New robes: O’Connor sworn in

WASIIlNGTON – In a six-minute ceremony, Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor broke through two centuries of male exclusivity and donned her robe Friday as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. With President Reagan, her family and 500 guests looking on, O’Connor stood beside Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and promised to “support and defend the Constitution” and faithfully carry out her duties. “On behalf of all the members of the court and retired Justice Potter Stewart, it is a pleasure to extend to you a very wann welcome to the court and to wish you a very long life and a long and happy career in our common calling,” Burger said in welcoming the court’s newest member and its first woman. O’Connor, who will be addressed by her brethren as “Justice O’Connor” – no courtesy title – was preceded by 101 men, dating to the court’s founding in 1790. Sitting across from Justice O’Connor in the front of the courtroom were President and Nancy Reagan, her husband, Phoenix lawyer John J. O’Connor III, and sons Scott, 23, Brian, 21, and Jay, 20. There, too, were her parents, Harry and Ada Mae Day. She earlier had told news reporters that she felt “just great” about taking “‘ler place in history. ceremony began as O’Connor, 51, entered the courtroom shortly after 2 p.m. and sat m front of her eight colleagues-to-be in the 19th~entury chair once occupied by Chief Justice John Marshall, whose decisions secured the position of the Supreme Court in American government. Attorney General William