Sandra Day O’Connor

She married John Jay O’Connor III on 20th December, 1952. Ever since their marriage, her husband was the driving force in their life. Together, the couple were blessed with three sons - the eldest Scott followed by Brian and Jay.

In 1988, she was diagnosed with breast cancer; she underwent mastectomy and revealed about her treatment only in 1994. Many thought that she would resign from the court, but she battled cancer and continued to hold her seat.

In 1989, her husband began suffering from Alzheimer’s. It was difficult for her to watch her husband lose his memory. He lived for twenty years with the progressive mental deterioration and breathed his last in 2009.

Sandra was born on 26th March, 1930 at El Paso, Texas to ranchers Harry and Ada Mae. She lived with her grandmother and attended ‘Radford School for Girls’.

By 1946, she graduated ranking sixth from ‘Austin High School’. With an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, she enrolled in ‘Stanford University’ and graduated with a B.A. in Economics in 1950.

She was accepted into the ‘Stanford Law School’ for a LL.B degree and graduated two years later in 1952 ranking third in her batch.

On a bulletin board in the university she acquired the phone numbers of several firms hiring lawyers. However, even after many attempts none were willing to recruit a female lawyer.

She finally began to work with an advocate as a deputy county attorney in California on the condition that she wouldn’t charge a salary until the advocate had sufficient to pay, and that she would work without a designated office.

She later moved to Germany and worked as a civilian attorney for three years at the Army’s ‘Quartermaster Corps’ before returning to America. Upon her return she assisted in the presidential campaign of Arizona Senator, Barry M. Goldwater.

In 1965, she was appointed as ‘Assistant Attorney General of Arizona’ for a period of four years. In 1973, she was elected to the State Senate as a Majority Leader and later served at the ‘Maricopa County Superior Court’ until 1979.

Her efforts to empower women were rewarded and she was promoted to the ‘Arizona State Court of Appeals’, where she worked at the ‘Court of Appeals-Division One’.

During the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan promised to nominate a lady to the Supreme Court, which he fulfilled on 7th July, 1981 when he nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Her nomination received opposition from pro-life and religious groups as well as a few US Senate Republicans. However, her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and in her first year she received more pleas from commoners than any justice had ever received before.

In her initial years, she aligned her votes with the conservative William Rehnquist and approached cases in a restrained manner and avoided generalisations.

As years progressed, the court grew more conservative. In many cases she held the swing vote and often disappointed the more liberal bloc of the court. Her votes held a ratio of 82 to 28, the former being in favour of the conservatives.