Nominee for High Court: A Record Defying Labels

Like supporters and detractors of her Supreme Court nomination, Sandra Day O’Connor devoted the better part of this week to a review of the state legislation and judicial decisions that constitute the record of much of her public life.

With her office at the Arizona Court of Appeals here overflowing with congratulatory bouquets, her desk cluttered with papers and files, and her law clerk, husband and friends helping with the review, Judge O’Connor looked up at a brief break yesterday morning to sigh, ”It’s a nightmare.”

”Fifty years is a long time,” she said, ”and it’s hard to remember everything you did.”

Differences of Temperament

The review is far from complete, but the woman, public and private, who has so far emerged from an examination of of those records, and from conversations with friends, colleagues and adversaries, is by political instinct, judicial philosophy, economic standing and personal temperament both similar to and different from the constituency that elected Ronald Reagan President.

Judge O’Connor emerges as a sometime conservative with a moderate, even progressive streak, a determined woman but not a dogmatic one. President Reagan described her as a ”person for all seasons,” but she appears to be something less than the advocate that other supporters, including many in the feminist movement, have made her out to be. At the same time she is clearly more complex than her detractors, including Moral Majority and the anti-abortion lobby, have suggested.