Opinion

O'Connor's class rank an error that won't die

A correction published Wednesday about Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor fixed an error made 24 years ago by Stanford University that lives on in reference material and the Internet. The error is that O'Connor ranked third in her 1952 class at Stanford Law School, in which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist finished first. Neither standing is true. Stanford acknowledged the mistake almost immediately in 1981. Donald W. Carson, journalism professor emeritus from the University of Arizona, pointed out in e-mail that Stanford didn't rank its graduates in 1952. "The 'third in the class' line has been repeated so many times that it is like an urban myth," Carson wrote. A correction ran Wednesday on A2, nearly 24 years to the day after the first one was issued. O'Connor, who grew up on a ranch in eastern Arizona, is in the news because she resigned July 1. A call to the Supreme Court's public information office found that the justice-approved official biography doesn't include "third in her class." O'Connor wasn't available for an interview. Her brother, Tucsonan Alan Day, who was spending a few days in San Diego, said by cell phone he's always heard "third in her class" and that "Sandra had never disagreed with it." "You caught me totally by surprise" questioning her class ranking, he said. "I was about 12, no 13, at the time; I didn't go into the office and ask." O'Connor is very modest, according to her brother. "She doesn't ever make herself bigger than she is." Law students may have determined standings by talking among themselves, but there was no official rank, said Jack Hubbard, assistant director of Stanford News Service. Johanna Eubank, a Star researcher who compiled the timeline that included the class standings, said she saw that information in multiple references, including the Arizona Republic Web Site and the January 1982 Current Biography, which publishes background on people in the news. "I found it in more than one place, so I trusted it," Eubank said. "And it was places that I felt comfortable with and considered reliable." The class rankings were not on the Supreme Court Web site, Eubank said, but those bios were "very short and didn't say a lot." An Internet search finds O'Connor's and Rehnquist's rankings over and over again - in the Christian Science Monitor, in USA Today, in the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and even in a 2004 press release from Stanford announcing that O'Connor would be that year's commencement speaker. All wrong, said Hubbard. He faxed me a Stanford news services press release from July 9, 1981, that should have quashed the error from the start. It says: "Stanford officials have confirmed that Sandra Day O'Connor, President Reagan's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, was one of 10 members in the Law School Class of 1952 elected to the Order of the Coif, national law academic honorary. The class had 102 members. "Contrary to information incorporated in a News Service release dated July 7, there is no currently available documentation that she ranked third in her class, while Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist ranked first. "Law School Dean Charles Meyers said Thursday, July 9, he has 'no notion' of individual rankings within the class. O'Connor told him she 'never knew what her class standing was,' except that she was elected to Coif." The 1981 press release goes on to say that Stanford picked up the ranking from the San Francisco Chronicle, which ran a Washington Post story. Stanford then circulated the information without making additional checks. "Lou Cannon, who wrote the Post story, said he didn't know for certain where the rankings came from although it appeared to be from those involved in the selection process," according to the 1981 release. Book winner

Gary Mason won my copy of "Freakonomics," which was the source of two recent columns.