Nominee was 3rd in Law Class

STANFORD, Calif. – Sandra O’Connor once replied to a Stanford University alumni survey by describing her work as “attempting to administer oldtime justice in a modern age.” Judge O’Connor received her bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford in 1950 and her law degree in 1952, ranking third in a class in which Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was first. She met her future husband, John .Jay O’Connor III, a 1951 graduat.e of Stanford, on the school’s prestigious Law Review board of editors. She was elected to serve as a trust.ee of the university from 1976 to 1980. “We’re very proud of her,” Stanford President Donald Kennedy said. “It’s a superb appointment,” Stanford Law School Dean Charles Meyer said. Judge O’Connor went to work in the district attorney’s office in San Mateo County, Calif., after she graduated from law school, first 88 a law clerk and later as an assistant district attorney working in civil law. She went on to win election to the Arizona Senate, becoming the first woman in the nation to serve as a majority leader in a state legislature, was elected a Superior Court judge and was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. Gerald Gunther, a constitutional scholar at Stanford, said he was pleased the Reagan administration took the “high road” in filling the Supreme Court vacancy. “Perhaps the best thing that’s happened is the right-to-life people oppose O’Connor,” Gunther said. “She seems by all report.a to be a perfectly qualified, conservative-philosophy