Arizona Republic, Editorial, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

No Single Issue

Arizona Republic, Editorial, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

SENATE confirmation of Judge Sandra O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court should not depend on whether, 10 years ago, she voted for or against a facet of the abortion issue. She was not acting in a judicial capacity back then, nor is the record clear as to whether one vote was triggered by opposition to a rider or by opposition to the main bill. In any event, Judge O’Connor reportedly told President Reagan that “she is personally opposed to abortion” and that it was especially abhorrent to her. What is important, in deciding whether the O’Connor nomination should be confirmed, is whether her Supreme Court decisions would be based on law. Judging from the record, they will be. Even the most extreme of the anti-abortion groups admits that Judge O’Connor is a strict constitutionalist who acts in accordance with the law and who believes, perhaps owing to her own legislative experience , that the Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the law, not to make it. .Justices quite obviously need a wide and varied background, which is an excellent reason for not using a single issue to decide a person’s qualifications. The pro-life people, best exemplified by Rev. Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority, have a tendency to focus on the single issue of abortion. It was this tendency that led Sen. Barry Goldwater, who said he had “supported right-to-life groups all the way down the line,” to tell a reporter that “every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the ass.” Such heated hyperbole

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Nominee was 3rd in Law Class

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

STANFORD, Calif. – Sandra O’Connor once replied to a Stanford University alumni survey by describing her work as “attempting to administer oldtime justice in a modern age.” Judge O’Connor received her bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford in 1950 and her law degree in 1952, ranking third in a class in which Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was first. She met her future husband, John .Jay O’Connor III, a 1951 graduat.e of Stanford, on the school’s prestigious Law Review board of editors. She was elected to serve as a trust.ee of the university from 1976 to 1980. “We’re very proud of her,” Stanford President Donald Kennedy said. “It’s a superb appointment,” Stanford Law School Dean Charles Meyer said. Judge O’Connor went to work in the district attorney’s office in San Mateo County, Calif., after she graduated from law school, first 88 a law clerk and later as an assistant district attorney working in civil law. She went on to win election to the Arizona Senate, becoming the first woman in the nation to serve as a majority leader in a state legislature, was elected a Superior Court judge and was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. Gerald Gunther, a constitutional scholar at Stanford, said he was pleased the Reagan administration took the “high road” in filling the Supreme Court vacancy. “Perhaps the best thing that’s happened is the right-to-life people oppose O’Connor,” Gunther said. “She seems by all report.a to be a perfectly qualified, conservative-philosophy

Arizona Republic, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Nominee’s article suggests restricting civil-rights suits

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

Associated Press WASHINGTON Sandra O’Connor, chosen by President Reagan for a Supreme Court seat, is suggesting that Congress act to restrict the number of federal civilrights suits against states and municipalities. In an article in the Summer 1981 issue of the William and Mary Law Review, Judge O’Connor suggested that federal courts should defer to state courts in some cases on COD&titutional questions. She also noted “acute confron- , tions” between state and federal courts in some school-busing cases and said tensions between the two judicial systems could increase in some areas. The judge wrote the article before the announcement of her nomination. Judge O’Connor’s statements in the article reflect a conservative theme shared by the president: the move to give states more freedom from the federal government. “It is a step in the right direction .to defer to the state courts and give finality to their judgments on federal constitutional questions where a full and fair adjudication has been given in the state court,” Judge O’Connor wrote in the article, titled “Trends in the Relationship Between the Federal and State Courts from the Perspective of a State Court Judge.” She said thousands of lawsuits against state and municipal officials are being filed in federal court under an 1871 federal civil-rights law. “In view of the great caseload increase in the federal courts and the expressed desire of the Reagan administration to hold down the federal budget, one would think

Los Angeles Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection

Nominee Rose from Rangeland Roots

Los Angeles Times, Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection / By

Woman in a Hurry Juggled Career and Home Life

WASHINGTON . Professionally, Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, is a paragon of the modern woman, juggling a successful legislative and judicial career with a home, a family and an active role as a civic leader. “You get the feeling when you’re talking to her that she’s always between trams,” said GeraId M. Caplan, a former Arizona State University law professor who has worked with her. Her roots, however, hem a far different world. She grew up in a turn-of-the-century adobe house near Duncan, Ariz. on the 250-square-mile Lazy B cattle ranch that her grandfather started 100 years ago. The ranch, in the southeastern corner of the state near the New Mexico border, is a world of empty rangeland, dry creekbeds and distant mountains, where the biggest events art:’ the spring and fall roundups. The closest neighbor and nearest post office are 20 miles away. ‘l’he nearest dependable water is often 800 feet or More straight down. There are miles and miles of unpopulated territory,” said June Lackey, the wife of Duncan’s mayor. “We’re big country-with few people.” The isolation of the Lazy B, where O’Connor’s parents still live, is one reason Harry Day sent his eldest daughter away to a girls’ school in El Paso, Tex., when she was a child. She lived there with a maternal grandmother during the school months, but spent her summers and vacations on the ranch. “She had a very good mind and we wanted

Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, The Washington Post

Nominee Has Avoided Ideological Extremes

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

Arizonans Praise Record, Say Stands Hard to Predict

Her benchside manner is so st.em, her stare so penetrating, that some young lawyers call her “laser eyes.” Her written opinions tick off the law, tick off the precedents and fit in the facts, all without rhetoric or aside§. They are the work of a technician, not an ideologue. In a stat.e where ideological extremes flourish, Sandra D. O’Connor has shown a knack for avoiding them throughout her career as a lawyer, state senator and judge. As a politician, she has been on either side of the Equal Rights Amendment and the abortion issue. As a judge, she is described as a tough sentencer, capable of imposing the death penalty. . But as she demonstrated in a 1978 murder case, she is just as capable of wiping out her own sentence and ordering a new trial when she thinks something has gone wrong in the process of criminal justice. For these reasons, her nomination was endorsed by virtually all those who know her in Arizona, from conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater to the head of the Arizona American Civil Liberties Union. At the same time, the state’s lawyer have given her consistently high marks in the bar association’s ratings of judges in the state. And for the same reasons, most lawyers said it would be risky t.o predict how she might vote on many of the controversial issues that will confront the Supreme Court. At 51 she is young for a Supreme Court justice, and her term of service could carry her far beyond any of the current

Newspaper article, The Kauffman-Henry Collection, The New York Times

Nominee for High Court: A Record Defying Labels

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

Like supporters and detractors of her Supreme Court nomination, Sandra Day O’Connor devoted the better part of this week to a review of the state legislation and judicial decisions that constitute the record of much of her public life.

With her office at the Arizona Court of Appeals here overflowing with congratulatory bouquets, her desk cluttered with papers and files, and her law clerk, husband and friends helping with the review, Judge O’Connor looked up at a brief break yesterday morning to sigh, ”It’s a nightmare.”

”Fifty years is a long time,” she said, ”and it’s hard to remember everything you did.”

Differences of Temperament

The review is far from complete, but the woman, public and private, who has so far emerged from an examination of of those records, and from conversations with friends, colleagues and adversaries, is by political instinct, judicial philosophy, economic standing and personal temperament both similar to and different from the constituency that elected Ronald Reagan President.

Judge O’Connor emerges as a sometime conservative with a moderate, even progressive streak, a determined woman but not a dogmatic one. President Reagan described her as a ”person for all seasons,” but she appears to be something less than the advocate that other supporters, including many in the feminist movement, have made her out to be. At the same time she is clearly more complex than her detractors, including Moral Majority and the anti-abortion lobby, have suggested.

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

Nominee called conservative, but left is happier than right

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

WASHINGTON – Few would have predicted that President Reagan’s first nominee to the Supreme Court would be greeted by harsh opposition from the National Right to Life Committee and kind words from the American Civil Liberties Union. Yet that is just what happened to the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor, 51, a conservative Arizona judge and a Stanford Law School classmate of William H. Rehnquist, the U.S. Supreme Court’s most doctrinaire conservative. Anti-abortion groups noted that Reagan had endorsed the Republican platform’s pledge to appoint federal judges who “respect traditional family values and the sanctity of human life.” And now, National Right to Life Committee president J.C. Wilke complained, the nomination of O’- Connor was “a repudiation of the Republican platform.” As a two-term senator in the Arizona legislature, where she was . the first woman in the nation to be a majority leader, O’Connor voted to legalize abortion in 1970 and against a resolution urging Congress to pass an anti-abortion constitutional amendment in 1974, according to the committee’s research. Despite all this flak, lawyers, politicians and journalists in Phoenix describe O’Connor as extremely bright and analytical, a superb political leader – and not controversial. “Senator O’Connor has the reputation of being a conservative but certainly not a doctrinaire conservative.” said Louis Rhodes, director of the liberal American Civil Liberties Union. “I don’t know if she’s ever been involved in anything

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

Nomination is one of many O’Connor feats

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

Nominated as the first woman to the nation’s highest court, State Appeals Court Judge Sandra O’Connor said she “never thought (her nomination) would be a reality.” But being first is nothing new for the 51-year-old O’Connor, who President Reagan chose Tuesday to fill the vacancy of retired Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. In 1969 she became Arizona’s first female legislator, and she went on to become Senate majority leader in 1973. She was the first and only woman to hold the job in either house of the state Legislature. Born March 26, 1930 on a ranch near Duncan, O’Connor has an extensive background in law and politics, and she rates superlatives from her col• leagues in both arenas. Arizona Supreme Court Justice Frank X. Gordon said'()’Connor has “philosophical leanings that a lot of us as well as the president would like to see.” But at least one assistant Arizona attorney general, who describes himself as a liberal, believes O’Connor’s politics haven’t affected her philosophy of the law. “I’ve had several cases before her, and all of her decisions have been fair. I don’t think her political beliefs will have that much to do with her decisions in Washington.” O’Connor was one of only five women in her class at the law school in 1952, and graduated third in her class. She also was a member of the board of editors of the Stanford Law Review. She man:ied another classmate, John Jay O’Connor m, now a Phoenix lawyer. They have three sons. Her first job was as deputy county