US News & World Report - Supreme Court Justice O'Connor Steps Down

July 2, 2005
By Liz Halloran

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor broke ground in 1981 as the first woman named to the nation's highest court. Some 24 terms later, she is departing as one of that body's most influential jurists, a moderate conservative who proved consistently successful at tilting the high court in her direction.
 
O'Connor's departure not only opens up the first Supreme Court vacancy in 11 years but also gives second-term President George W. Bush his first high court nominationand an opportunity to reward his political base and reshape the court by nominating a more conservative replacement for the moderate justice. Bush says he will not nominate a successor until he returns July 8 from a trip to Europe.

But interest groups on both sides of the political spectrum are already girding for a fight. And that fight may be especially nasty because O'Connor, who is leaving in part to spend more time with her ailing husband, was considered a swing vote crucial to many of the court's decisions. The loss of the moderate conservative O'Connor is reverberating through liberal interest groups, which, among other issues, counted on her as a vote to affirm a woman's right to abortion.

And her departure is energizing conservative groups who have made clear they expect Bush to seize the opportunity and appoint a successor who conforms to the religious right's agenda. "There could not be a more significant opportunity for President Bush," said Jay Sekulow of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice.

O'Connor once said that her role as an influential swing vote on the high court was "media created." But a review of her opinions over the past decade shows that she was the deciding vote on more than a dozen key decisions involving rights and privacyfrom affirming the right of colleges and universities to consider race in their admissions policies and upholding the constitutionality of the Americans With Disabilities Act to overturning a state ban on late-term abortion and limiting the government's right to hold terrorism suspects without independent review.

The Supreme Court in recent years had clearly been the O'Connor-Anthony M. Kennedy court, and not the William Rehnquist court, says Earl M. Maltz, a Rutgers University law professor. O'Connor and Kennedyboth appointed by President Ronald Reaganhave controlled the moderate center of the court and have cast the deciding votes on some of the most important cultural decisions of the era. They have at times been seen as traitors to the conservative movement, but legal scholars like Richard Garnett of Notre Dame Law School say that's an oversimplification.

"Justice O'Connor has been every bit as hard core a federalist as Rehnquist," says Garnett. "Over the course of her career, she has been a conservative justice who has played a huge role in making the public square more welcoming of religious expression and has been reliable on issues like the death penalty and habeas corpus." She also voted with the majority in the court's 2000 decision that halted the presidential recount in Florida and made Bush president.

Many of O'Connor's views were shaped by what Garnett calls a "fascinating" life story. O'Connor's childhood on the 198,000 acres of the Lazy B ranch in Arizona makes for compelling biography, which O'Connor and her brother, H. Alan Day, recounted in a well-received book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, published three years ago.

The family's simple ranch home had no electricity or running water until O'Connor was 7. As a child, she rode with cowboys, mended fences, fired her own rifle, and spent hours reading with her mother. O'Connor graduated from high school at 16, earned an economics degree from Stanford University in 1950, and went on to Stanford Law School, graduating third in her class. Classmate Rehnquist was first. But O'Connor famously couldn't get a job out of law school because of her gender and eventually opened her own firm. She and her husband, John O'Connor, had three sons, and she became active in Republican politics.

O'Connor was assistant attorney general in Arizona, and served in the state Senate, where she became the first woman in the nation to be elected majority leader; in 1974 she won election to a state judgeship. Five years later she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. In 1981, Reagan nominated her to the Supreme Court, and she was approved unanimously by the Senate. She successfully battled breast cancer in 1988.

Though consistently aligned with Rehnquist during her early years on the high court, O'Connor's opinions later began to diverge toward a more centrist interpretation in a number of cases. And because of that, "she's occupied a place of significance in the courtmore so than some others who have served," Garnett said, though she has been both criticized and praised for reviewing cases on an individual basis, rather than with an overarching constitutional approach.

Linda Meyer, a Quinnipiac University law professor who clerked for Justice O'Connor, said her former boss "understood that you needed some play in the joints of the Supreme Court doctrine." Meyer says O'Connor was " not a grand constitutional theorist. . . . She was a pragmatist who tried to do the right thing in a particular case."

Meyer is one of a number of O'Connor's former clerks who remember fondly a woman who combined warmth and steel. "She's both tough and gracious," Meyer says. "She would make lunch for us on Saturday's, remember our birthdays, but at the same time she would not be influenced by us. The court is going to lose someone who is a real coalition builder and who really tried to do justice in particular cases."

In a statement released through the court O'Connor said, "I am 75 years old. I need to spend more time with my husband," who suffers from Alzheimer's. President Bush praised O'Connor as a "discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity." Whoever comes next has a tough act to follow. On that most everyone can agree.July 2, 2005
By Liz Halloran

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor broke ground in 1981 as the first woman named to the nation's highest court. Some 24 terms later, she is departing as one of that body's most influential jurists, a moderate conservative who proved consistently successful at tilting the high court in her direction.
 
O'Connor's departure not only opens up the first Supreme Court vacancy in 11 years but also gives second-term President George W. Bush his first high court nominationand an opportunity to reward his political base and reshape the court by nominating a more conservative replacement for the moderate justice. Bush says he will not nominate a successor until he returns July 8 from a trip to Europe.

But interest groups on both sides of the political spectrum are already girding for a fight. And that fight may be especially nasty because O'Connor, who is leaving in part to spend more time with her ailing husband, was considered a swing vote crucial to many of the court's decisions. The loss of the moderate conservative O'Connor is reverberating through liberal interest groups, which, among other issues, counted on her as a vote to affirm a woman's right to abortion.

And her departure is energizing conservative groups who have made clear they expect Bush to seize the opportunity and appoint a successor who conforms to the religious right's agenda. "There could not be a more significant opportunity for President Bush," said Jay Sekulow of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice.

O'Connor once said that her role as an influential swing vote on the high court was "media created." But a review of her opinions over the past decade shows that she was the deciding vote on more than a dozen key decisions involving rights and privacyfrom affirming the right of colleges and universities to consider race in their admissions policies and upholding the constitutionality of the Americans With Disabilities Act to overturning a state ban on late-term abortion and limiting the government's right to hold terrorism suspects without independent review.

The Supreme Court in recent years had clearly been the O'Connor-Anthony M. Kennedy court, and not the William Rehnquist court, says Earl M. Maltz, a Rutgers University law professor. O'Connor and Kennedyboth appointed by President Ronald Reaganhave controlled the moderate center of the court and have cast the deciding votes on some of the most important cultural decisions of the era. They have at times been seen as traitors to the conservative movement, but legal scholars like Richard Garnett of Notre Dame Law School say that's an oversimplification.

"Justice O'Connor has been every bit as hard core a federalist as Rehnquist," says Garnett. "Over the course of her career, she has been a conservative justice who has played a huge role in making the public square more welcoming of religious expression and has been reliable on issues like the death penalty and habeas corpus." She also voted with the majority in the court's 2000 decision that halted the presidential recount in Florida and made Bush president.

Many of O'Connor's views were shaped by what Garnett calls a "fascinating" life story. O'Connor's childhood on the 198,000 acres of the Lazy B ranch in Arizona makes for compelling biography, which O'Connor and her brother, H. Alan Day, recounted in a well-received book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, published three years ago.

The family's simple ranch home had no electricity or running water until O'Connor was 7. As a child, she rode with cowboys, mended fences, fired her own rifle, and spent hours reading with her mother. O'Connor graduated from high school at 16, earned an economics degree from Stanford University in 1950, and went on to Stanford Law School, graduating third in her class. Classmate Rehnquist was first. But O'Connor famously couldn't get a job out of law school because of her gender and eventually opened her own firm. She and her husband, John O'Connor, had three sons, and she became active in Republican politics.

O'Connor was assistant attorney general in Arizona, and served in the state Senate, where she became the first woman in the nation to be elected majority leader; in 1974 she won election to a state judgeship. Five years later she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. In 1981, Reagan nominated her to the Supreme Court, and she was approved unanimously by the Senate. She successfully battled breast cancer in 1988.

Though consistently aligned with Rehnquist during her early years on the high court, O'Connor's opinions later began to diverge toward a more centrist interpretation in a number of cases. And because of that, "she's occupied a place of significance in the courtmore so than some others who have served," Garnett said, though she has been both criticized and praised for reviewing cases on an individual basis, rather than with an overarching constitutional approach.

Linda Meyer, a Quinnipiac University law professor who clerked for Justice O'Connor, said her former boss "understood that you needed some play in the joints of the Supreme Court doctrine." Meyer says O'Connor was " not a grand constitutional theorist. . . . She was a pragmatist who tried to do the right thing in a particular case."

Meyer is one of a number of O'Connor's former clerks who remember fondly a woman who combined warmth and steel. "She's both tough and gracious," Meyer says. "She would make lunch for us on Saturday's, remember our birthdays, but at the same time she would not be influenced by us. The court is going to lose someone who is a real coalition builder and who really tried to do justice in particular cases."

In a statement released through the court O'Connor said, "I am 75 years old. I need to spend more time with my husband," who suffers from Alzheimer's. President Bush praised O'Connor as a "discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity." Whoever comes next has a tough act to follow. On that most everyone can agree.