A Tribute to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

A TRIBUTE TO

JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR

In July, 1981, President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The nomination was greeted with enthusiasm by the press and the gen eral public. The applause generated was focused initially on the fact that she would be the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Outside of Arizona, her qualifications were not well-known and, even as a nominee, she was stereotyped as a Reagan conserva tive-whatever that might have meant. Her confirmation hearings, however, demonstrated not only that she was articulate and well prepared, but that this nominee had the intellectual strength and ability to make a substantial contribution to the Court. As Dean Alan A. Matheson of the Arizona State University School of Law stated at the time, “After the clamor concerning the first female appointee has receded, Justice Sandra [Day] O’Connor will be judged solely on the basis of her ability and her contribution to the development of the law. The judgment will be a positive one.”1

Justice O’Connor is now in her fifteenth term of service on the Court. The judgment is indeed a positive one.

I am not the appropriate person to comment on Justice O’Connor’s significant contributions to the work of the Court in the criminal justice and civil rights areas, or with respect to redis tricting, affirmative action, abortion, the federal-state relationship, the Establishment Clause, etc. And very few would be interested