"Come on, Sandy Baby, loosen up. You're too tight."
             John Riggins, running back for the Washington Redskins, at a Washington Press Club dinner in 1985

Sandra Day O'Connor (26 March 1930 - ) is an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, and holds the distinction of being the first woman appointed to the Court. As of this writing, she has announced her retirement from the court, pending the confirmation of a successor; the Court made the announcement on 1 July 2005, surprising those who expected the retirement of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Rehnquist had been receiving treatment for thyroid cancer since late 2004, but it is believed he personally told Justice O'Connor that he didn't expect to leave the bench for another year.

Initially, Appeals Court judge John Roberts was nominated as O'Connor's replacement, but when Rehnquist suddenly died on 3 September 2005, Roberts instead took the Chief Justice seat. By the start of the court's term on 3 October, no one had been chosen to fill her seat. Harriet Miers was nominated by the president that day, but she withdrew from the nomination process when it became clear that she was unlikely to be confirmed. O'Connor remained on the bench until the confirmation of Samuel Alito on 31 January 2006.

Biography

Sandra Day O'Connor was born in El Paso, Texas and grew up on the "Lazy B" cattle ranch in Arizona. She and her brother, H. Alan Day, later wrote a book about life on the ranch. When she finished ropin' and ridin' she went on to Stanford, getting her bachelor's in economics in 1950. She went on to Stanford Law School to get her LL.B., graduating in only two years, which put her in William Rehnquist's graduating class. They even dated briefly during this period.

After graduating near the top of her class, Sandra Day was unable to find a job at a law firm — though, unbelievably, one firm offered her a spot as a legal secretary. She went into public service instead, working as a Deputy County Attorney in California, and taking a job in Frankfurt, Germany as a civilian attorney for Quartermaster Market Center. She went into private practice from 1958 to 1960 and then became Assistant Attorney General in Arizona from 1965 through 1969. Meanwhile, she married John Jay O'Connor III in 1952; they have three sons.

After this, she began her career in the legislative branch. She was appointed to Arizona's state senate in 1969, and then she was reelected twice as a Republican. In 1973 she became the first woman to be named the senate majority leader of any state. After that — having served in the executive and legislative branches — she got a spot in Arizona's judicial branch, giving her the rather unusual claim of having served in all three branches of government. She was elected first to judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, serving between 1975 and 1979. She was then appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals, where she served from 1979 until 1981, when she was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the court

With the tenor of the times shifting, a lot of people were starting to think it was high time a woman took a seat on the Supreme Court. Ronald Reagan, as a matter of fact, campaigned with a promise to name a woman to the Supreme Court. He was as good as his word — at least on that issue — and when Potter Stewart retired on 3 July 1981, Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor as his successor. She was confirmed 99-0 in the Senate, and she took her seat on 25 September 1981.

Initially serving under Warren Burger, she was considered a conservative, but with the rightward movement of the Court under William Rehnquist, she's earned a particular place for herself on the Court as one of its leading moderates. Justice O'Connor, as one of the unpredictable swing voters on the court, has a particular power in American politics. Forbes called her the fourth most powerful woman in the United States in 2004, which may well be an underestimate. Argument before the Court has been sometimes tailored to her legal style. Her characterization as a swing voter is partially due to her lack of a single overriding judicial philosophy — rather, she prefers to take a case-by-case approach to making decisions.

Her jurisprudence includes her prominent status as one of the New Federalists, who believe that the balance of power has shifted too much towards the federal government and wish to return powers held by the states before the New Deal. Between 1937 and 1995, not a single Supreme Court ruling held that a law couched under the commerce clause was an overreach of federal power; the 1995 decision in United States v. Lopez finally struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act which was tenuously justified as ensuring the safety of education and thus somehow promoting interstate commerce.

O'Connor wrote the majority opinion in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger and voted with the majority in Gratz v. Bollinger; these 2003 cases revolved around affirmative action at the University of Michigan and determined that a limited form of it, as practiced in admissions to the U of M Law School, is permissible under the Constitution, but that the admissions practices of the school's undergraduate program went too far. In the former, her vote was decisive; it passed via a 5-4 majority. She also voted with a 5-4 majority in the 2000 case Bush v. Gore, which essentially handed the presidency to George W. Bush; the decision carefully explained that it was to be confined to the present circumstances and thus not to be construed as setting a precedent. Nevertheless, critics have called it an overreach by the Court and a political act.

Her style of jurisprudence is further illustrated in her concurring opinion to the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas. The case struck down anti-sodomy laws targetting gays; the majority opinion protected sexuality in general under the doctrine of substantive due process — essentially determining that private sexuality is outside what the government may regulate. O'Connor's concurrence instead was based on equal protection — since the Texas law in question applied only to gay people, it was targeting a group rather than an act. It's worth noting that substantive due process arguments are largely the province of more liberal justices.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in 1992, upheld the right to abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy by a slim 5-4 margin, including Justice O'Connor. The plurality opinion of O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter permitted states to place some restrictions on abortion even during the first trimester, provided they not place an "undue burden". Their opinion was not couched in a "right to privacy" (not explicitly embedded in the Constitution but central to Roe v. Wade) but as "grounded in a general sense of liberty". This was something of a shift for O'Connor, who during her early years was expected to vote pro-life; whether her personal politics shifted to the center along with her jurisprudence is unknown.

Retirement

Once she finally made it off the bench, O'Connor replaced Henry Kissinger as the Chancellor of the College of William and Mary (a ceremonial post). She plans to travel and spend time with her family (as, I suspect, do most retirees). She's also fond of golf. O'Connor won't be giving up law completely, though: she's a member of a commission of the American Bar Association to help elucidate the role of judges and discuss the separation of powers, an important issue to O'Connor, who feels that the legislature has begun to attack the judiciary.

References

Supreme Court official bio
"O'Connor not bothered by delayed retirement". Associated Press. 28 September 2005
"Significance of Justice O'Connor's Vote". The Supreme Court Nomination Blog. 1 July 2005
"Centrist justice sought 'social stability'". USA Today. 5 July 2005.