"As the first woman on the Supreme Court, Justice (Sandra Day) O'Connor set a pace I could scarcely match," Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a speech at the University of Arizona on Wednesday. She talked with audience members at a reception after her address.

Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Arizona's two Supreme Court justices "pace-setters," offering a series of personal reflections about her former colleagues in a speech Wednesday at the University of Arizona law school.

From the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's poker-faced humor to the tireless grace of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Ginsberg's anecdotes went beyond the official biographies and newspaper profiles.

With the death of Rehnquist, a former Phoenix attorney, and the retirement of O'Connor, a Stanford classmate raised on a ranch in Southern Arizona, last year will be remembered as one of major change for the court, Ginsburg said.

In the law school's 27th Annual Isaac Marks Memorial Lecture, Ginsburg talked of the two and their importance, particularly to Arizona. Rehnquist taught a two-week class on court history at the UA for 11 years and this spring O'Connor will return to teach for the second time.

Also this year, the law school established the William H. Rehnquist Center on the Constitutional Structures of Government, a nonpartisan research center devoted to issues important to the late justice, especially federal-state relations and the independent judiciary.

"Of all the bosses I've had as a lawyer, a law teacher and a judge, Chief Justice Rehnquist ranked among the fairest and most efficient," Ginsburg said.

Rehnquist had an irreverent sense of humor, able to give with a poker face lines that triggered smiles and laughs.

Ginsburg prompted laughter from much of the audience herself when she plainly said she and Rehnquist held different views on more than one occasion.

"Due to his Scandinavian heritage, the chief sometimes seemed a model of Nordic cool, but I saw firsthand his capacity for empathy," she said, remembering when Rehnquist kept her assignments light during the most trying weeks in her treatment for colon cancer.

Ginsburg remembered Rehnquist's self-designed robe, with four gold stripes on each sleeve, a style he copied from a local theater company's presentation of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "Iolanthe."

"In his own words, he did not want to be 'upstaged by the ladies,' " Ginsburg said.

O'Connor did more to promote collegiality among the court members than any of the 110 justices who have served on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg said. As a cowgirl who could brand cattle, drive a tractor and shoot a rifle before she was a teen, O'Connor held her own with men her whole life.

Ginsburg said O'Connor understood that the secret to power was to "be visible and put on an impressive show." With an extraordinary ability to manage time, O'Connor responded to invitations to appear across the country and around the world. She was lauded for the ability to disagree plainly and professionally, without castigating colleagues.

"As the first woman on the Supreme Court, Justice O'Connor set a pace I could scarcely match," she said. "My secretaries imagined that Justice O'Connor had a secret twin sister traveling the world."

"She told me what I needed to know, not in an intimidating dose, but just enough for me to navigate safely my first days and weeks," she said.

Appointed to the court in 1993 by President Clinton, Ginsburg was prepared to write her first opinion on an uncontroversial, unanimous decision, as expected. Instead, she was assigned a case with a 6-3 decision, dealing with some of the "most inscrutable legislation Congress ever passed," she said.

O'Connor's advice: "Just do it," which Ginsburg labeled a prime example of her general attitude to "Waste no time on regret or resentment; just get the job done."