O’Connor: More than just keeping a campaign promise

A president’s overriding responsibility in selecting a nominee for the United States Supreme Court is to choose someone whose talent, temperament and experience most qualify for service on the nation’s highest court. Measured against this demanding criteria, President Reagan’s choice of Arizona Appeals Court Judge Sandra O’Connor can be called meritorious, perhaps even distinguished. That the judge is also a woman, the first nominated in the 191-year history of the United States Supreme Court, lends Mr. Reagan’s choice a historical significant that is as momentous as it is obvious. By all accounts, Judge O’Connor has compiled an excepti?nally fine record in a succession of iegal and iudicial posts: assistant state attorney general, superior court judge, and, most recently, a member of Arizona’s second highest court. Her written opinions, described by colleagues as lucid and brilliantly reasoned, reportedly reflect Mr. Reagan’s philosophical preference for judicial decisions that interpret the law rather than make it. Judge O’Connor’s academic background is every bit as solid as her subsequent achievements. In 1952, she graduated from Stanford law school along with William H. Rehnquist, now among the Supreme Court’s most respected justice. The one obvious gap in Judge O’Connor’s qualifications is her lack of experience at the federal court level. But this need hardly be a significant drawback for a nominee possessing so many other worthy attributes. In Judge O’Connor’s case,