O’Connor Facing Two of the Country’s Hardest Roles: Supreme Court Justice and First Woman

Last Friday , Sandra O’Connor j(,>ined The Brethren. And an elite sisterhood. Last Friday, Sandra O’Connor became the 102nd Supreme Court Justice. And the first woman Justice. As. all the speeehes about barrierbreaking, history-makiRg, inner-circle-integrating enu, she is settling down to two of the hardest roles in the country: Supreme Court Justice and First Woman. In some ways, this woman who won her robe with the unanimous consent of the Senate and the goodwill of the people, with the approval of conservatives and the best wishes of the women’s rights activists, faces the issues shared by any woman who has ever been the first, the exception, the only, the other. How do you deal with the extra burdens? How do you live with the attention and the expectations? With the demands of conscience and history? Fine service O’Connor wants to be remembered as a good justice, but she will be judged, in large part, as a Woman Justice. Her opinions will be scrutinized for signs of her sex; her behavior will be analyzed for clues of her kind. Like every other first woman, she will be visible and vulnerable, the one justice in the photograph whom everyone can name. She will be criticized if she doesn’t “think like a male justice” and criticized if she does. Someone will surely want her to prove that a woman on the bench makes a difference, and someone else will want her to prove that women on the bench are no different. It is, as Margaret Hennig, dean of the Graduate School of Business Management