Class Ranks are unverified for justice, nominee

Stanford University Law School administrators Thursday withdrew their claim that Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist ranked first and nominee Sandra O’Connor third in the school’s 1952 law class. The rankings were reported in a July 7 Stanford press release but cannot be documented, said Robert Beyers, director of Stanford’s public-information office.

Beyers said the release was based on a July 2 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, which quoted a Washington Post story.

“We failed to verify the information prior to issuing the release, and it’s all turned into a big can of worms,” a Stanford spokeswoman said. “We got burned.”

Judge O’Connor, an Arizona appellate judge who was nominated for the Supreme Court on Tuesday by President Reagan, told university officials Wednesday she never was informed by Stanford of her ranking and does not know what it was, Beyers said.

“The ranking did not come from anything release by Judge O’Connor,” said Nancy White, a spokeswoman in the judge’s Phoenix office.

“In fact, she was never even told what her ranking was and had nothing to do with the Stanford press release,” Ms. White told an Arizona Republic reporter Thursday.

Her law-school ranking is not listed on a biography Judge O’Connor released during a press conference in Phoenix on Tuesday.

The biography does list Judge O’Connor as a member of the Order of the Coif, a group restricted to the top 10 percent of law-school graduates.

Rehnquist, also an Arizonan, does not list