O’Connor selection a plus for states as well as women

The confirmation of Sandra Day O’Connor as a member of the Supreme Court – which now seems certain – doesn’t mean simply that the high court will have its first woman member ever. O’Connor will also be the first Supreme Court justice chosen from state government during a quarter century in which the pendulum swung fast – and some say dangerously – toward federal dominance in American life. The record books show that prior to President Reagan’s selection of Mrs. O’Connor, an Arizona appeals court judge, no state jurist had been appointed to the court since President Eisenhower’s selection of William Brennan in 1956. Before that, one has to go all the way back to Herbert Hoover’s 1932 appointment of Benjamin Cardoza to find selection of a state judge. Moreover, Judge O’Connor is a former state legislator. In 1972, in fact, she became the first woman ever chosen to be a state Senate majority leader. Not a single sitting member of the Supreme Court has any state legislative experience at all. Will she provide a friendlier voice on the court for problems of state and local government? To hold back federal courts, for instance, from takeovers of substandard state prisons and mental hospitals unless absolutely necessary? To stop imposing remedies for alleged social injustices without any concept of the potentially immense costs for state and local taxpayers? Read her expressed opinions on federal-state relations and there’s no question where she’ll stand. In the current issue of the