“Thoughts on Safeguarding Judicial Independence: An Interview with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor”

By any measure, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is a remarkable woman. She grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona and majored in economics at Stanford University, graduating in 1950 with high honors. Two years later, she graduated magna cum laude from Stanford Law School, where she served on the Stanford Law Review and was elected to membership in the Order of the Coif. It was there that she met her husband, John, and began her lifelong friendship with William Rehnquist. She returned to Arizona and to the private practice of law until 1965. There then followed a four-year stint as assistant attorney general for Arizona. In 1969, she was appointed by the governor of Arizona to a vacancy in the state senate. Thereafter, she was elected to the Arizona Senate and served as the Republican majority leader--the first woman to serve as majority leader of a state senate in the United States.

But her ultimate aspirations and acumen were judicial, not political, and she successfully ran to be a trial judge for the Superior Court of Maricopa County in 1975. Four years later, she was nominated by the newly elected Democratic governor of Arizona to the Arizona State Court of Appeals. President Ronald Reagan nominated her to be the first woman on the Supreme Court of the United States in July 1981. She was immediately and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Justice O'Connor retired from the Court in January 2006 after 25 years of distinguished service during which she played