Ex-jurist (Francis P.) O'Connor dies at 79

[Ian David]

Source: The Boston Globe

By Scott Allen, Globe Staff | August 5, 2007

He was known as "The Great Dissenter" on the state's highest court, a judge who did not hesitate to stand alone on the losing side if he thought it was the right side. In 16 years as an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, Francis P. O'Connor went his own way on some of the most divisive social issues of the 1980s and 1990s, from the right of gay people to adopt to the right of the terminally ill to die.

Governor Edward King named O'Connor to the court in 1981 in hopes of getting a conservative who would reliably oppose abortion, but the Commonwealth got someone less easy to pigeonhole. O'Connor strenuously opposed abortion, but he frequently broke with conservatives, too, opposing the death penalty and sometimes sticking up for the rights of defendants.

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After the US Supreme Court legalized abortion nationally in 1973, O'Connor helped found the antiabortion organization Massachusetts Citizens for Life. He told legislators at his SJC nomination hearing that he personally found abortion abhorrent, but said he would follow the law of the land. On the court, he opposed the majority opinion that banned abortion clinic blockades by antiabortion protesters. Though the majority said these protests could unfairly intimidate women, O'Connor argued that the ban could "impermissibly chill" people's right to protest.

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In his years on the SJC, O'Connor wrote numerous important majority opinions, such as the 1987 decision that denied a woman the right to sue for damages after her longtime boyfriend was injured in a work accident. If unmarried couples are given the same status as married couples, O'Connor wrote for the majority, it would subvert the institution of marriage. Likewise, O'Connor acted for the court in 1993 when he refused to stop gays from marching in South Boston's St. Patrick's Day Parade.

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