Arizona Daily Star, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Unanimously: Arizona woman gains Supreme Court bench

Arizona Daily Star, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHING TON (AP) – The Senate, ending an all-male tradition nearly two centuries old, unanimously confirmed Sandra Day O’Connor as an associate justice of the Supreme Court yesterday. O’Connor, a 51-year-old judge of the Arizona Court of Appeals, will be sworn in Friday in time to join the court for the opening of its 1981-82 term on Oct. 5. The vote was 99-0, with only Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who was attending an economic conference in his home state, missing from the tally. He had supported O’Connor in earlier committee action. After the vote, O’Connor appeared on the steps of the Capitol with Senate leaders and Vice President George Bush. Grinning jubilantly, she said said she was overjoyed by the depth of Senate support for her nomination. “My hope is that after I’ve been across the street and worked for a while that they’ll all feel glad for the wonderful vote they gave me today,” she said. Once installed on the the court, she said, “I’m going to get very busy, very fast.” “Today is truly a historic occasion,” said Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, leading off a series of 22 speeches in warm praise of President Reagan’s first high-court nominee. Hailing a “happy and historic day,” Reagan said in a statement that the confirmation of his nominee “symbolizes the richness of opportunity that still abides in America – opportunity that permits persons of any sex, age or race, from every section and walk of life, to aspire and achieve in

Newspaper article, Seattle Times, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Unanimous confirmation for O’Connor

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

WASHINGTON – (AP) – Sandra Day O’Connor, confirmed by a unanimous Senate as the fn-st woman justice on the United States Supreme Court, promises to be “very busy, very fast” after she is sworn in later this week. There is no clear indication, however, how she will vote on social and constitutional issues that come before the court. The 51-year-old Arizona appealscourt judge won a 99-0 endorsement in the Senate yesterday as the 102nd justice in the 191-year history of the nation’s highest court. She will be youngest of the nine members. Judge O’Connor will be sworn in for her lifetime position in ceremonies Friday afternoon. “My hope is that 10 years from now after I’ve been across the street and worked for a while, that they’ll all feel glad for the wonderful vote they gave me today,” a smiling Judge O’Connor said after the vote. Once installed on the court, which opens Its 1981-82 term October 5, “I’m going to get very busy, very fast,” Judge O’Connor said. The vote, following four hours of laudatory speeches by conservatives and liberals alike, was a victory for Mr. Reagan as well as Mrs. O’Connor. Opposition to Judge O’Connor’s views on abortion melted when Senator Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, leader of the most conservative wing of the Senate, said he would support the nomination “because I have faith in the President.” Helms said he believed Mr. Reagan’s views against legalized abortion were too strong to permit him to nominate someone who supports the 1973 _Supreme

Mesa Tribune, Newspaper mention, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Turley drafts O’Connor talk

Mesa Tribune, Newspaper mention, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

PHOENIX – Sen. Stan Turley, R-Mesa, reached into his own ranch upbringing to draft the comments he’ll make in support of Sandra O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Turley said he expects to testify today or Fri- ‘day before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Turley, who grew up on the Sundown _Ranch on the Mogollon Rim and later ran his o”0 ranch for 18 years in the Queen Creek area, said he pondered what to say for several weeks. He decided to emphasize O’Connor’s roots in the soil of Arizona “rather than saying she had a fine scholastic record at Stanford.” Turley’s prepared remarkci stress O’Connor’s upbringing on a ranch near Duncan and her “heritage from a pioneer family in Arizona that is unique.” “To be reared in this environment where so many things are beyond ~n’s ~ontrol sometimes, not always, but sometlffies gives an added dimension of character to those who are subject to those forces,” he said. “A dimension of humility, faith in a divine providence, integrity and common sense developed from meeting that type of chaD:enge. “In my opinion Sandra bas this added dimension to a high degree. True, it is an intangible, but nevertheless real.” Turley also said he plans to defend o•eo~o.-‘s stands on abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment. He plans to tell the committee he thinks O’Connor has “demonstrated strong belief” in the separation of the three branches of government. “She has shown an impatience with the judicial branch when it has been used to make law rather

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Time For A Woman

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

THERE have been 101 justices on the United States Supreme Court since it was formed nearly 200 years ago.

All men.

Now a woman may make it.

It’s high time.

During his campaign for the presidency, Ronald Reagan promised one of his first appointments to the highest court in the land would be a woman.

He will make his first appointment, to fill the forthcoming resignation of Justice Potter Stewart, before Oct. 1.

While Justice Stewart said that appointing a judge on the basis of sex “was antithetical to the very idea of what a judge is supposed to be,” being a female won’t hurt any candidate for the Supreme Court now.

Here are some who undoubtedly will be considered:

Anne Armstrong, of Texas, a Republican dynamo who has served as ambassador to Great Britain.

Carla Hills, a Republican lawyer from California who has served in the Cabinet. At one time President Reagan was considering her for solicitor general.

Cornelia Kennedy and Amalya Kerase, appellate federal judges in Michigan and New York. While available reference books do not give the political party affiliations of either, both are black.

The opportunity of breaking the female barrier with a black woman must have great attraction to any politically inclined president, which Reagan certainly is. But Justice Thurgood Marshall is black, and there might be political problems with having two black justices on a nine-member court. We suspect Kennedy and Kerase will have to wait until Justice Marshall leaves the court.

Arizona Appellate Court Judge Sandra O’Connor has been suggested as a possible candidate.

One of her main problems, of course, is that Arizona already has one Supreme Court Justice, William Rehnquist, and it would be unusual indeed for a small state to have two members of the court.

Newspaper article, Tempe Daily News, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Thousands object in O’Connor rally

Newspaper article, Tempe Daily News, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

Dallas (AP ) – A crowd of several thousand abortion 01r ponents was stirred to a frenzy as a 12-hour rally protesting the nomination of Sandra O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court drew to a close . The rally drew the leaders of America’s conservative movement – Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell , Equal Rights Amendment foe Phyllis Schlafly and evangelist James Robison. The protesters – estimated at 6,800 by organizers and at 4,000 by police – leaped to their feet and cheered Thursday night when speakers demanded that O’Connor , an Arizona appeals court judge, be removed from consideration for the seat because of her views on abortion. The crowd interrupted Moral Majority lead er Jerry Falwell three times with ovations as he warned that abortion could lead to America’s downfall. “America’s national sin is abortion,” Falwell said. “God will judge America, perhaps with Soviet missiles, if we don’J put an end to this biological holocaust.” Falwell, who spoke near the end of the rally organized by the Religious Roundtable, said he had promised President Reagan he would withhold comment on O’Connor’s nomination until after next week’s Senate confirmation hearings. But other speakers drew cheers and cries of “Amen” when they called for Reagan to withdraw the nomination and for O’Connor to remove herself from consideration. Schlafly, the anti-ERA crusader, told the crowd O’Connor’s pro-abortion stand as an Arizona legislator was ” out of step with the pro-family, pro-life policies on

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

The Supreme Court’s First Woman Is Tough, Smart – And A Lady

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

Her day begins in pre-dawn darkness. Switching on the lights, Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dresses quickly and moves toward the kitchen. Every square foot of her highceilinged apartment is guarded. A step-down living room leads to a sunroom and outdoor balcony, three bedrooms, a study, and four baths, all secured by a private television channel through which she can identify any caller who presses the O’Connor button at street level outside a pair of locked wrought-iron doors. Over breakfast of half a grapefruit and a softboiled egg, she no longer has the time to enjoy several newspapers. Given the demands of the court, she does well to get through The Washington Post. By 7 a.m., the O’Connors ease their Honda out of the garage. She drops her husband, attorney John O’Connor, at the University Club for an early swim. At 7:30 she vanishes into the marble-pillared Supreme Court building. Ten hours later – hours of hearing arguments, writing decisions, conferring, and coping with stacks of mail – she emerges; carrying a briefcase of night reading, often tackled in the wee hours. “With Sandra O’Connor,” says a former colleague in the Arizona Legislature, “there ain’t no Miller time.” No branch of government is more remote from public scrutiny than the Supreme Court. Absolute secrecy sunounds its deliberations. “I do not talk to reporters at any time, at any place, on any subject,” Justice William J. Brennan Jr. has said. Socially, with few exceptions, the justices

Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, Washington Star

The Story of Women: It’s Come a Long Way

Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, Washington Star / By

In The Star’s 128 years, its headlines have em blazoned women’s activities across its pages in many roles – as suffragettes, Civil War nurses, soldiers and spies, World War I Liberty Bond sellers, flappers, world war II riveters and bomber ferry pilots, West Point cadets and Navy admirals, ERAers, Right-to-Lifers, trend-setting first ladies, and Cabinet members. And now in the year of the paper’s demise, the first woman Supreme Court justice has been nominated. The story of women’s contributions to the Republic in the last century and a quarter is as much a part of its warp and woof as the exploits of its Molly Pitchers, Abigail Adamses and Dolley Madisons of an earlier era .. Peggy Eaton didn’t jump mto the Tidal Basin as our contemporary Fanne Foxe, whose midnight plunge toppled a tippling congressman, but she cut~ swath through Andrew Jacksons Cabinet circle that rocked Washington with whispers of scandal. And Abscam had nothmg on Rose O’Neal Greenhow, whose Confederate spy network, Just across the park from the White House, stretched across the Atlantic to England and the Continent. Liberation is not a new concept. The first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848 was a forerunner of the Ms. era and the nationwide 1970s movement to pass the ERA amendment. Nor is the idea of a woman for president new. Belva Ann Lockwood tried it back in 1884. She was the first woman nominated for the office and actually got a few votes. In the years ahead, maybe another woman will

Editorial, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, Wall Street Journal

The Retiring Judiciary

Editorial, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, Wall Street Journal / By

When he announced his intention yesterday to name Sandra O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Reagan seems to have fulfilled not one but both of his long-standing commitments on the subject. First , of course , he had promised to search for a qualified woman to fill a vacancy ; not surprisingly, it appears he has easily found one. But second, it looks like the nominee meets the ideological test Mr. Reagan said he would apply-not the test of political conservatism , but the test of belief in a philosophy of judicial restraint. Mr. Reagan is fed up with the imperial judiciary . So are a lot of people . So is the Supreme Court itself . The question is whether they are fed up for the right reasons . About five years ago commentators began to notice that a new kind of judicial activism was abroad in the land . It involved a certain role reversal: The traditionally conservative courts seemed now to be fighting the Executive and Legislature in behalf of the liberal principle of extending government’s protective scope. Moreover , the new activism seemed on its way to becoming entrenched so that it could not be easily reversed by elections or swings of opinion. The courts were operating by expanding the definitions of basic constitutional concepts like standing and due process; such ground once broken is difficult to abandon. The courts also had a seemingly ever-growing field of overall government activity and public interest lawyers to cope with ; this , too, seemed a near irreversib