O'Connor, Sandra Day (redirected from Sandra Day)

O'Connor, Sandra Day, 1930–, U.S. lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1981–2006), b. El Paso, Tex. Graduating from Stanford law school (1952), she returned to practice in her home state of Arizona. There she was a state assistant attorney general (1965–69) and a Republican state senator (1969–74). Appointed a state judge in 1974, she was in 1979 named to the Arizona Court of Appeals. In 1981, President Reagan nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she became the first woman justice. Except in cases of sexual discrimination and states' powers under the federal system, she generally resisted judicial activism, emerging in the 1990s as a frequent swing vote between more and less conservative blocs. After leaving the Court, she served (2006) as a member of the Iraq Study Group.

Bibliography

See her Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest (with her brother, H. A. Day; 2001) and The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice (2003); study by J. Biskupic (2005).

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O'Connor, Sandra Day

 orig. Sandra Day

(born March 26, 1930, El Paso, Texas, U.S.) U.S. jurist. After graduating first in her law school class at Stanford University (1950), she entered private practice in Arizona. She served as an assistant state attorney general (1965–69) before being elected in 1969 to the state senate, where she became the first woman in the U.S. to hold the position of majority leader (1972–74). After serving on the superior court of Maricopa county and the state court of appeals, she was nominated in 1981 by Pres. Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first female justice in the court's history. Known for her dispassionate and meticulously researched opinions, she proved to be a moderate and pragmatic conservative who sometimes sided with the court's liberal minority on social issues (e.g., abortion rights). O'Connor retired from the court in 2006.

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O'Connor, Sandra Day (1930–  ) Supreme Court justice; born in El Paso, Texas. After taking her law degree from Stanford (1952), she had a private practice in Arizona; serving in the Arizona Senate (1969–74), she was the first woman in America to be elected majority leader of a state senate (1972–74). She was elected to a county superior court (1974–79) and was then appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals (1979–81). When President Ronald Reagan selected her, she became the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court (1981). Generally conservative in her legal views, she occasionally took independent positions and for long held the "swing vote" on the issue of abortion.