Arizona Business Gazette, Op ed, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor’s nomination paved by other women judges

Arizona Business Gazette, Op ed, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

Before the U.S. Supreme Court became an equal opportunity employer, there was Florence Allen. Wheµ she was 7 years old, her father said, “If Florence were a boy, I’d make her into a lawyer.” When she was grown, three U.S. presidents said that if Flprence were a man, she’d be a Supreme Court Justice. Florence Ellinwood Allen. Published _poet. Concert pianist. First woman to pronounce the death sentence . First woman judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and for three decades, best bet to become the first female on the nation’s highest bench. Two weeks ago, President Reagan nominated Sandra D. O’Connor for that honor and Florence Allen, who died in 1966, would have been as pleased as all the other women jurists __ who have struggled for the day a woman would get invited to join Washington’s most exclusive male club. When Reagan cho!’e O’Connor, a 51-year-old Arizona Appellate Court justice, to sit with those who “leave their footprints on the sands of time,” the president fulfilled a campaign pledge to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court. The historic value of the move was not lost on this president who, despite his opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, cheerfully praised O’Connor as the equal of “the 101 ‘brethren’ who have preceded her.” Between Allen and O’Connor, there have been at least a dozen women judges publicly mentioned for justice jobs. But few of them have even come close to a seat on the big bench.

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Daily Reporter Tucson, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor’s net worth more than a million

Daily Reporter Tucson, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHINGTON (UPI) – Sandra O’Connor, President Reagan’s choice to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, shares a net worth of more than $1 million with her l~wyer husband, accor ding to documents filed Sept. 1. O’Connor, answering guestions for the Senate, also confirmed she is an advocate of the judicial restraint Reagan favors. The Constitution requires federal courts “s crupulously to avoid making law or engag ing in general superv ision of executive functions,” she sai d. The Senate Jud iciar y Comm ittee will hold hearings on her nomination Sept. 9-11, and it is expected O’Connor will be easily confirm ed despit e criticism from abortion opponents and New Right groups . Reagan announ ced his select ion of the 51-year -old Arizona Court of appeals judg e on Jul y 7, but waited Wltil late August to formally send her name to the Senate. The nomination dre w heated opposition based on Mrs. O’Connor’s ‘Otes on abortio n questions and he support of the Equal Rights Amendm ent while a member of the Arizona Senate. In answering a standa rd questionnaire for the jud iciary panel. O’Connor said she and her husband , J ohn. have a net worth of $1.1 mill ion. That places her in sam e financial league as Justice Lewis Powell and Chief Justice Warr en Burger , both millionnaires . Retired Justice Potter Stewar t – whom Mrs. O’Connor would replace – also had a net worth considerably in excess of $1 million. Most of the family wealth is in real estate and in her family ‘s Lazy 3 Ranch.

Daily Territorial Tucson, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor silent on abortions

Daily Territorial Tucson, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

O’Connor stays quiet during court abortion arguments

WASHINGTON (UPI) – With the issue of abortion under consideration in the current Supreme Court term, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is staying as quiet about her views on the subject as she did at confirmation hearings. Usually quick with questions, Mrs. O’Connor, 52, was silent during the first 35 minutes of oral arguments Tuesday. The first woman ever on the high court, Mrs. O’Connor took her seat in September 1981. Tuesday’s three-hour argument was the first she has heard on the abortion question. During Senate confirmation hearings, she steadfastly refused to say if she would repudiate the court’s historic 1973 decision legalizing abortion. . Her nomination to the court by President Reagan was warmly received in most quarters, but abortion opponents criticized her stand on the issue during her time as an Arizona legislator. Although she said abortion personally offends her, Mrs. O’Connor told senators she would not oppose allowing abortions to save the woman’s life and “possibly” for other reasons. In its 1973 ruling, the Supreme Court said protecting the woman’s health wruld justify state regulation of abortions in the second three months of pregnancy. Just how far states can go in !llch regulation is the question before the c,urt in cases from Virginia, Missouri and Akron, Ohio, Not until more than halfway throughthe first case did she speak up. By then, seven of the nine justices had raised questiom. Her first query tried

Newspaper article, Phoenix Gazette, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor signs court opinion on sexual bias

Newspaper article, Phoenix Gazette, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHING TON – The Supreme Court, with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor choosing the subject of unconstitutional sex bias to write her first opinion, says state-supported nursing schools cannot bar men from enrolling. Thursday’s 5-4 decision is a victory for Joe Hogan, who broke a 97-year tradition by becoming the first man to enroll at the Mississippi University for Women. Justice O’Connor, the court’s only female mem-• her, wrote for the majority that Hogan’s exclusion from the university’s nursing school violated the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection” of the laws. “Rather than compensate for discriminatory barriers faced by women, MUW’s policy of excluding males from admission to the school of nursing tends to perpetuate the stereotyped view of nursing as an exclusively woman’s job,” Justice O’Connor said. “By assuring that Mississippi allots more openings in its state-supported nursing schools to women than it does to men,” she wrote, “MUW’s admissions policy lends credibility to the old view that women, not men, should become nurses, and makes the assumption that nursing is a field for women a self-fulfilling prophecy.” The university, located in Columbus, Miss., is the nation’s only state-supported university for women. Hogan, a hospital nurse who lives with his wife in Columbus, wanted to attend the local university to obtain a bachelor’s degree in nursing. His application to the university was rejected because he is a man. Mississippi Attorney General Bill Allain

Newspaper article, San Jose Mercury, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor’s experience may help states’ rights

Newspaper article, San Jose Mercury, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHINGTON – In the long run. the most significant fact about Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Sandra Day O’Connor may turn out to be not that she is a woman but that she has served as a state legislator and state judge. O’Connor’s experience at the state level is almost as unusual for the modern-day Supreme Court ru: is her gender . For the past quartercentury, virtually every person appointed to the Supreme Court has come there from the same national channels: a federal judgeship, a federal government job in Washington or a nationally prominent law practice. Not since Justice William J. Brennan Jr. came to Washington from the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1956 has any justice been appointed with experience in a state court system. None of the members of the current court has ever served in a state legislature. If O’Connor gives the justices a ground-level view of the way state courts and legislatures operate, her voice could prove highly influential. She could, in fact, become a powerful advocate on behalf of President Reagan’s oft-stated desire to give greater power to the states. The Supreme Court is regularly asked to pass judgment on the validity of laws enacted by state legislatures and rulings by state courts. Generally, the justices find it much easier to rule unconstitu- . tional the actions of these state bodies than the laws passed by Congress or the actions of federal agencies. • In the court term that has just ended, for example, the Supreme Court moved further in the

Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, Yuma Daily Sun

O’Connor: Senator presses for clear views on abortion

Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, Yuma Daily Sun / By

WASHINGTON (AP) – Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O’Connor said today she thinks teen-age girls should consult with their parents before seeking abortions, but refused to endorse mandatory parental consent. “It is my personal view that I would want the child to consult the parents,” Mrs. O’Connor raid as she completed her part in the confirmation hearings. Asked by reporters as she left the hearing room for her assessment of the proceedings and her confirmation chances, Mrs. O’Connor replied, “I hope OK.” Her comment on parental consent came during a tense and prolonged questionand-answer session with conservative Sen. Jeremiah Denton, R-Ala., who previously had pressed Mrs. O’Connor for her personal and legal views on abortion. Denton was cut short by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., when Denton tried to quiz Mrs. O’Connor about what President Reagan knew about her abortion views before selecting her as the first woman on the nation’s highest court. “The subject we are considering here is her fitness for the position for which the president selected her,” Thurmond told Denton. How she was selected, he said, “is his business, not ours.” Denton originally was allotted 15 minutes to pose his questions, but was given an additional 45 minutes by Thurmond. However, saying he felt frustrated because he could not determine “where you’re coming from philosophically” on abortion, Denton said, “I feel quite frustrated that these matters have not been fully developed.

Mesa Tribune, Newspaper mention, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor selects clerk

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

WASHINGTON (AP) – Arizona Appeals Court Judge Sandra O’Connor reportedly has selected one of her four law clerks for the U.S. Supreme Court. With O’Connor’s confirmation virtually certain within the next two. weeks as the nation’s first female Supreme Court justice, there were reports Saturday that she has selected Ruth V. McGregor of Phoenix, an Arizona State University law school graduate, to be her clerk. A spokesman for the Phoenix law firm of Fennemore, Craig, von Ammon & Udall confirmed that McGregor, 38, left the firm last week to take the clerk’s position with O’Connor. McGregor was ASU’s top law school graduate in the May 1974 class. The Senate is expected to confirm O’Connor’s nomination next week.

Mesa Tribune, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor seems a certain bet

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

WASHINGTON -In the end, the hearings were so bland that even the presence of television cameras couldn’t keep the U.S. Senators in the room. And the lack of controversy surrounding Sandra Day O’Connor should continue right through Tues day, when the ~izona judge is expected to have her Supreme Court nomination confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like all current justices except .William Rehnquist – her fellow Arizonan and old Stanford Law School classmate who received 26 ne~ative votes a decade ago – O’Connor can anticipate opposition by fewer than a dozen of the 100 senators. O’Connor had met and was interviewed by all in advance. She received enthusiastic support at the hearings from women’s groups, the customary bipartisan home-state delegation and most of the committee’s senators. In a minor historical footnote to President Reagan’s precedent-breaking decision to nominate a woman, she also became the first female endorsed for the Supreme Court by the establishment oriented American Bar Association, which in 1971 told President Richard Nixon that the two woman judges on his “short list” of six possible nominees were wiqualified. Embattled labor and civil rights groups for the first time in decades remained neutral, not bothering to testify. O’Connor’s strongest opponents, the anti-abortion activists, were split by President Reagan’s hardball politics. In a letter widely circulated in Right to Life circles last month, he bluntly charged (without offering proof) that

Newspaper article, Phoenix Gazette, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

O’Connor Says President Sought No Promises

Newspaper article, Phoenix Gazette, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

WASHINGTON – No promises were made to President Reagan when he discussed an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor told a Senate committee today . “I was not asked to make any commitments … about what I would do or how I would resolve any issues that would come before the court,” the Arizona Appeals Court judge said . Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was questioning Judge O’Connor on the second day of a three-day confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee. The nominee declined to give any details of her two discussions with Reagan. “DID THE president ask you not to reveal the conversation?” Grassley asked. Judge O’Connor said Reagan made no such suggestion- “It was my ‘ perception of what was proper.” Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., opened his questioning by asking, “Did the president offer you a jellybean?” Dressed in a suit but performing like a figure skater, Judge O’Connor continued to maneuver around tough judicial issues. SHE EXPLAINED that she would not want to say anything that would require her to sit out a Supreme Court decision later . But the judge said she had voted in favor of a memorial in the Arizona Legislature to Congress, asking Congress to limit busing for racial balance in schools. Recalling a 75-mile round trip to school from her ranch home near …