Anxious to return to law in 1974, O'Connor won a seat as a trial judge on the Maricopa Superior Court....In 1980 Babbit, who had been elected governor, appointed O'Connor to the Arizona Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court). (Friedman & Israel, 1997, p. 1761) It is stated that when she was faced with particularly hard cases, she chose to seek out the most extreme views on each side and then find the moderate stand in the middle with the most logical demonstration of resolution. O'Connor is also said to have held that her nomination to the Supreme Court was "a classic example of being the right person in the right spot at the right time. Stated simply, you must be lucky." Though her appointment went a great deal without controversy there were some people who saw her appointment as perfunctory and her position as a judicial leader unproven.

The American Bar Association gave O'Connor a mere "qualified" (as opposed to "highly qualified") rating on experience, because she had never served at the federal level. Law professor and Supreme Court historian G. Edward White stated frankly that "a man with O'Connor's background would probably not be nominated to the Supreme Court. "On the other hand, one might speculate that, had O'Connor's career opportunities at the outset not been foreclosed by gender alone, she might well have achieved a record of accomplishment by 1980 akin to that of her classmate William H. Rehnquist...." Representative Morris Udall of Arizona...

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O'Connor proved her worth as a justice and demonstrated immense skill in the resolution of extremely difficult legal questions, posed to the court. This is especially true with regard to her last few years as a justice.