Sandra Day O'Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court

Introduction: A Historic Nomination

Traditionally, nominations to the Supreme Court have been a highly political act of the executive branch of government. It is a singular power of the president that frequently proceeds with only limited challenge from Congress, and a confirmed nomination is one for life — unless the justice chooses to step down. The legacy of a Supreme Court appointment can therefore be long and consequential for a president, who typically seeks out candidates who share commonalities with themselves and their political party. The opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice does not arise frequently, given the length of tenure those justices serve.

The appointment and unanimous confirmation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the result of a campaign promise made by then-candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980 to place the first woman on the Supreme Court. Reagan, once elected, fulfilled his promise by seeking O'Connor from outside the traditional realm of candidates — the lower federal courts (Vieira & Gross, 1998, p. 7).

It was rather unusual for Reagan to appoint such a young justice, as it had previously been the practice of presidents to appoint those with the most judicial experience, and therefore typically the oldest candidates. O'Connor was only 51 when appointed, but she was an obvious choice, as evidenced by her unanimous confirmation by the Senate after only a short deliberation. As Perry (1991) notes, "Reagan's appointments to the nation's highest court also demonstrated the same strategy of finding relatively young ideological kin, who may shape the direction of the Court well into the next century. Sandra Day O'Connor was fifty-one at the time of her appointment in 1981" (p. 12).

O'Connor's Background and Path to the Court

O'Connor's path to the Supreme Court was shaped by a distinguished career in Arizona law and politics, marked throughout by the barriers she encountered as a woman. Despite graduating near the top of her law school class at Stanford — third overall, just behind her classmate William H. Rehnquist, the future Chief Justice — she was initially offered only a position as a legal secretary upon entering the workforce. As Waters (2005) notes, "Who would have thought that after graduating first in her law school class that she would only be offered a job as a legal secretary? Justice O'Connor remembered what she learned along the way and chose to give back" (p. 92).

She was named an editor of the Stanford Law Review, where she also met her future husband, John O'Connor, and graduated at only twenty-two years of age (Friedman & Israel, 1997, p. 1760). O'Connor took time to work abroad and then raise her children before returning to legal and political posts — repeatedly demonstrating that women of caliber had every right to move in and out of the workforce without penalty, and to, in short, have it all.

In 1965, O'Connor returned to full-time employment in the public sector as an assistant attorney general in Arizona. In 1969, she was appointed to fill a vacant state Senate seat and was subsequently elected to a full term. Her Republican colleagues — nearly all of whom were men — chose her as majority leader, making her the first woman in the United States to hold such a position. A Democratic colleague, Alfredo Gutierrez, recalled: "It was impossible to win a debate with her. We'd go on the floor with a few facts and let rhetoric do the rest. Not Sandy — she would overwhelm you with her knowledge." Her close attention to statutory detail and complete mastery of the facts were especially notable in light of her future judicial methodology. Eager to return to law in 1974, O'Connor won a seat as a trial judge on the Maricopa Superior Court, and in 1980 was appointed by Governor Babbitt to the Arizona Court of Appeals (Friedman & Israel, 1997, p. 1761).

Though her appointment went largely without controversy, some questioned her credentials. The American Bar Association gave O'Connor only a "qualified" — rather than "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." At the same time, he speculated that had O'Connor's early career opportunities not been foreclosed by gender, "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 reassured fellow Democrats that "if we're going to have a Reagan appointee to the Court, you couldn't do much better," describing O'Connor as "about as moderate a Republican as you'll ever find being appointed by Reagan" (Friedman & Israel, 1997, p. 1764).

O'Connor herself described her nomination as "a classic example of being the right person in the right spot at the right time. Stated simply, you must be lucky."

Tenure on the Court and Judicial Philosophy

O'Connor served on the Supreme Court for 24 years, developing a reputation as a careful, fact-driven jurist who resisted rigid ideological frameworks. It is said that when faced with particularly difficult cases, she sought out the most extreme views on each side and then identified the moderate position in the middle that offered the most logical resolution. This approach earned her the reputation as a centrist swing vote on a closely divided Court.

Her judicial philosophy drew heavily from her practical experience in law and politics. In a commencement address at Stanford University in 1982, she urged cooperative negotiation rather than litigation as a way to resolve disputes, suggesting that listeners "remember the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That might make you a little more generous, save you a lot of time and money and make my job a lot easier" (Friedman & Israel, 1997, p. 1760).

O'Connor also championed the role of state authority within the federal constitutional framework. Her decisions frequently reflected a concern for preserving the power reserved to the states under the Constitution, and she was a consistent voice for limiting federal overreach into areas of state jurisdiction. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Judiciary Committee, observed that "throughout her 24 years of service on the nation's highest court, Justice O'Connor worked to restore common sense to our criminal justice system and due regard for the power reserved to the states under the Constitution" ("The Battle for the," 2005, p. A01).