Nominee is expected to fulfill Reagan mandate for restraint

Arizona Appeals Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor’s court opinions are short, clearly written and stress interpeting the law. That attracted President Reagan and led to her nomination Tuesday to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to her longtime friend and colleague, House Minority Leader Burton Barr, R-PhoeniL “She will judge, she will not legislate,” Barr said. “That’s what Reagan wants. He wants them (justices) to sit up on the bench and decide what the law says. She will do that.” Sources close to Reagan said he saw in Judge O’Connor another Justice William Rehnquist, 56, a fellow Arizonan and solid conservative appointed to the Supreme Court by President Nixon. Rehnquist and Judge O’Connor were classmates at Stanford University and were co-editors of the Stanford Law Review. In her months as a member of the Arizona Court of Appeals, an analysis of her opinions shows that Judge O’Connor has not been faced with controversial legal questions and has not written ihe kind of legal opinions that make history. Instead, she has dealt mainly with routine issues of workmen’s compensation and divorce. However, she has little patience with criminals’ claims that they were denied their rights. In the past 16 months, she has written the court’s opinions in decisions that refused to let a divorced woman share in her ex-husband’s workmen’s compensation payments; declined to create a new right to sue lawyers and witnesses for testimony that comes out at a trial; and opened up the city of Mesa