Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93

[wing2000]

"Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the United States Supreme Court, a rancher’s daughter who wielded great power over American law from her seat at the center of the court’s ideological spectrum, died on Friday in Phoenix. She was 93.

The Supreme Court announced her death in a statement, saying the cause was complications of dementia.

In a public letter she released in October 2018, when she was 88, the former justice, who had not been seen in public for some time, announced that she had been diagnosed with the beginning stages of dementia, “probably Alzheimer’s disease,” and consequently was withdrawing from public life.

When President Ronald Reagan named her to the Supreme Court in 1981 to fulfill 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. Fifty-one years old at the time of her nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband."

Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93

During a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket — she was the most powerful woman in the country.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

R.I.P. She leaves an enduring legacy. Great lady.

 

[wing2000]

...she was a strong, independent woman from the ranch lands of Arizona.

Despite graduating near the top of her law school class [1952], she was offered only a secretarial position when she applied for a job at a major law firm. The notion that a woman might sit on the Supreme Court seemed distant indeed, not only then but even on the brink of her own appointment.

The idea seemed so novel that Ronald Reagan’s promise during his 1980 presidential campaign made front-page news. Only two years before that, a Broadway comedy, “First Monday in October,” featured a conservative female Supreme Court justice, and the very idea was played for laughs. When life imitated art on July 7, 1981, Paramount moved up the release date of the movie version of the play by five months, releasing it in August. Ultimately, of course, it was Sandra O’Connor who had the last laugh.

 

[RileyG]

May she rest in peace.