JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor greets the audience at the Bast Center on Thursday as the featured speaker at Roanoke College's Constitution Day. O'Connor was the first female to serve on the federal bench, from 1981 to 2006.

Two standing ovations, presented before she said a word.

That was the greeting former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor received Thursday night when she spoke at Roanoke College.

The crowd, which school officials estimated at more than 2,000, filled the college's Bast Center and the audience seemed visibly, genuinely excited to see and hear the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Given the subject of many of her remarks, that kind of welcome may have been gratifying to O'Connor.

"Only one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government, let alone say what they do," she declared as she rallied for increased civics education programs in schools.

The names of the judges on "American Idol" are common knowledge, O'Connor observed, but less than 15 percent of the general public can identify a chief justice.

"We're currently failing to impart the knowledge that people need," she said. "Knowledge of our government is not handed down through the gene pool.

"The teaching of civics is vanishing from the community, and we need to bring it back."

A solution she said she's helping spearhead is the Web site www.ourcourts.org, a legal and governmental resource for teachers and for children in grades six through eight.

"That's the age when students can be taught the complexity of rules and can understand why we have them," she explained.

Another topic O'Connor focused on was judicial independence.

"Judges must be free to apply the law without bias or prejudice and without concern for whether the law is popular," she said, comparing judiciaries to referees at sporting events who have to make fair calls for teams both home and away.

During the last half-hour, O'Connor took prepared questions from a panel.

Asked about the Bush v. Gore decision, the former justice said, "When I became a state judge, I made a decision I was going to do the best I could to study the case, make a decision, and not look back."

She said subsequent recounts of Florida votes cast during the 2000 presidential election bore out the court's ruling.

"It's done, it's over, let's move on," she said, to applause.

Other questions centered on a lack of civility in politics, cameras in courtrooms, and whether O'Connor believed Roe v. Wade would be overturned.

"I haven't any idea," she replied. "I'm not there anymore."

Earlier, O'Connor received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Roanoke College and spoke with students in two classes.

Courtney Mortland, 20, and about two dozen other students got the chance to speak with O'Connor during an American Constitutional Law class.

"She kind of threw all of us for a loop," said Mortland, a junior studying history and foreign politics with a concentration in legal studies. "She was very down to earth, laid-back, a real person."

Mortland asked O'Connor what skills were necessary for a successful legal education and law career.

"She said you need to read fast and write well," Mortland recalled, and that was advice O'Connor repeated in her remarks, tempered with a more basic directive:

"Be sure it's what you want to do," she warned prospective law students in the audience. "We have too many [lawyers] already."

When asked about her quarter-century in the Supreme Court, O'Connor closed on a reflective note.

"I had 25 years in an institution I learned to respect enormously," she said. "Twenty-five years is a pretty long time. I think that's probably enough."