She voted with the court’s most conservative member, her fellow Stanford Law School graduate (and, we learned from Evan Thomas’s 2019 biography, “First,” a onetime boyfriend) William Rehnquist, in opposing affirmative action, curbing state prison inmates’ access to federal court and bolstering the authority of the states vis-à-vis the federal government. Her early years on the court appeared to bear out the promise conveyed by her political credentials. She was close to Senator Barry Goldwater, a former neighbor in Phoenix, and had served as an Arizona co-chairwoman of Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972. At a time when the Supreme Court’s behavior seems to embody and even to amplify the country’s polarization, it’s worth reflecting on the path she took during her quarter-century on the court.Ī former majority leader of the Arizona Senate, she had spent years in Republican politics. The history of her appointment is not the only reason to think today about Sandra O’Connor, who retired 15 years ago and is now, at 91, living with dementia. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson was electrifying. For those of us who were old enough in 1981 to recognize the significance of the breakthrough, the sight of Justice O’Connor on a bench that included aging nominees of Presidents John F. The overflowing audience included President Ronald Reagan, whose nomination of a little-known judge on Arizona’s intermediate appellate court fulfilled a campaign promise - regarded by some as impetuous - to name the first woman to the court. Most people in the United States today were not yet born on that early fall afternoon when Sandra O’Connor took the oath of office and ended 191 years of an all-male Supreme Court. I use the word “wonder” because of how what once seemed remarkable is today a commonplace of the 12 justices to join the court in the ensuing decades, four have been women, including three of the last five. 25, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor took her seat on the Supreme Court. An additional, less noted anniversary is an occasion not for sorrow but for wonder. 11, of course, and the anniversary last Saturday of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. before the 1950’s, but law firms in California did not hire women, unless they were secretaries! She did find a position as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California which set her on a path that would include serving in all three branches of government at the local, state, and national level.This has been a month of sad remembrances - the 20th anniversary of Sept. There had been a number of female lawyers in the U.S. Despite having excelled in her studies at Stanford University, Justice O’Connor could not find a job at a law firm right out of law school. You’d think after these developments it wouldn’t be too hard to set up shop as a woman lawyer.
The shortage of male workers during World War II resulted in 7 million women entering the workforce in the early 1940s, changing the labor landscape forever.The Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor was established in the 1920 to monitor working conditions for women and improving their opportunities in the workplace.The 19th amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote after a long and hard fight by the suffragettes.The appointment of Justice O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981 was one of many milestones achieved for women in the United States. Supreme Court Justice’ - can you name all three*? Supreme Court! Today there are three women that hold the title ‘U.S. She went on to become the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (ret.) was born on this date, March 26th in 1930.
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