![]() ![]() Powell was O'Connor's favourite, a 'wonderful man' willing to do 'anything' she needed, whereas White – a former football halfback – had such a powerful handshake that she was forced to grab his thumb with her fist as a pre-emptive measure to prevent injury.īrennan, Blackmun, Powell and Marshall were gone within the decade, replaced by Republican nominees Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and Clarence Thomas, leaving White the sole 'Democratic' voice before Bill Clinton's appointments of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer in 19 respectively. Elected to the court by a sweeping Senate majority of 99-0 (the missing senator, Max Baucus of Montana, sent her a copy of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It as an apology for his absence), she was clearly a popular choice – even if it was due in large part to Reagan's popularity at the time.Īlongside O'Connor on the Bench were Republican nominees Rehnquist, William Brennan, Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell and John Paul Stevens, and Democratic nominees Thurgood Marshall and Byron White. I was not sure if I went to the Supreme Court that it would be a comfortable choice for me.'īut with support from her husband ('come on, you'll be fine'), O'Connor accepted the post. 'It was far removed from our life in Arizona and I was not trying to move to Washington DC. 'I had never worked at court, I had never been a law clerk there, I had never tried a case at court,' says O'Connor. Then, two years later, she suffered her next 'great shock' – when President Ronald Reagan announced he was nominating her to the US Supreme Court, following a campaign pledge to help secure the female vote. O'Connor eventually returned to the law in 1975 as an elected county judge, and in 1979 was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. It was the first time a woman in the US had ever held a legislative leadership position. Here she was re-elected twice, and in 1973, to her 'great shock', she was made majority leader. The two primarily took on cases for people with limited funds and evidently earned a good reputation doing so, as O'Connor was soon elected a precinct committeeman by the Republican party, and subsequently appointed to a vacancy in the Arizona State Senate. When the couple returned home to Arizona in 1957, O'Connor again struggled to find work, eventually convincing another man to open a law office with her. Four months later she was made a full employee, only leaving, reluctantly, after her husband was drafted to the Judge Advocate General's Corps in Frankfurt during the Korean war. No one would even speak to me.'Įxhibiting the persistence and initiative for which she would later become renowned, O'Connor sought out a county attorney in San Mateo, California, who she heard had once had a woman on his staff, and agreed to work for nothing until he could pay her a salary. 'It was very frustrating because I had done very well in both undergraduate and law school and my male classmates weren't having any problems. But the world wasn't ready for an ambitious, intelligent woman who could hold her own in conversation and shoot a jackrabbit at 50 yards. In 1952, O'Connor graduated near the top of her class, got married – not to Bill, but John Jay, a colleague on the Stanford Law Review – and excitedly entered the outside world. She and 'Bill' quickly became friends, then more than friends, as they bonded over regular games of bridge and charades. It is also here that she first encountered William Rehnquist, who went on to become Supreme Court chief justice in 1986. It was here that O'Connor met the 'inspirational' professor Harry Rathbun, who convinced her to stay on and take a graduate law degree. Yet unlike her father, whose aspirations to study at Stanford fell by the wayside, O'Connor left home to live with her grandmother and attend school in El Paso – and, eventually, earned the Stanford place her father had coveted. The oldest of three children, O'Connor had taken on much of the responsibility for running the family ranch on the border of New Mexico and Arizona. And all the more impressive considering the only job she was offered following graduation from Stanford Law School was as a legal secretary. O'Connor's rise to the top of the American judiciary came in 1981, by which time she had already served as an assistant attorney general, a state senator and an appeals judge for Arizona. In 2000, O'Connor played a seminal role in arguably the most controversial decision the Supreme Court has made when it resolved the contested Bush v Gore election. These qualities have defined the 81-year-old through much of her life and career, as she rose from unemployed law graduate to one of the most powerful women in American history. O'Connor has a twinkle in her eye as she speaks, and it is clear she enjoys recounting this tale of early grit and chutzpah.
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