A decade before she would become a historic first, Sandra Day O’Connor wanted the president to name a woman to the US Supreme Court. And she let the White House know.
It was 1971 and then-Arizona state Sen. O’Connor wrote to President Richard Nixon telling him, “It is my belief that the citizens of this nation would warmly accept appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court.”
Nixon, facing two sudden vacancies in October 1971, ended up choosing two men, one of whom was William Rehnquist, an old friend of O’Connor’s from Stanford Law School.
But the political confidence she showed in her state senate years, along with tenure as an Arizona state court judge, eventually put her in President Ronald Reagan’s orbit and landed her a spot on the nation’s highest court in 1981.
O’Connor’s political experience shaped her as a justice. She came to Washington knowing how to count votes. With a backroom savvy and moderate conservatism, she became the most influential justice of her era.
Serving for nearly a quarter century before her January 2006 retirement, O’Connor cast the deciding vote and wrote the governing rationale on many areas of the law before the contemporary right-wing majority took hold, including abortion rights, racial remedies and the separation of church and state.
With her colleagues, she was the social glue, eager to build relations outside of court that might smooth them inside. Using her natural charisma and the politician’s touch, she encouraged dinners, bridge and outings to music and theater events. Her presence was immediately missed among fellow justices when she retired in January 2006.
In her later years on the bench, she moved increasingly to the left, particularly after casting one of the five conservative votes for the majority in Bush v. Gore. That 2000 case resolving Florida…
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