A Tribute to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

A TRIBUTE TO JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR

It is a great privilege, and a personal pleasure, to introduce Justice O’Connor, who honors us with her presence. Her remarkable, almost storied background is well known. Pathbreaker, one who overcame the extraordinary, almost unthinkable disabilities as a young lawyer whose professional opportunities were arbitrarily and invidiously limited. Yet she succeeded admirably, taking on task after task and discharging her varying and growing duties in a way that won Phi Beta Kappa, Law Review type honors that characterized her distinguished academic career at Leland Stanford’s University, the N.Y.U., if you will, of the West. That she is a person of great accomplishment and ability is universally understood. What is less known here in the East about her remarkable background is that, long before the Year of the Woman, then duly elected Senator O’Connor, upon entering the Arizona State Senate, rose with meteoric speed to become Senate Majority Leader. This in a, shall we say, male-dominated institution. Notwithstanding her success in politics, she opted instead for the life of the law and the bench. Her shill and wisdom as a trial judge were renowned, and she quickly rose to the intermediate appellate bench in her native State. (Although for purposes of precision I must say, as a native Texan, that we in the Lone Star State proudly, parochially claim Justice O’Connor as our own since she had the good fortune to be born in El Paso.) When back