Other Views

RONALD REAGAN did what he had to do and named a woman to the Supreme Court. From all accounts , Sandra Day O’Connor is a conservative who is respected by conservatives and liberals alike as an able judge, a thoughtful legal scholar and a clear writer. Her political background – she was the first and only woman to serve as majority leader in the Arizona state senate – could be an asset in a job where nine individuals must come to a consensus on a regular basis. That she is a mother of three means that she will bring a perspective to the job that differs significantly from that of the men who have preceded her. That she is a woman may change the dynamic of the current court in subtle, possibly even dramatic, ways. Although Reagan denied he was naming a woman merely to do so, he had no other choice politically . His record on women’s issues is weak, so weak that even conservative Republican women have criticized him pub- licly in recent weeks for failing to name siJnificant numbers of women to positions tn the administration. The absence of a woman from the Supreme Court bas symbolically and sometimes effectively disenfranchised the women of this country for the past two centuries. In recent years the high court has been criticized, and rightly so, as an institution with limited un- derstanding of women and their roles in the family and society. O’Connor, who was offered a job as a legal secretary after graduating third in her class from Stanford Law School, bas bad firsthand experience