Sandra Day O’Connor obituary: ‘The most powerful woman in America’

Born: March 26th, 1930

Died: December 1st, 2023

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the US supreme court, a rancher’s daughter who wielded great power over American law from her seat at the centre of the court’s ideological spectrum, has died aged 93.

In a public letter she released in October 2018, when she was 88, the former justice announced that she had been diagnosed with the beginning stages of dementia, “probably Alzheimer’s disease” and consequently was withdrawing from public life.

Although William Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate, served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court during that crucial period was often called the O’Connor court, and O’Connor was referred to as the most powerful woman in America.

Very little could happen without O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarising issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

Why does Taylor Swift trigger guitar-heads of a certain age? Blame rockism

---

Historical events usually recede in importance as they retreat in time - not the first World War

---

Cathal Crotty picked on the wrong woman and that is to be his enduring punishment

---

Rishi Sunak gets a bad rap but he was good for Ireland

---

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. “Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,” she wrote.

When then US president Ronald Reagan named her to the supreme court in 1981 to fulfil a campaign promise to appoint the first female justice, she was a judge on a midlevel appeals court in Arizona, where she had long been active in Republican politics, though she had friends in both parties. She was 51 at the time of her nomination and served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. As the court moved to the right during that period, her moderate conservatism made her look in the end like a relative liberal. Her husband, John O’Connor III, whom she met when they were both students at Stanford Law School and married shortly after her graduation in 1952, died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2009.

Before successfully seeking an Arizona state court judgeship in 1974, she spent five years in the Arizona senate, winning two re-election campaigns and becoming majority leader in 1972. No woman in the country had held such a high office in a state legislature.

Despite her decades as a member of the Washington elite, O’Connor continued to think of herself as a person of the West and once referred to herself as “the first cowgirl to serve on the US supreme court.”

Sandra Day was born in El Paso, Texas, the eldest of three children of Harry and Ada Mae (Wilkey) Day. Her parents had eloped because Ada Mae’s urbane parents disapproved of the prospect of ranch life for their daughter.

From an early age, Sandra rode horses and helped the ranch hands with the chores involved in tending 2,000 head of cattle. Sandra’s parents sent her from the age of six to live with her maternal grandmother in El Paso during the school year, so she could get an education. She entered Stanford University at 16, graduated in 1950 and earned her law degree two years later.

During her second year of law school, her steady date was a fellow student named William Rehnquist. After they drifted apart, she began dating another fellow student, John O’Connor; they married in 1952.

Rebuffed by private law firms after graduation, she turned to the public sector and worked briefly as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California. She then followed her husband to Germany, where he was stationed with the army’s judge advocate general’s corps; she worked as a civilian lawyer for the quartermaster corps. When John O’Connor’s army service concluded, the young couple settled in Phoenix to start a family and begin a career. Their three sons, Scott, Brian and Jay, were born between 1957 and 1962.

While her husband entered a big-firm law practice in fast-growing Phoenix, Sandra Day O’Connor opened a suburban law office of her own.

In 1965, she returned to full-time work as an assistant state attorney general. Govenor Jack Williams, a Republican, appointed her to an interim vacancy in the state senate in 1969. She won two subsequent elections, becoming majority leader in 1972. In 1974, she ran successfully for a seat on the Maricopa County superior court, the local trial court. In 1978, Republican leaders urged O’Connor to run for governor against the Democratic incumbent, Bruce Babbitt. She declined, and the next year, Babbitt named her to the state’s intermediate appeals court.

On the spectrum of Arizona Republican politics, O’Connor was a moderate. She supported the proposed equal rights amendment to the constitution and did not take part in the anti-abortion activism that was becoming visible in the state.

The senate approved her nomination on September 21st, 1981, by a vote of 99-0.

Her announcement nearly 24 years later in 2005 that she would retire shattered the quiet of a July 4th weekend.

O’Connor’s successor, Alito, was not confirmed until January 31st, 2006, so she remained on the court for another half year. Her plan to care for her husband at home quickly proved unworkable and later that year he entered a nursing home.

She spent an active retirement, sitting as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts around the country and speaking and writing widely in support of two causes: judicial independence and civics education. She also catered to her six grandchildren, taking them on trips and writing two children’s books based on her childhood on a remote Arizona ranch.

She is survived by her sons, six grandchildren and her brother, Alan.

A version of this article originally appeared in the New York Times.