'Teach the young' about service, urges Supreme Court justice

Federal recruiters should emphasize the rewarding and exciting nature of public service in an effort to draw young people into the ranks of government workers, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said on Monday.

O'Connor, who was being presented with the Elliot L. Richardson Prize for Excellence in Public Service, said civil servants today must persuade "young people that the individual can make a difference in this world of ours." The award was presented by the Council for Excellence in Government, a Washington-based nonprofit group dedicated to improving government performance.

"Teach the young," O'Connor said in her address. "I think we have to tell them how satisfying it is to contribute something in the public sector."

O'Connor was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and has served at the local, state and federal government levels, but she said she was brought into the public sector "by something short of choice." After graduating from Stanford Law School, O'Connor became a deputy county attorney when law firms in California balked at hiring a female lawyer.

During her speech Monday, however, she said that her work has been "more interesting," her colleagues "more genuine," and her opportunities "more frequent" than if she had followed her male law school classmates into the private sector.

A poll released Monday by the council revealed that many 17- to 24-year-olds are interested in helping others, but they are far more likely to join nonprofit organizations than they are to join the civil service. In the same poll, just 27 percent of respondents said they had been asked to consider working for the government. Two years ago, that number was 38 percent.

O'Connor called on the federal government to increase its recruiting efforts and become more visible as an employment option, saying that "someone needs to pose the question to those who might not have heard it."

Taking note of a common complaint among federal workers, O'Connor also said that federal compensation must be competitive with the private sector. Many of the clerks at the Supreme Court are saddled with heavy debt when they leave law school, she noted.

For those-and other indebted recent graduates-to even consider the public sector "salaries must be increased," O'Connor said.