O'Connor, Sandra Day

Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a unanimous vote of 99–0. She was sworn into office on September 25, 1981, and served on the court for more than 25 years.

Justice O'Connor's appointment to the Supreme Court was not without controversy, as she drew criticism from both conservatives and liberals. Conservatives were concerned about her lack of knowledge of constitutional matters and lack of experience in the federal court system. Meanwhile, liberals were concerned about her failure to indicate explicit support for feminist issues. Justice O'Connor's tenure on the bench, however, alleviated some of the concerns on both sides. She gradually earned a reputation for being a moderate conservative, a free-thinker, and an effective compromiser. She became well-known for her commitment to careful analysis of the facts and issues presented in each of the cases that she heard.

Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, at the time a controversial decision.

Justice O'Connor's conservative values lay the foundation for her beliefs about the role of the courts. She made it clear that she believed the courts’ role is to interpret the law, not legislate. She advocated for the exercise of judicial restraint, the primacy of state's rights, the safeguarding of personal freedoms, and incremental social change.

In 1982, her second year on the court, Justice O'Connor issued her first major opinion. In a sex discrimination case, she opined that male students could not be rejected from nursing school based on their gender. In her years on the bench, she shaped constitutional law in several areas, including affirmative action, voting rights, separation of church-and-state issues, the Fifth Amendment, states’ rights, and abortion.

In fact, Justice O'Connor received the most attention for her opinions on cases related to abortion rights. In several cases, she was the deciding vote in upholding states’ rights to regulate and limit abortion. Many conservatives had hoped that Justice O'Connor would take an even more active antiabortion position; [Page 1046]nevertheless, her opinions fell short of reversing the historic Roe v. Wade decision.

Though Justice O'Connor conceded the government some regulatory control over abortion, such as with regards to informed consent and parental approval provisions, her position upheld Roe‘s recognition of a personal freedom interest in a woman's right to choose. Therefore, her influence in preserving abortion rights in the United States is without question.

Justice O'Connor was born on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas, and spent her early years on a ranch in Arizona. Later she attended school in El Paso under the care of her grandmother. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford University, both with honors. In law school, she was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. She met her husband, John Jay O'Connor III, at Stanford, and the couple had three sons. Justice O'Connor's career took off in 1965, when she started to work part time for the Arizona attorney general's office. In 1969, she was appointed to the state senate and was subsequently reelected to that position. In 1973, she became the first woman to serve as the majority leader of a state senate. In 1974, she was elected to a position of trial judge for Maricopa County, and in 1979, she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. Then, in 1981, she was appointed to the Supreme Court and served until her retirement in 2006.

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