O’Connor’s experience may help states’ rights

WASHINGTON – In the long run. the most significant fact about Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Sandra Day O’Connor may turn out to be not that she is a woman but that she has served as a state legislator and state judge. O’Connor’s experience at the state level is almost as unusual for the modern-day Supreme Court ru: is her gender . For the past quartercentury, virtually every person appointed to the Supreme Court has come there from the same national channels: a federal judgeship, a federal government job in Washington or a nationally prominent law practice. Not since Justice William J. Brennan Jr. came to Washington from the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1956 has any justice been appointed with experience in a state court system. None of the members of the current court has ever served in a state legislature. If O’Connor gives the justices a ground-level view of the way state courts and legislatures operate, her voice could prove highly influential. She could, in fact, become a powerful advocate on behalf of President Reagan’s oft-stated desire to give greater power to the states. The Supreme Court is regularly asked to pass judgment on the validity of laws enacted by state legislatures and rulings by state courts. Generally, the justices find it much easier to rule unconstitu- . tional the actions of these state bodies than the laws passed by Congress or the actions of federal agencies. • In the court term that has just ended, for example, the Supreme Court moved further in the