Sandra Day O'Connor
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Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American jurist.
She served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 until her assumption of senior status on January 31, 2006. [1] The first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, she was a crucial swing vote on the Court for many years because of her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence and her relatively moderate political views.
In 2001, Ladies' Home Journal ranked her as the second most powerful woman in America. In 2004 and 2005, Forbes magazine listed her as the sixth and thirty-sixth most powerful woman in the world, respectively; the only American women preceding her on the list were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and First Lady Laura Bush.
Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, she was a politician and jurist in Arizona. She was a trial judge with the Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County from 1975 to 1979, and an appellate judge with the Arizona Court of Appeals from 1979 to 1981.
Nominated to the Court by President Ronald Reagan, she served for 24 years.
On July 1, 2005, O'Connor announced her intention to retire effective upon the confirmation of a successor. President George W. Bush nominated Justice Samuel Alito to take her seat in October 2005. O'Connor left the Court upon Alito's confirmation by the Senate on January 31, 2006. She is currently the Chancellor of the College of William and Mary, and also currently serves on the board of trustees of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
O'Connor's husband passed away on November 11, 2009. [2]
External links
- Our Courts, an O'Connor project to teach children about civics.
- Postscript: A Chat with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, WSJ Law Blog, August 11, 2009
