Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Judge O’Connor backed by key leaders in Senate;

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHING TON – President Reagan sought to calm the religious and political right Wednesday over his nomination of Arizona’s Sandra O’Connor to the Supreme Court, and a key senator predicted that she will be confirmed without difficulty. Aside from outraged cries from anti-abortion groups, there was no firm opposition to Judge O’Connor where it count.s – among the 98 men and two women in the Senate who finally will decide whether she will be the first woman to serve on the high court. But the White House said that because speculation on the possibility of her nomination began last week, early mail and telephone calls were running against the nomination. Telegrams and Mailgrams were 290 pro and 2,573 against, and phone calls were 263 pro and 1,554 against. Despite opposition by such groups as the Moral Majority, Judge O’Connor was backed by Senate Judiciary _Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., a key conservative leader . “I expect to support her,” Thurmond said. “I would say the Senate will confirm her unless something comes up that we don’t know about.” His view was echoed by Senate Democratic leader Robert Byrd and assistant Republican leader Ted Stevens, who said they know of no senators expressly against Judge O’Connor. The president hopes for – and expect.s – quick confirmation of his nominee. On his return from horseback riding Wednesday at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, he was asked about Senate confirmation of Judge O’Connor. “I expect it,” he said. Senate GOP

Op ed, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

… With no Apologies to Aristophanes

Op ed, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

Aristophanes’ ashes must have erupted like Mt. St. Helens when President Reagan named a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some 411 years before Christ, Aristophanes was writing in “Lysistrata” that, “There is no animal more invincible than a woman, nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless.” Images arise of Sandra Day O’Connor clawing at the eyes of Chief Justice Burger as he tries to impose some argum ent upon the rest of the Court. And Shakespeare’s bones must have beaten each other like castanets , muffling out even the strident protests of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. It was Shakespeare, after all, who wrote: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” Can’t you just see tears cascading down Mrs. O’Connor’s black robe as frailty prevents her from dealing with some absurd opinion by her old Stanford classmate, Justice William Rehnquist? Reagan Praised Whether he chose Mrs. O’Connor to keep a campaign promise, or because he has been catching unmitigated hell from Republican women who say he hasn’t given enough decent jobs to females, President Reagan deserves high praise for naming Mrs. O’Connor to the nation’s highest tribunal. After 191 years of wallowing in the inanities of Aristophanes and Shakespeare, and assorted chauvinisms in between, it is good to see Mr. Reagan respond to the principle that America’s commitment to justice is deepened when women sit on the Court. We go back and forth from the trifling to the vulgar in our assertions that women are “different” from men. It is time that

Op ed, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

From Myra Bradwell to Sandra Day O’Connor…

Op ed, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

It was just the other day that I was invoking the 19th-century shade of Myra Bradwell, but with the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, the old story takes on an especially poignant meaning . From Mrs. Bradwell to Mrs. O’Connor, it’s been a long, uphill climb for ladies in the law. Myra Bradwell, may she rest in peace, was a native of Vermont who moved to Chicago sometime in the mid-1850s. Not long after ratification of the FourteEjnth Amendment in 1868, she did a most audacious, unfeminine thing: She applied for a license to practice law. Curiously, she did not rely upon the equal protection clause but rather upon the privileges and immunities clause, but in any event the Supreme Court of Illinois summarily turned her down. No women were to be allowed in court. Mrs. Bradwell appealed. In April 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court also gave her the brush-off. !t “‘.as wi~hi~ the police powers of Ilhn01s to hm1t membership in the bar to males only. Only Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase dissented, and he didn’t say why. Justice Joseph P. Bradley was so shocked by the whole astonishing idea that he wrote a flaming concurring opinion in which two other justices joined. History, nature, the common law, and “the usages of Westminster Hall from time immemorial” argued against the proposition. Bradley felt impelled to expand upon the wide difference in the spheres and destinies of man and woman. “Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Class Ranks are unverified for justice, nominee

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

Stanford University Law School administrators Thursday withdrew their claim that Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist ranked first and nominee Sandra O’Connor third in the school’s 1952 law class. The rankings were reported in a July 7 Stanford press release but cannot be documented, said Robert Beyers, director of Stanford’s public-information office.

Beyers said the release was based on a July 2 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, which quoted a Washington Post story.

“We failed to verify the information prior to issuing the release, and it’s all turned into a big can of worms,” a Stanford spokeswoman said. “We got burned.”

Judge O’Connor, an Arizona appellate judge who was nominated for the Supreme Court on Tuesday by President Reagan, told university officials Wednesday she never was informed by Stanford of her ranking and does not know what it was, Beyers said.

“The ranking did not come from anything release by Judge O’Connor,” said Nancy White, a spokeswoman in the judge’s Phoenix office.

“In fact, she was never even told what her ranking was and had nothing to do with the Stanford press release,” Ms. White told an Arizona Republic reporter Thursday.

Her law-school ranking is not listed on a biography Judge O’Connor released during a press conference in Phoenix on Tuesday.

The biography does list Judge O’Connor as a member of the Order of the Coif, a group restricted to the top 10 percent of law-school graduates.

Rehnquist, also an Arizonan, does not list

Newspaper mention, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

About Washington: An Occupation of Civil Life

Newspaper mention, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHINGTON, July 10 – There was great change in the nation in 1873, when the men of the Supreme Court sat together and ruled on Bradwell v. Illinois. It was an era when the slaves had been freed, the frontier was retreating and women were fighting for the constitutional right to practice law, tinally reaching the highest court with their case. “God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action.” the ma- jority ruled. “It belongs to men to make, apply and execute the law.” Thus did Myra Bradwell suffer defeat and the State of Illinois enjoy vic- tory in its law banning women lawyers. If Myra Bradwell sought comfort in a separate opinion, she found none in the concurrence of Mr. Justice Bradley, who felt the majority’s language too weak. “Man is, or should be, woman’s p~ tector,” he said, finding that the “deli,, cacy which belongs to the fair sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.” “This is the law of the Creator,” declared the man. Time has passed by Mr. Justice Bradley. But he is not forgotten by the successors of Myra Bradwell, particularly as they prepare for the coming Senate inquiry into the nomination of Judge Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman member of tfie Supreme Court. In the hours after Judge O’Connor’s nomination, this city’s phenomenal predilection for reducing eftnts to quick-fix, white-hot iSsues threatened to make her a mere adjunct to the endless abortion dispute, as more than a dozen anti-abortion lobbying groups found

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Jurist broke tradition for law career, too

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

New York Times

Judge O’Connor was born Sandra Day on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas, but she spent her earliest years on her family’s 162,000-acre ranch, the Lazy B, which her grandfather founded a century ago near Duncan in southeastern Arizona.

Because there were no schools in Duncan that suited her parents, Harry and Ada Mae Day, as a young girl Judge O’Connor was sent to live with her maternal grandmother in El Paso and attend school there.

She did well, graduating from high school at age 16. She then entered Stanford University, with which she has maintained a lifelong affiliation, most recently as a trustee.

At a time when most women at Stanford were majoring in education, Judge O’Connor won a bachelor’s degree in economics, awarded with great distinction, and a law degree. She obtained both in six years.

Her sophomore roommate, Marilyn Brown, remembers her as a “very shy” young woman who spoke with the soft accents of western Texas but who seemed more than equal to university life.

…

Although Judge O’Connor’s biography lists her as an Episcopalian, a
friend said neither she nor her husband are active churchgoers.

…