Editorial, New York Daily News, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

A landmark for the court

Editorial, New York Daily News, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

From all accounts, President Reagan picked a winner and made history as well by selecting. Sandra O’Connor to fill the vacancy on the· Supreme Court.

The highest court in the land has been an, all-male bastion for much too long, and we’re! happy to see Reagan breach the wall. It’s a signal, honor for the Arizona jurist and a long-overdue· recognition of the fact that in law, as in other ‘fields, women have come into their own.

But Judge O’Connor promises to bring to the court more than a history-making label. She was, a top student at Stanford Law School, a respected lawyer in Arizona and the Republican majority leader of the State Senate before being named to an appellate court-by a Democratic governor.

People familiar with Judge O’Connor’s work on the bench give her high marks on all counts-grasp of the law, judicial temperament and clear, cogently written opinions.

The chorus of approval is not unanimous. The Right to Life Committee and the Moral Majority already have protested what they regard as Judge O’Connor’s “pro-abortion” leanings. What that means, we suspect, is that as a private citizen the judge doesn’t share their particular views on abortion.

But her entire record argues that she would not on the bench let her personal views intrude on her judicial actions. Apparently, she does not subscribe to the old Earl Warren philosophy of the Supreme Court’s right to invade every nook and cranny of American life.

In this sense, Mrs. O’Connor is judicially nonpartisan

New Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

But what is she like as a person?

New Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

The tough, powerful, male leader of the Arizona House was telling the tough, powerful, female leader of the Arizona Senate how they were going to push a bill through that night in 1973, no matter how long it took. “No we aren’t,” Sandra Day O’Connor told Burton Barr, a man who doesn’t hear “no” very often.” My boys are going to camp tomorrow and I’m going home to be sure they’ve packed everything.”

When that kind of thing happened at the Arizona Legislature under its first and only female leader, Barr would muse, “Sandra is human. This brilliant thing that moves around is human.”

A lot of people were asking themselves last week if O’Connor – who had chalked up a half dozen “firsts” before President Reagan made her the first woman ever considered for the U.S. Supreme Court – was human.

Reporters from the country’s largest newspapers made frantic calls to Phoenix the day of the announcement, compiling reams on her public record, but asking in plaintive voices, “but what about O’Connor as a PERSON?” Their stories the next day showed they didn’t find much.

It’s not because there’s nothing to find.

“Sandra O’Connor once told me that people have to focus on what they want in life and go after that,” an old friend said the night of her appointment.” If you spread yourself too thin, she says, you won’t accomplish much of anything. She believes if you focus, you can have what you want. I guess she’s right.” Many feel Sandra O’Connor, a privileged Arizona cowgirl who can still ride

New Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

“The judicial area is a snug fit for her,” Barr says

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“The legislature is a political arena where you’re always out in the open getting shot at,” says House Majority Leader Burton Barr. “She’s better suited to the judicial area where things are more relaxed and more scholarly. That’s a snug fit for her.” Few people leave the legislature when they’re m the position of majority leader. O’Connor did in 1974 to run for a seat on the Maricopa County Superior Court. She quickly developed a reputation for being tough on attorneys – some say the way she could “dress down” an unprepared barrister was masterful and devastating. It was in that setting that she solidified a judicial temperament that has been lauded by the president: she believes in interpreting the law, not making it. While conservatives were spreading the word that O’Connor had been “tough on criminals” in her trial court days, liberals were noting her major mark was one of fairness. Arizona courts are notorious for making political rulings. They’re the last chance to keep a controversial issue off the ballot or an unpopular politician from a recall move. They’re a last chance that is often used. So when a controversial initiative challenging the safety of nuclear power was ready to go on the b~ot, a contingent of heavy-duty movers and shakers went into Judge O’Connor’s court to squash the effort. Observers note she had plenty of opportunity to follow the political winds and find a loophole to keep the issue from a public vote. She didn’t. One “fan” of her trial court days

Letter to the editor, New Times, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Letters to the editor: “Cheers and Jeers for O’Connor,” “I was O’Connor’s Bailiff,” and “Nothing Sadder”

Letter to the editor, New Times, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

CHEERS AND JEERS FOR O’CONNOR

The rave reviews of Jana Bommersbach, Southern Arizona ranch hands et alia are not enough. Sandra O’Con’nor just isn’t much to get excited about – even excited enough to support her nomination. Remember the folks who made that nomination
Sure she’s no Rehnquist. Somebody broke that mold soon after his birth. But she is still quite conservative. And people have known for 10 or 20 years that a conservative woman can rise to fairly great heights in the good old U.S.A. The point is people like Sandra O’Connor do not have a coherent view of society that they will try to put forward such that people, especially female people, can be liberated in a meaningful sense of the word.

The questions are these: should she have received the nomination if she hadn’t had a pretty wealthy start in life, including horses (note the plural), prep school and Stanford Law? Could she have risen so high in Arizona politics without the connections offered by her family and her marriage? Would she have been so respected if she had remained childless? (Or if her sons hadn’t gone to Brophy Prep?) Would she have advanced in the Arizona Judiciary if she had made any public statements regarding the injustice, racism, sexism, and general anti-democratic (note small d) sentiment in Arizona state government? Would she be so popular if she hadn’t joined (and led) the Right women’s clubs? And why were they single-sex clubs anyway? Finally, regarding endorsements, how much respect

New Times, Newspaper mention

O’Connor on the Courts

New Times, Newspaper mention / By

O’Connor on the Courts

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will deliver the 9:15am keynote address at a one-day ASU College of Law conference entitled “Arizona’s People’s Courts: Proposals for Improvement” State political and judicial leaders will attend to learn the results of a six-month ASU study of Arizona’s municipal and justice court system. O’Connor is expected to urge state legislators to work towards lower court reform. Other speakers include Chief Presiding Judge William J. Carter, Jon M. Memmott (director of research for the Utah legislature), and Arizona Senators Jim Kolbe, Leo Corbet, and Jones Osborn. All sessions will take place in the Great Hall of the ASU Law Building. The conference is open to the public at no charge.

Newspaper mention, Scottsdale Daily Progress, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor to keynote

Newspaper mention, Scottsdale Daily Progress, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

TEMPE – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will be the keynote speaker Nov. 27 at a College of Law conference at Arizona State University, ASU officials have announced. The conference is designed to hear findings of a six-month ASU study of the state’s municipal and justice court system. Justice O’Connor’s speech is entitled “Don’t Just Stand There,” and is expected to urge state lawmakers to take action on improvements in lower courts.

New Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Getting to Know the Judge – A Republican Darling Becomes a Political Hot Potato

New Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

Sandra Day O’Connor made up the list of her lifetime accomplishments last week; a resume to satisfy the hunger for information on this first woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her list was one page long. More of her life – both professional and personal – was left off the list than put on. To understand this historic woman, you have to know some of the things that weren’t on that list. Things like … A REPUBLICAN DARLING BECOMES A POLITICAL HOT POTATO

While some blasted O’Connor’s lukewarm support for ERA, feminists looked at her stance and forgave her. The first woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court couldn’t even get a Credit card in her own name in Arizona just eight years ago. As far as Arizona laws were concerned, Sandra Day O’Connor was just a “Mrs.” in 1973 – not the majority leader of the Arizona Senate; not the highly-honored law graduate of Stanford; not the former assistant attorney general. When she married her law school classmate. John Jay O’Connor III, she simply became a Mrs. who couldn’t hold title to her own property, ouy her own car or have her own credit without her husband’s name and approval. Sandra O’Connor helped change those laws; as a member of the highest court in the nation, she will spend the rest of her career changing or upholding the laws of the country. As a jurist, she is expected to be a “strict constructionist” who will bring to the high court the same qualities she showed in the county and appeals courts of Arizona:

Editorial, New Times, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Hair Comes the Judge

Editorial, New Times, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

“My hairdo, right or wrong.”

An admirable credo, we admit. We just wish we could say the same for Judge Sandra O’Connor’s coiffure. We recently overheard someone say, “She looks so wholesome, it’s hard to believe she’s in favor of abortion.” We couldn’t agree more. Since there’s never been a woman Supreme Court Justice, we don’t exactly know what one should look like. But somehow, we don’t think she should look like she’s about to tell a classful of 1955 third graders to get under their desks for an atomic bomb drill.

No one doubts that the Judge is a busy woman. Reviewing-briefs, absorbing
testimony and issuing death row reprieves take a lot out of a person. But you’d think Her Honor could find time to drop in at the Pennsylvania Avenue Cut ‘N Curl for an estimate. Then again, maybe she can’t.
So in the interest of good grooming in high places, we took it upon ourselves to survey hometown hairdressers in hopes of lending the judge some tonsorial first aid.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get far. Evidently there exists among beauticians a code every bit as strict as the Hypocritic [sic] Oath and to pass judgment on someone’s do for a third party is akin to cosmetic treason. The receptionist at the Add-A-Curl Beauty Salon merely passed the buck, telling us to call back later and talk to someone – anyone – else. At the Purple Wig, the spokeswoman pled the fifth. “Oh, we’ve never done her. We’d have nothing to say about this issue.”
Off the record, it was a different story. A

New Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

The Bar’s stamp of approval becomes an after-thought

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NATIONAL-The American Bar Association is taking a long, hard look at Sandra O’Connor’s qualifications to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court

But the U.S. Senate that is expected to routinely confirm O’Connor before the court’s fall session begins in October will know what the ABA thinks of the Arizona Court of Appeals judge before the_public does. The Reagan administration apparently has ordered the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary to keep the report under wraps until the hearings.

Chairwoman Brooksley Landau, a Washington lawyer, is refusing to say if Reagan has authorized the ABA to release the report when it’s completed – a polite way of saying it won’t be. Reagan waited until the last minute to inform the ABA he was nominating O’Connor, coming perilously close to ignoring a Presidential tradition of seeking a pre-nomination imprimatur from the nation’s largest association of lawyers, but the national press doesn’t seem interested in asking why.

Some skeptics in the legal community are suggesting the committee might designate O’Connor as a judicial lightweight, whose relatively brief trial court tenure doesn’t give her the length and depth in constitutional law expected of justices. O’Connor doesn’t have as many years on the bench as Reagan’s other female finalists, the skeptics note.

On the other hand, O’Connor brings to the court the kind of nuts-and-bolts trial experience ~at could keep the Supremes from wandering too often into legal esoterica that reads