Reagan calls her ‘a person for all seasons’

WASHINGTON – President Reagan Tuesday nominated Sandra Day O’Connor, 51, an Arizona appeals court judge, to be the first woman to wear the robes of a U.S. Supreme Court justice. As the president put it in an announcement in the White House press room: “She is truly a ‘person for all seasons,’ possessing those unique qualities of temperament, fairness, intellectual capacity and devotion to the public good which have characterized the 101 ‘brethren’ who have preceded her.” O’CONNOR, WHO will succeed retiring Justice Potter Stewart if she is confirmed by the Senate, responded in Phoenix: “I will do my best to serve the court and this nation in a manner that will bring credit to the president, to my family and to all the people…”

Reagan said the appointment kept a campaign promise he made last Oct. 14. He had pledged then that “one of for the U.S. Supreme Court, Court vacancies in my administration will be filled by the most qualified woman I can find.” The president said Tuesday that he had not meant that “I would appoint a woman merely to do so. That would not be fair to women, nor to future, generations of all Americans whose lives are so deeply affected by the decisions of the court. “Rather, I pledged to appoint a woman who meets the very high standards demand of all court appointees.” SMILING HAPPILY at her Phoenix press conference, O’Connor avoided giving her views on current legal and political issues such as abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment. She explained that