WASHINGTON – As the Senate considered Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court; Sen. Joseph Biden iold his colleagues that “all bets are of.r’ once a justice takes the oath of office .. The Delaware Democrat was right on target in his reminder last Septem ber that no one in the Senate can predict how a new member of the nation’s highest court will vote once he or she “dons that robe and walks into that sanctum across the way.” . ‘ After three months on the court, Justice O’Connor shows no signs of aligning herself with either its liberal or conservative bloc. SHE told the Senate last summer that her job would be “one of interpreting and applying the law, not making it.” That philosophy has led the high court’s first woman member on occasion to side with the cQurt’s liberals, its conservatives and sometimes mixtures of both. Since she was sworn in Sept. 25, Justice O’Connor: • Joined three of the court’s more conservative members in dissenting from part of a decision allowing most confidential secretaries and other workers with access to an employer’s confidential information to join labor unions. • Joined Justice John Paul Stevens and liberal Justices Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan in dissenting from a decision barring federal courts from hearing virtually all laws uas seeking money damages because of allegedly discriminatory property tax assessments. • Joined overwhelming majorities – made up of both liberals and conservatives – in several decisions

When President Reagan nominated Sandra O’Connor for the Supreme Court last year, there was a good deal of grumbling. It turned out to be a political masterstroke that sailed through the confirmation process in the Senate, but conservatives weren’t so sure. Her record was sketchy, and what there was of it caused alarm among anti – abortion groups. , Afte~ Justice O’Connor’s six months on the Court, however, The New Republic concludes after an examination of her record that “her vote has not always been predict – able. But she has cast her lot often enough with lawschool classmate William Rehnquist and with Chief Justice Burger to help forge a clear conservative majority on a number of crucial issues … Mrs. O’Connor’s record so far suggests she will not alter the steady conservative momentum of the Court … And as the youngest member of the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor may be with us until well into the 21st century.”

The key cases in her six-month record were not of the headline variety, but they do indicate that Justice O’Connor takes a restricted view of activist interventions by the Supreme Court. On January 12, for example, her vote helped provide a bare five-vote majority in a ruling that ordinary taxpayers could not sue in federal court to block the government from giving property to a religious group. The case was Valley Forge Christian College versus Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It turned on the issue of “standing,” that is, who is entitled