Women as Supreme Court Candidates: From Florence Allen to Sandra O’Connor

Women as Supreme Court candidates: From Florence Allen to Sandra Day O’Connor
By Beverly B. Cook

America was not ready for a woman on the Supreme Court when a well-qualified Florence Allen was available in the 1930s. But by Sandra O’Connor’s day, America had changed its mind.

In the years between Florence E. Allen’s New Deal-era candidacy for the United States Supreme Court and the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman associate justice in September 1981, the proportion of women lawyers qualified for the Court did not change; the number of viable women candidates remained very small. But what did change over the intervening 50 years was the nation’s social climate and political culture.

[Photo caption: U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger swears in Sandra Day O’Connor on September 25. Her husband, John, holds two family Bibles.]

Allen’s active self-candidacy faltered against the resistance of public opinion and the disinterest of the president. The public did not accept a woman’s seat on the Court, and the politicians, the legal professionals and the justices themselves did not perceive women lawyers as eligibles in the candidate pool. O’Connor’s route to the Supreme Court was smoothed by the recent acceptability of women in high public positions. The new public opinion toward female roles and the increasing importance of the women’s vote encouraged President Reagan to create a woman’s seat and then to look into the small pool of eligible women to find the one most