Sandra Day O'Connor

Dear Judge O’Connor,

My name is Matthew Winick who is a college student at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, MI. My favorite subjects to study are history, government, criminal justice, and some business.  The reason I like studying these subjects is that I want to learn about how society works, the need for reforms for the Criminal Justice System including the court system, checks and balances when dealing with crime while protect people’s civil liberties, and the need for Civil Right to protect people who are different like minorities, gender, people with disability, and people with different orientation to be protected from discrimination. Justice O’Connor I took a class in the winter semester called Intro To Criminal Justice. The class was interesting and had a great instructor. In the class I got to learn about how the court system works, some of the Supreme Court  Cases, understand civil liberties along with Miranda rights, different laws dealing with crime, and some of how law enforcement works. These things helped me work on creating new ideas to reform the Criminal Justice system.  My ideas to reform the system are like more right for juveniles when charged with a crime, alternative programs with education, community service, and therapy groups to help victimless offenders along with drug users from re-offending their crime, more educational programs like DARE to help address the need to reduce gun violence and drug abuse, and extend laws to protect people who are different from hate crime or prejudice.

Justice O’Connor I am inspired by your work in the Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court I was amazed by how you became the first woman to serve on the court, you help protect the fourth amendment by opposing other groups who want to invade people’s privacy, your ruling on McConnell V. FEC on regulating soft money for elections, and your courage to help protect people who are different from discrimination based on their race, gender, disability, or their sexual orientation. Your ruling on these issues really shows what a judge can do to make a difference.  Your website Our Courts and later ICivics helped benefit me to learn about the courts and government’s role through games, lesson plans, and interactive ways. Your website gave me great motivation to learn about government, criminal justice system, and history. Also the website helped me pass my government classes in middle school and high school. Justice O’Connor I want to say congratulations on winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. My goal in the future is to work as a teacher or in a museum or in an organization to help people with express the need for judicial reform and the need to protect civil liberties and motivate people including students to be motivated to learn how government can play a good role in society, the need to expand on Civil Rights to combat discrimination, and the need to make the criminal justice system better. Thanks for inspiring me and promoting the website to help motivate me to learn and to comprehend better on the subject. Also thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Respectfully yours,

Matthew B. Winick