the remaining members continue on, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma.

Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor; wages are low, and workers are exploited to the point of starvation. The big corporate farmers are in collusion and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. All police and state law enforcement authorities are allied with the growers. At the first migrant Hooverville camp the Joads stop at, Casy is arrested for knocking down a deputy sheriff who is about to shoot a fleeing worker for alerting others that the labor recruiter, travelling with the officer, will not pay the wages he is promising. Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, offers better conditions but does not have enough resources to care for all the needy families, and it does not provide work or food. Nonetheless, as a federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by local deputies.

In response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The Joads find work as strikebreakers in a peach orchard. After picking for most of the day, they are only paid enough to buy food for that night's supper and some for the next day. The next morning the peach plantation announces that the pay rate for the picked fruit has been reduced by half. Casy is involved in a strike that turns violent. When Tom witnesses Casy being struck and killed with a pickaxe, he kills the attacker and takes flight. The Joads quietly leave the orchard to work at a cotton farm where Tom risks being arrested, and possibly lynched, for the homicide.

Knowing he must leave to avoid capture and protect his family from being blacklisted from working, Tom bids his mother farewell and vows to work for the oppressed. The family continues to pick cotton and pool their daily wages to buy food. Upon its birth, Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With the winter rains, the Joads' dwelling is flooded and the car disabled, and they move to higher ground. In the final chapter of the book, the family takes shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside they find a young boy and his father, who is dying of starvation. Ma realizes there is only one way to save the man. She looks at Rose of Sharon and a silent understanding passes between them. Rose of Sharon, left alone with the man, goes to him and has him drink her breast milk.

Characters

 * Tom Joad: the protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named after his father. Later, Tom takes leadership of the family, even though he is young.
 * Ma Joad: the Joad family matriarch. Practical but warm-spirited, she tries to hold the family together. Her given name is never learned; it is suggested that her maiden name was Hazlett.
 * Pa Joad: the Joad family patriarch, also named Tom, age 50. Hardworking sharecropper and family man. Pa becomes a broken man upon losing his livelihood and means of supporting his family, forcing Ma to assume leadership.
 * Uncle John: Pa Joad's older brother (Tom describes him as "a fella about 60", but in narrative he is described as 50). He feels guilty about the death of his young wife years before, and is prone to binges involving alcohol and prostitutes, but is generous with his goods.
 * Jim Casy: a former preacher who lost his faith and later is murdered by a camp guard. He is a Christ-like figure, based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts.
 * Al Joad: the third youngest Joad son, a "smart-aleck sixteen-year-older" who cares mainly for cars and girls; he looks up to Tom, but begins to find his own way.
 * Rose of Sharon (said as Rosasharn) Joad Rivers: the eldest Joad daughter, a childish and dreamy teenage girl, age 18, who develops into a mature woman. Pregnant at the beginning of the novel, she eventually delivers a stillborn baby, perhaps due to malnutrition, but she is able to use her breast milk to save a man from starvation.
 * Connie Rivers: Rose of Sharon's husband. Nineteen years old and naïve, he is overwhelmed by marriage and impending fatherhood. He abandons his wife and the Joad family shortly after they arrive in California.
 * Noah Joad: the eldest Joad son, he is the first to leave the family, near Needles, California, planning to live off fishing on the Colorado River. Injured at birth and described as "strange", it is implied he has slight learning difficulties.
 * Grampa Joad: Tom's grandfather, who expresses his strong desire to stay in Oklahoma. His full name is given as "William James Joad". Grampa is drugged by his family with "soothin' syrup" to force him to leave with them for California, but he dies during the first evening on the road. Casy attributes his death to a stroke, but says that Grampa is "just' staying' with the lan'. He couldn' leave it."
 * Granma Joad: Grampa's religious wife; she loses her will to live after his death. She dies while the family is crossing the Mojave Desert.
 * Ruthie Joad: the youngest Joad daughter, age 12. She is shown to be reckless and childish. While quarreling with another child, she reveals that Tom is in hiding.
 * Winfield Joad: the youngest Joad son, age 10. He is "kid-wild and calfish".
 * Jim Rawley: He manages the camp at Weedpatch and shows the Joads surprising favor.
 * Muley Graves: a neighbour of the Joads. He is invited to come along to California with them, but refuses. The family leave two of their dogs with him; a third they take, but it is killed by a car during their travels.
 * Ivy and Sairy Wilson: a migrant couple from Kansas who attend the death of Grampa and share the journey as far as the California state line.
 * Mr. Wainwright: a fellow laborer on the cotton farm in California; he is the husband of Mrs. Wainwright.
 * Mrs. Wainwright: mother to Aggie and wife to Mr. Wainwright. She helps Ma deliver Rose of Sharon's baby.
 * Aggie Wainwright: the sixteen-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright. Late in the novel, she and Al Joad announce their intent to marry.
 * Floyd Knowles: a man at the Hooverville, where the Joads first stay in California, who urges Tom and Casy to join labor organizations. His agitation results in Casy being jailed.

Religious interpretation
Many scholars have noted Steinbeck's use of Christian imagery within The Grapes of Wrath. The largest implications lie with Tom Joad and Jim Casy, who are both interpreted as Christ-like figures at certain intervals within the novel. These two are often interpreted together, with Casy representing Jesus Christ in the early days of his ministry, up until his death, which is interpreted as representing the death of Christ. From there, Tom takes over, rising in Casy's place as the Christ figure risen from the dead.

However, the religious imagery is not limited to these two characters. Scholars have regularly inspected other characters and plot points within the novel, including Ma Joad, Rose of Sharon, her stillborn child, and Uncle John. In an article first published in 2009, Ken Eckert even compared the migrants' movement west as a reversed version of the slaves' escape from Egypt in Exodus. Many of these extreme interpretations are brought on by Steinbeck's own documented beliefs, which Eckert himself refers to as "unorthodox".

To expand upon previous remarks in a journal, Leonard A. Slade lays out the chapters and how they represent each part of the slaves escaping from Egypt. Slade states “Chapters 1 through 10 correspond to bondage in Egypt (where the bank and land companies fulfill the role of Pharaoh), and the plagues (drought and erosion); chapters 11 through 18 to the Exodus and journey through the wilderness (during which the old people die off); and chapter 19 through 30 to the settlement in the Promised Land-California, whose inhabitants are hostile… formulate ethical codes (in the government camps)”. Another religious interpretation that Slade brings up in his writings is the title itself, stating “The title of the novel, of course refers to the line: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored in Julia Ward Howe’s famous 'Battle-Hymn of the Republic'. Apparently, then the title suggests, moreover, 'that story exists in Christian context, indicating that we should expect to find some Christian meaning'." These two interpretations by Slade and other scholars show how many religious aspects can be interpreted from the book. Along with Slade, other scholars find interpretations in the characters of Rose of Sharon and her stillborn child.

Development
"This is the beginning—from 'I' to 'we'. If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into 'I', and cuts you off forever from the 'we'." Steinbeck was known to have borrowed from field notes taken during 1938 by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb. While she collected personal stories about the lives of the displaced migrants for a novel she was developing, her supervisor, Tom Collins, shared her reports with Steinbeck, who at the time was working for the San Francisco News. Babb's own novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, was eclipsed in 1939 by the success of The Grapes of Wrath and was shelved until it was finally published in 2004, a year before Babb's death.

The Grapes of Wrath developed from The Harvest Gypsies, a series of seven articles that ran in the San Francisco News, from October 5 to 12, 1936. The newspaper commissioned that work on migrant workers from the Midwest in California's agriculture industry. (It was later compiled and published separately. )

In mid-January 1939, three months before the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote a long letter to Pascal Covici, his editor at Viking Press. He wanted Covici, in particular, to understand this book, to appreciate what he was up to. And so he concluded with a statement that might serve as preface in and of itself: "Throughout I've tried to make the reader participate in the actuality, what he takes from it will be scaled on his own depth and shallowness. There are five layers in this book, a reader will find as many as he can and he won't find more than he has in himself."

Title
While writing the novel at his home, 16250 Greenwood Lane, in what is now Monte Sereno, California, Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title. The Grapes of Wrath, suggested by his wife Carol Steinbeck, was deemed more suitable than anything by the author. The title is a reference to lyrics from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", by Julia Ward Howe (emphasis added):

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19–20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment. This and other biblical passages had inspired a long tradition of imagery of Christ in the winepress, in various media. The passage reads:

"And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs." The phrase also appears at the end of Chapter 25 in Steinbeck's book, which describes the purposeful destruction of food to keep the price high:

"[A]nd in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." The image invoked by the title serves as a crucial symbol in the development of both the plot and the novel's greater thematic concerns: from the terrible winepress of Dust Bowl oppression will come terrible wrath but also the deliverance of workers through their cooperation. This is suggested but not realized within the novel.

Author's note
When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]." He famously said, "I've done my damnedest to rip a reader's nerves to rags." His work won a large following among the working class, due to his sympathy for the migrants and workers' movement, and his accessible prose style.

Critical reception
Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's influence: "The Grapes of Wrath may well be the most thoroughly discussed novel – in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms – of 20th century American literature." The Grapes of Wrath is referred to as a Great American Novel.

At the time of publication, Steinbeck's novel "was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national radio; but above all, it was read". According to The New York Times, it was the best-selling book of 1939 and 430,000 copies had been printed by February 1940. In that same month, it won the National Book Award, favorite fiction book of 1939, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. Soon, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and its Armed Services Edition went through two printings.

The book was noted for Steinbeck's passionate depiction of the plight of the poor, and many of his contemporaries attacked his social and political views. Bryan Cordyack wrote: "Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California; they were displeased with the book's depiction of California farmers' attitudes and conduct toward the migrants. They denounced the book as a 'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda. Some argued that his novel was filled with inaccuracies. In his book The Art of Fiction (1984), John Gardner criticized Steinbeck for not knowing anything about the California ranchers: "Witness Steinbeck's failure in The Grapes of Wrath. It should have been one of America's great books...[S]teinbeck wrote not a great and firm novel but a disappointing melodrama in which complex good is pitted against unmitigated, unbelievable evil." Others accused Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make a political point. He had visited the camps well before publication of the novel and argued their inhumane nature destroyed the settlers' spirit.

In 1962, the Nobel Prize committee cited The Grapes of Wrath as a "great work" and as one of the committee's main reasons for granting Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 1999, French newspaper Le Monde of Paris ranked The Grapes of Wrath as seventh on its list of the 100 best books of the 20th century. In the UK, it was listed at number 29 among the "nation's best loved novels" on the BBC's 2003 survey The Big Read. In 2005, Time magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005". In 2009, The Daily Telegraph of the United Kingdom included the novel in its "100 novels everyone should read".

The Grapes of Wrath has faced a great amount of controversy since publication, including book bans and other challenges on a variety of political and religious grounds in the United States and other countries. The early attempts to suppress and censor the book directly inspired the promulgation of the Library Bill of Rights by the American Library Association.

Similarities to Whose Names Are Unknown
Following the publication of Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown in 2004, some scholars noted strong parallels between that work — the notes for which Steinbeck is widely believed to have examined — and The Grapes of Wrath.

Writing in The Steinbeck Review, Michael J. Meyer noted numerous "obvious similarities" between the two novels "that even a cursory reading will reveal", such as Babb's account of two still-born babies, mirrored in Steinbeck's description of Rose of Sharon's baby. Among other scenes and themes repeated in both books: the villainy of banks, corporations, and company stores that charge exorbitant prices; the rejection of religion and the embrace of music as a means of preserving hope; descriptions of the fecundity of nature and agriculture, and the contrast with the impoverishment of the migrants; and the disparity between those willing to extend assistance to the migrants and others who view "Okies" as subhuman. Meyer, a Steinbeck bibliographer, stops short of labeling these parallels as plagiarism but concludes that "Steinbeck scholars would do well to read Babb — if only to see for themselves the echoes of Grapes that abound in her prose."

Steinbeck scholar David M. Wrobel wrote that "the John Steinbeck/Sanora Babb story sounds like a classic smash-and-grab: celebrated California author steals the material of unknown Oklahoma writer, resulting in his financial success and her failure to get her work published ... Steinbeck absorbed field information from many sources, primarily Tom Collins and Eric H. Thomsen, regional director of the federal migrant camp program in California, who accompanied Steinbeck on missions of mercy...if Steinbeck read Babb’s extensive notes as carefully as he did the reports of Collins, he would certainly have found them useful. His interaction with Collins and Thomsen — and their influence on the writing of The Grapes of Wrath — is documented because Steinbeck acknowledged both. Sanora Babb went unmentioned."

Writing in Broad Street (magazine), Carla Dominguez described Babb as "devastated and bitter" that Random House cancelled publication of her own novel after The Grapes of Wrath was released in 1939. It is clear, she wrote, that "Babb's retellings, interactions, and reflections were secretly read over and appropriated by Steinbeck. Babb met Steinbeck briefly and by chance at a lunch counter, but she never thought that he had been reading her notes because he did not mention it." When Babb's novel was finally published in 2004, she declared that she was a better writer than Steinbeck. "His book", Babb said, "is not as realistic as mine."

In film
The book was quickly made into a famed 1940 Hollywood movie of the same name directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. The first part of the film version follows the book fairly accurately. However, the second half and the ending, in particular, differ significantly from the book. John Springer, author of The Fondas (Citadel, 1973), said of Henry Fonda and his role in The Grapes of Wrath: "The Great American Novel made one of the few enduring Great American Motion Pictures."

The documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story (2009) revealed that The Grapes of Wrath was the favorite novel of comedian Bill Hicks. He based his famous last words on Tom Joad's final speech: "I left in love, in laughter, and in truth, and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit."

In July 2013, Steven Spielberg announced his plans to direct a remake of The Grapes of Wrath for DreamWorks.

The Japanese animated series Bungou Stray Dogs portrays a character based on Steinbeck whose superpower is named "The Grapes of Wrath".

In music
Woody Guthrie's two-part song—"Tom Joad – Parts 1 & 2" – from the album Dust Bowl Ballads (1940), explores the protagonist's life after being paroled from prison. It was covered in 1988 by Andy Irvine, who recorded both parts as a single song—"Tom Joad"—on Patrick Street's second album, No. 2 Patrick Street.

The 1981 song "Here Comes that Rainbow Again", by Kris Kristofferson, is based on the scene in the roadside diner where a man buys a loaf of bread and two candy sticks for his sons.

The band The Mission UK included a song titled "The Grapes of Wrath" on their album Carved in Sand (1990).

The progressive rock band Camel released an album, titled Dust and Dreams (1991), inspired by the novel.

American rock singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen named his 11th studio album, The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995), after the character; and the first track on the album shares the same title. The song – and to a lesser extent, the others on the album – draws comparisons between the Dust Bowl and modern times.

Rage Against the Machine recorded a version of "The Ghost of Tom Joad" in 1997.

Like Andy Irvine in 1988, Dick Gaughan recorded Woody Guthrie's "Tom Joad" on his album Outlaws & Dreamers (2001).

An opera based on the novel was co-produced by the Minnesota Opera, and Utah Symphony and Opera, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Michael Korie. The opera made its world premiere in February 2007, to favorable local reviews.

Bad Religion have a song entitled "Grains of Wrath" on their album New Maps of Hell (2007). Bad Religion lead vocalist Greg Graffin is a fan of Steinbeck's work.

The song "Dust Bowl Dance", on the Mumford & Sons album Sigh No More (2009), is based on the novel.

The Pink Floyd song "Sorrow", written by front-man David Gilmour and included on the band's album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, is thematically derived from/based on the novel.

The song "No Good Al Joad", on the Hop Along album "Get Disowned" takes its title from the novel's character Al Joad.

The song "Grapes Of Wrath" by Weezer, written by Rivers Cuomo from their album "OK Human" (2021), takes its title directly from the novel.

In theatre
The Steppenwolf Theatre Company produced a stage version of the book, adapted by Frank Galati. Gary Sinise played Tom Joad for its entire run of 188 performances on Broadway in 1990. One of these performances was filmed and shown on PBS the following year.

In 1990, the Illegitimate Players theater company in Chicago produced Of Grapes and Nuts, an original, satirical mash-up of The Grapes of Wrath and Steinbeck's acclaimed novella Of Mice and Men.

In 2019, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon produced Mother Road by Octavio Solis, inspired by Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The play is about William Joad who believes that he has no blood kin to inherit the family farm until he finds an unexpected relation: Martín Jodes—a young Mexican-American man descended from Steinbeck's original protagonist Tom Joad. The play reverses the Joads’ mythic journey, as these modern-day Joads travel from migrant farm-worker camps in California back to Oklahoma.

title: The Grapes of Wrath


text:
United States Secretary of Agriculture

The United States secretary of agriculture is the head of the United States Department of Agriculture. The position carries similar responsibilities to those of agriculture ministers in other governments

The department includes several organizations. The 297,000 mi2 (770,000 km2) of national forests and grasslands are managed by the United States Forest Service. The safety of food produced and sold in the United States is ensured by the United States Food Safety and Inspection Service. The Food Stamp Program works with the states to provide food to low-income people.

Secretary of Agriculture is a Level I position in the Executive Schedule, thus earning a salary of US$221,400, as of January 2021.

Since February 24, 2021, the current secretary is Tom Vilsack, who had previously served as the 30th secretary of agriculture in the Obama administration.

List of secretaries of agriculture
When the Department of Agriculture was established in 1862, its executive was a non-Cabinet position called the commissioner of agriculture. The commissioners of agriculture were:

The position of secretary of agriculture was created when the department was elevated to Cabinet status in 1889. The following is a list of secretaries of agriculture, since the creation of the office in 1889.

(14) (18)
 * Parties

Status

Line of succession
The line of succession for the secretary of agriculture is as follows:

 * 1) Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
 * 2) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agriculture Services
 * 3) Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Administration
 * 4) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services
 * 5) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics
 * 6) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety
 * 7) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment
 * 8) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development
 * 9) Under Secretary of Agriculture for Marketing and Regulatory Programs
 * 10) General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture
 * 11) Chief of Staff, Office of the Secretary
 * 12) State Executive Directors of the Farm Service Agency (in order of seniority by length of unbroken tenure) for the States of:
 * 13) *California
 * 14) *Iowa
 * 15) *Kansas
 * 16) Regional Administrators of the Food and Nutrition Service (in order of seniority by length of unbroken tenure) for the:
 * 17) *Mountain Plains Regional Office (Denver, Colorado)
 * 18) *Midwest Regional Office (Chicago, Illinois)
 * 19) *Western Regional Office (San Francisco, California)
 * 20) Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Agriculture
 * 21) Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Civil Rights
 * 22) Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Congressional Relations

title: United States Secretary of Agriculture


text:
Cracker (band)

Cracker is an American rock band formed in 1990 by lead singer David Lowery and guitarist Johnny Hickman. The band's first album Cracker was released in 1992 on Virgin Records; it included the single "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)", which went to #1 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart. The band's follow-up, the 1993 album Kerosene Hat included the hit songs "Low", "Get Off This", and "Euro-Trash Girl".

Cracker has released nine studio albums and several compilations, collaborations, solo projects and live albums. The band mix influences and sounds from rock, punk, grunge, psychedelia, country, blues and folk.

1990s
Shortly after Lowery's former group Camper Van Beethoven disbanded in 1990, he began demoing material along with boyhood friend, guitarist Johnny Hickman. After moving from Redlands, California to Richmond, Virginia, Lowery and Hickman recorded a demo tape, later nicknamed Big Dirty Yellow Demos by the group's fans, which included early versions of songs that appeared on later albums. They eventually chose the name Cracker and teamed up with fellow Redlands bass guitarist Davey Faragher. A brief tour with Virginia drummer Go Weatherford followed.

By 1991, the newly formed band had signed a recording contract with Virgin Records and enlisted the help of several drummers/percussionists (Jim Keltner, Michael Urbano and Phil Jones), issuing its first album, Cracker, in 1992. From the album came radio hit "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)", which peaked at No. 1 on Modern Rock Tracks, and a second single entitled "Happy Birthday to Me." The album went on to sell more than 200,000 copies.

A year later, Cracker issued its best-selling album, Kerosene Hat. The album included hit singles "Low" and "Get Off This" (both with official music videos directed by Carlos Grasso), as well as a cover of the Grateful Dead's "Loser." The album sold almost half a million copies that year and eventually almost reached platinum status. Urbano performed on Kerosene Hat and toured with Cracker before leaving the band, along with Faragher. After a short spell with Bruce Hughes, Lowery and Hickman added Bob Rupe, formerly of The Silos, as bass guitarist and Charlie Quintana (Bob Dylan, The JuJu Hounds) on drums. In 1993, Cracker contributed the song "Good Times Bad Times" to the Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin album. Initially, the band had recorded a rendition of "When the Levee Breaks" but it was deemed "too weird."

Three years later, The Golden Age was released, with "I Hate My Generation" as the lead single. However, the music scene was shifting away from guitar-driven alternative rock, and although critically acclaimed, the album sold only moderately. Following the long-term additions of drummer Frank Funaro and keyboard player Kenny Margolis, the band returned in 1998 with Gentleman's Blues, with "The Good Life" as the lead single. Although the album received only a lukewarm critical response, it solidified an ever-growing and devout following both in the United States and Europe who referred to themselves as "Crumbs."

In 1995 the song "Whole Lotta Trouble," co-written by Hickman and Chris LeRoy, was used in the film Empire Records. The same year, Cracker's cover of the Flamin' Groovies song, "Shake Some Action," was used in the teen romantic-comedy Clueless.

Camper Van Beethoven unexpectedly re-formed in 1999, and in 2004 released the critically acclaimed New Roman Times. During this time, Hickman released a first solo recording, Palmhenge, which received "Voices Choice" accolades in The Village Voice by the rock critic Robert Christgau and a positive review in Blender magazine. Since then, Lowery has performed in both Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven.

2000s
A compilation album called Garage D'Or was released in 2000, with one disc composed of greatest hits and three new songs, and another of out-takes, soundtrack contributions, demos and other obscurities. Rupe departed in January 2000 and was replaced by bass guitarist Brandy Wood. In 2002, the band released its next studio album, Forever which, once again, met with limited commercial success.

The group left Virgin in 2003 with the independent release Countrysides, composed of eight country and western covers and one new, original song. A collaboration with the bluegrass band Leftover Salmon, Oh Cracker, Where Art Thou? (2003), contained bluegrass versions of many Lowery and Hickman compositions. In 2005, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven started an annual three-night "Campout" at Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace in Pioneertown, California, close to where Lowery and Hickman met, in which they and several other bands perform, including sets by Cracker and Camper band members performing their own music. Previous years' guests have included Roger Clyne, John Doe, Neko Case, Ike Reilly, Ryan Bingham, Vermillion Lies, Jason Molina and Magnolia Electric Co, Built To Spill, Brant Bjork and the Bros, Clem Snide, Gram Rabbit and The Bellrays.

With Camper Van Beethoven bass guitarist Victor Krummenacher replacing Wood, the band released the studio album Greenland on June 6, 2006, and continued to tour extensively. After the departures of Margolis and Krummenacher, the band's lineup stabilized in 2007 around Hickman, Lowery, Funaro and new bass guitarist Sal Maida, who had played with Roxy Music.

Cracker released a new studio album entitled Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey to positive reviews on May 5, 2009. It was the band's first chart on the Billboard 200 in more than a decade, after having sold more than 3,000 copies in a week. This was in part due to the Triple A chart success of the album's lead single, "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out With Me," which was used in the television show Californication.

2010s
In January 2011, Lowery released his first solo album, The Palace Guards, on 429 Records. In March, Cracker announced Campout East, the east coast counterpart to their Campout festival, to be held in Crozet, Virginia. The first Campout East was held at Misty Mountain Camp Resort and was co-hosted by Sons of Bill. The second Campout East took place in Buena Vista, Virginia at Glen Maury Park on June 1–2, 2012.

Johnny Hickman released a second solo album, Tilting, in July 2012, while Cracker's song "Low" appeared in the 2012 film The Perks of Being a Wallflower and again in The Wolverine and an episode of Hindsight.

Drummer Frank Funaro was unable to tour due to an injury to his arm that sidelined him for all of 2014.

In July 2014, a revival of the Kerosene Hat era lineup toured China. Lowery and Hickman were joined on the tour by original bassist Davey Faragher and former drummer Michael Urbano. Faragher and Urbano also joined the band in recording roughly half of the double album Berkeley to Bakersfield. The other half was recorded with an entirely new lineup that also became the current touring lineup. The album was released on December 9, 2014, with "Waited My Whole Life" released as a single.

In December 2015, Lowery (along with Camper Van Beethoven) filed a class action lawsuit against music streaming service Spotify, alleging that Spotify knowingly and unlawfully reproduced and distributed copyrighted recordings without obtaining proper music licenses.

Current members

 * David Lowery – vocals, guitar (1990–present)
 * Johnny Hickman – lead guitar, vocals (1990–present)
 * Bryan Howard – bass guitar (2014–present)
 * Carlton "Coco" Owens – drums (2014–present)

Former members

 * Davey Faragher – bass guitar, vocals (1990–1993, 2014)
 * Phil Jones – drums, percussion (1990–1992 – session)
 * Go Weatherford – drums (1990–1991 – touring)
 * Michael Urbano – drums (1992–1993, 2014)
 * Joey Peters – drums (1992 – session)
 * Bruce Hughes – bass guitar (1993–1994)
 * David Lovering – drums (1993–1994)
 * Johnny Hott – drums (1994–1995)
 * Bob Rupe – bass guitar, vocals (1994–2000)
 * Charlie Quintana – drums (1995–1996) (d. 2018)
 * Frank Funaro – drums (1996–2014)
 * Kenny Margolis – keyboards, accordion (1996–2007)
 * Brandy Wood – bass guitar, vocals (2000–2004)
 * Victor Krummenacher – bass guitar, vocals (2004–2006)
 * Sal Maida – bass guitar (2006–2014)
 * Thayer Sarrano – keyboards, vocals (2014–2015)
 * Matt "Pistol" Stoessel – pedal steel guitar (2014–2023)
 * Paul McHugh – keyboards, organ (2018–2022)

Singles

 * Other compilations
 * The Virgin Years (1995) with Camper Van Beethoven
 * Get On with It: The Best of Cracker (2006) Virgin Records greatest hits collection (Not authorized by the band )

 * Tribute albums
 * If I Were a Carpenter (1994) – "Rainy Days and Mondays"
 * Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin (1995) – "Good Times Bad Times"
 * Eyesore: A Stab at the Residents (1996) – "Blue Rosebuds"
 * Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation (1996) – "Withering"
 * Burning London: The Clash Tribute (1999) – "White Riot"
 * This Is Where I Belong - The Songs of Ray Davies & The Kinks (2002) – "Victoria"

title: Cracker (band)