Remembering `a good judge'
Sandra Day O'Connor, who died last week at age 93, was both the first and the last. She was the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981. She was the last justice to serve in elected office before joining the bench. And in her words, she was the “first cowgirl” — and most certainly the last — to join the High Court.
She was a pioneer, a pragmatist and a politician who made, as Ruth Marcus wrote in the Washington Post, a “singular contribution during her 24 years on the court: She elevated common sense and moderation over reflexive adherence to ideology.”
That contribution starts — but definitely doesn't end — with her gender. When she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952, she simply could not find a job. “I placed calls to many of the firms, and they wouldn't talk to me; I was female,” she told The New York Times. A friend introduced her to a partner in a big California law firm who told her: “The problem is this firm has never hired a woman as a lawyer and I don't see the time when we will. Our clients wouldn't stand for it.” And then he asked her, “Well, how well do you type?”
O'Connor was acutely aware of her importance as a role model, as a key figure in one of the most enduring revolutions of the 20th century: the empowerment of women. “I had no idea when I was appointed how much it would mean to many people around the country,” she once said. “It affected them in a very personal way. People saw it as a signal that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for women. It's important to parents for their daughters, and to daughters for themselves.”
Her influence ranged far beyond gender. Historically, many justices had previously served in elected office. But since the death of Hugo Black, a former senator from Alabama, in 1971, O'Connor has been the only justice with legislative experience, and that shaped her approach to judicial decision-making.
“She had a keen feeling for the real-world impact of the Court's decisions, and a natural politician's sociability and savvy,” writes Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker. She quotes political scientist James Todd, who observed O'Connor when she was majority leader of the Arizona Senate: “She knew how to deal with people and how to compromise and get things done. As majority leader, she'd have senators over to her house, and she'd cook for them — and they'd have to talk to each other.”
Her pragmatic bent started long before the legislature, during her childhood as a “cowgirl” on a remote ranch 35 miles from the nearest town. She rode horses, fixed fences, drove tractors, herded cattle and once startled a meeting of judges by asking, “How many of you have ever milked a cow?”
All those experiences helped train her for the most critical moment of her career: drafting the majority opinion in the famous Casey case of 1992. After fending off four conservative justices who wanted to overturn the Roe decision of 1973 that legalized abortion, she drafted an opinion that preserved the principle of legality, but allowed states to impose restrictions that did not create an “undue burden” for women.
It was classic O'Connor: finding the center of gravity, the consensus point, in the middle of a highly divisive debate — a compromise that endured for 30 years before being overturned last year by a far more ideological court. But her Casey opinion reflected another trait as well: a fierce belief in personal liberty and a rejection of government control over individual lives.
This profoundly Western or frontier view of conservatism once flourished in the Republican Party, as personified by leaders like Barry Goldwater, the party's nominee for president in 1964 and a strong defender of abortion rights. That tradition has been swallowed up by the advent of a more Southern-based, evangelical impulse in the GOP that favors using public power to spread moral virtue.
That is a far cry from the libertarian values O'Connor learned during her cowgirl days, which are reflected in her Casey opinion.