Sandra Day O'Connor

Sandra Day O'Connor

Perhaps no other jurist could have come to the Supreme Court under greater expectations. When President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981 to be the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, he did soto keep a campaign promise. O'Connor's nomination was quick to draw criticism from both the political people left and right. Conservatives put down her lack of federal judicial experience and claimed that she didn't have any constitutional knowledge. They considered her a wasted nomination and suspected her position on abortion. Liberals, on the other hand, could not deny their satisfaction at seeing a woman on the High Court, but they were disappointed in O'Connor's apparent lack of strong support for feminist issues. In time, however, O'Connor has come to answer all these criticisms. O'Connor has emerged from the shadow of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the Court's conservative bloc with her own brand of pragmatic and centrist-oriented conservatism. Even those liberals who branded her a "traitor" in her early years for compromising on abortion rights, now appreciate her efforts to keep the "pro-choice" message of Roe v. Wade in 1973. O'Connor's success should come at no surprise. From her country childhood to her career climb through a profession dominated by men, O'Connor often resorted to practical solutions as she worked within the system. This made her more important in the Supreme Court.

Sandra Day O'Connor was born March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas. Her parents, Harry and Ada Mae, owned the Lazy-B-Cattle Ranch in southeastern Arizona, where O'Connor grew up. O'Connor experienced a difficult life on the ranch in her early years. The ranch itself did not receive electricity or running water until she was seven. Since their nearest neighbors lived 25 miles away, the family spent their days mostly in isolation. Her younger brother and sister were not born until she was eight years old, leaving her to spend many years as an only child. To make up for the loneliness, she made friends with many of the ranch's cowboys and kept many pets, including a bobcat. O'Connor read a lot in her early years and engaged in many farm activities. She learned to drive at age seven and could fire rifles and ride horses very well by the time she turned eight.

The isolated ranch made formal education difficult so O'Connor's parents sent her to live with her maternal grandmother in El Paso. Sandra went to the Radford School, a private academy for girls, from kindergarten through high school. Suffering from extreme homesickness, she stopped going and returned to Arizona for a year. Still, she graduated with good marks at the age of sixteen. O'Connor gives credit much to her grandmother for being such a great influence on her. She credits her grandmother's confidence in her ability to succeed as her motivation for refusing to admit defeat.

After high school, O'Connor went to Stanford University where she majored in economics. She chose economics originally with the goal of applying that knowledge towards the operation of a ranch of her own or even the Lazy-B Ranch. A legal dispute over her family's ranch, however, stirred her interest in law and O'Connor decided to enroll at Stanford Law School after receiving her baccalaureates degree magna cum laude in 1950.It took

O'Connor two years instead of three, to complete law school. Along the way, she served on the Stanford Law Review and received membership in the Order of the Coif, a legal honor society. She also met her future husband, John Jay O'Connor, a fellow student, at this time. O'Connor graduated third out of a class of 102. (First in the class William H. Rehnquist who would become chief justice.)

O'Connor faced a difficult job market after leaving Stanford. No law firm in California wanted to hire her and only one offered her a position as a legal secretary. Ironically, a senior partner of that firm, William French Smith, helped O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court years later as the Attorney General. Failing to find suitable work in private practice, O'Connor turned to public service. She accepted a job as the deputy county attorney for San Mateo, California. When O'Connor's husband graduated from Stanford a year later, the army immediately drafted him into the Judge Advocate General Corps. John O'Connor served in Frankfurt, Germany, for three years with Sandra by his side. While in Germany, Sandra served as a civilian lawyer in the Quartermaster's Corps.

When the O'Connors returned to the U.S. in 1957, they decided to settle down in Phoenix, Arizona. They had their three sons in the six years that followed.

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