![]() One, she cared about the impact of the court’s decisions - not only on the law, but on the country itself. The answer, of particular relevance today, is twofold. What interests me is less where she stood on the court’s political spectrum than how she got there. ![]() Over time, she largely lost the label “conservative” and became known as a “moderate.” That overused, context-dependent word has little independent meaning. At a time when the justices’ support for the right to abortion remained robust, she was harsh in her criticism of Roe v. She voted with the court’s most conservative member, her fellow Stanford Law School graduate (and, we learned from Evan Thomas’s 2019 biography, “First,” a onetime boyfriend) William Rehnquist, in opposing affirmative action, curbing state prison inmates’ access to federal court and bolstering the authority of the states vis-à-vis the federal government. Her early years on the court appeared to bear out the promise conveyed by her political credentials. She was close to Senator Barry Goldwater, a former neighbor in Phoenix, and had served as an Arizona co-chairwoman of Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972. At a time when the Supreme Court’s behavior seems to embody and even to amplify the country’s polarization, it’s worth reflecting on the path she took during her quarter-century on the court.Ī former majority leader of the Arizona Senate, she had spent years in Republican politics. The history of her appointment is not the only reason to think today about Sandra O’Connor, who retired 15 years ago and is now, at 91, living with dementia. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson was electrifying. For those of us who were old enough in 1981 to recognize the significance of the breakthrough, the sight of Justice O’Connor on a bench that included aging nominees of Presidents John F. The overflowing audience included President Ronald Reagan, whose nomination of a little-known judge on Arizona’s intermediate appellate court fulfilled a campaign promise - regarded by some as impetuous - to name the first woman to the court. Most people in the United States today were not yet born on that early fall afternoon when Sandra O’Connor took the oath of office and ended 191 years of an all-male Supreme Court. I use the word “wonder” because of how what once seemed remarkable is today a commonplace of the 12 justices to join the court in the ensuing decades, four have been women, including three of the last five. 25, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor took her seat on the Supreme Court. An additional, less noted anniversary is an occasion not for sorrow but for wonder. 11, of course, and the anniversary last Saturday of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This has been a month of sad remembrances - the 20th anniversary of Sept.
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