Sandra Day O’Connor: The Making of a Precedent

On September 25, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor raised her hand in Washington, D.C. and, within a few moments, made history as the nation’s 102nd Supreme Court justice and as the first woman ever to sit on the country’s highest tribunal. And at that moment, Stanford Law School became the first law school to seat two members of the same class on the winged bench in the Supreme Court’s colonnaded courtroom.

When President Reagan announced O’Connor’s nomination, he lauded her as “a person for all seasons.” In the days that followed, Reagan’s nominee received enthusiastic endorsement from liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike. Indeed, with the exception of ultra-conservative groups, such as The National Right to Life Committee and The Moral Majority, support for the first female justice was nationwide. An Associated Press-NBC poll revealed that 65% of the country supported O’Connor’s appointment.

When the time came for the Senate to give its crucial assessment, O’Connor was confirmed 99-0. And, with that vote, a 191-year-old tradition was broken; the brethren finally had a sister.

Who is Sandra Day O’Connor? What unique set of experiences and circumstances guided her walk into history? What will her appointment mean for the Court?

Shortly after O’Connor’s nomination was announced a Presidential aide involved in the search for the first woman justice observed: “She [O’Connor] really made it easy. She was the right age, had the right philosophy, the right combination of experience,