A recent survey revealed that only one in 10 young Americans can name the current Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. And fewer than half can name the three branches of American government.

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor yesterday, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, called this public ignorance a result of cutbacks in civics and government education in public schools. The curriculum deletions, she said, are “unintended consequences” of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.

Incidentally, the man sitting next to her, attorney Theodore Olson, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of would-be-President Bush during the 2000 presidential election recount crisis (with Justice O’Connor the supposed swing vote in deciding the presidency).

National and international tumult surrounded that historic court proceeding.

But yesterday at the Greenwald Pavilion on the Aspen Institute campus, where Olson and Justice O’Connor sat on a panel devoted to issues in the law, the only disorder came from the mountain skies, which interrupted them with thunderclaps and gusts of wind that whipped the canvassed walls of the 700-seat tent.

Olson alluded to his experience arguing before O’Connor and America’s highest court in 2000, but, mindful of Aspen’s known leftward political tendencies, said, with a smile, only, “I won’t mention the name of that case in this audience.”

The panel — rounded out by New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye, Yale Law Professor Stephen L. Carter and moderator Meryl Chertoff of Georgetown University — primarily tackled the phenomenon of electing state judges.

Prof. Chertoff said these campaigns, not envisioned by the framers of the U.S. Constitution and non-existent until 1846, have resulted in “a veritable arms race in judicial elections,” with judges’ filling coffers with cash from companies and individuals hoping to influence their later decisions.

Judges are elected in 39 states.

Justice O’Connor disparaged the process, saying she favors state systems, where judges are appointed by the governor and later retained or dismissed by voters (the system Colorado uses). She argued that the idea of judges’ campaigning on their own beliefs, being swayed by voter tendencies rather than constitutions and judicial statutes, and raising private campaign funds is damaging American law.

“I think cash in the courtrooms is always a bad idea,” Justice O’Connor said.

andrew@aspendailynews.com