The Remarkable Legacy of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

The First Female Justice, But Also So Much More Than That
Every woman in the country owes a debt of gratitude to Justice O’Connor for the way she has carried the mantle of being the first female United States Supreme Court Justice. This was the highest position a woman had yet achieved in American government, and, as the Justice herself is fond of saying, she was honored to be the first, but she sure did not want to be the last female Justice. She does not need to worry.

Justice O’Connor’s appointment in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan led some to claim that she would be the “women’s” Justice. Her gender was her early defining characteristic – but she made sure it would not be her primary defining characteristic on the Court.
Indeed, I do not think it ever occurred to her to be a Justice for only one-half of the population. Rather, she was at the Court to render her absolutely best judgment case-by-case on the hard issues facing the Court. And that is what she has done.

Never a knee-jerk vote for women litigants, she has doubtless been influenced by her own experiences, including the experience of being a woman in what was, at least when she graduated from law school, a man’s world. Famously, stellar grades at Stanford Law School did not save the future Justice from being offered not legal, but legal secretary positions – the ones deemed “fit” for a woman.

Thanks to Justice O’Connor, American women know that there is no one mold that the successful female must fit; there is no