A moderate conservative, she was known for her dispassionate and meticulously researched opinions. She was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Subscribe to our free political podcast, The Gaggle. Sandra Day O’Connor, ne Sandra Day, (born March 26, 1930, El Paso, Texas, U.S.), associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. In the past year, O'Connor was honored for her work on efforts on Alzheimer's research and public awareness of memory care. She was the perfect person for that position because of her background and her personality and her intellect." "One thing the passage of time does is it allows us to look back with some understanding of what an extraordinary job she did as the first woman on the court. Regardless, O'Connor's place in history is untouched, McGregor said. It's not for certain that they will overrule Casey." And that might be what the current court decides also. I really thought that after the Casey decision that at least in this area, the law was pretty much settled. She said she is surprised that abortion, an issue that hung over O'Connor's confirmation hearings, remains a legally unsettled matter. "The indications are that Casey will be substantially cut back, if not overruled, but I'm basing that on what legal scholars who study the current justices say," McGregor said. Now, the court seems poised to allow states to broaden their efforts at limiting abortions or overturn that case completely. Casey helped preserve abortion rights, and rested on the idea that states could chip away at those rights, as long as they didn't present an "undue burden." O'Connor's 1992 opinion for the conservative bloc in Planned Parenthood v. "In the face of that, her substantive decisions, which were treated when she issued them as right where the American public was at, are not going to last." "She was supposed to be so politically astute, but she missed the big story, which was the rise of the Republican right," Hirshman said. She said O'Connor's body of law now faces a reckoning from a more conservative court than the one she left. "I think she was a very good symbolic first female - and that matters," said Linda Hirshman, author of “Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World.” Wade despite personal opinions on abortion Previous rulings: Sandra Day O'Connor voted to uphold Roe v. O'Connor also joined the conservative majority on the court to end the Florida recount in 2000, effectively handing George W. Near the end of her tenure, O'Connor, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, was a centrist whose vote often proved decisive on issues ranging from civil rights to the limits of government at the dawn of a new century. Everybody wanted to see her," she said.īursts of interest in the court are a reminder of O'Connor's outsized importance to it. "It's the same pressures, the same stress just because of the nature of it being a historic appointment." "It very much took me back to Justice O'Connor's appointment," McGregor said. Supreme Court, said the recent events have reminded her of what she witnessed. Ruth McGregor, the former chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court and a clerk for O'Connor during her historic first term on the U.S. A history: Sandra Day O'Connor - with a work ethic gained on a ranch - embodies Grand Canyon state
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