Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American jurist. She served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 until her retirement from the bench in 2005. The first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, she was a crucial swing vote on the Court for many years because of her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence and her relatively moderate political views.
In 2001, Ladies' Home Journal ranked her as the second most powerful woman in America. In 2004 and 2005, Forbes magazine listed her as the sixth and thirty-sixth most powerful woman in the world, respectively; the only American women preceding her on the list were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and First Lady Laura Bush.
Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, she was a politician and jurist in Arizona. Nominated to the Court by President Ronald Reagan, she served for 24 years.
O'Connor was born Sandra Day to Harry Alfred Day (a rancher) and Ada Mae Wilkey. She grew up on a cattle ranch in the southeastern Arizona town of Duncan. She later wrote a book with her brother, H. Alan Day, titled "Lazy B" about growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest and her childhood experiences on the ranch. For schooling, she lived in El Paso with her maternal grandmother and attended the Radford School for Girls and Stephen F. Austin High School. O'Connor attended Stanford University in Stanford, California where she received her B.A. in economics in 1950. She continued at the Stanford Law School for her LL.B, serving on the Stanford Law Review, and graduating toward the top of a class of 102, of which future Chief Justice William Rehnquist was valedictorian.
In 1952 she married John Jay O'Connor III, whom she had met in law school, and with whom she has three sons: Scott, Brian, and Jay. John O'Connor has suffered from Alzheimer disease for over 17 years and Sandra O'Connor has placed many of her efforts recently into creating more awareness about the disease. In November 2007, CNN reported that her family's situation has been made more difficult as, due to memory loss, her husband has formed new personal attachments in the institution where he now lives while not fully recalling his life-long family connections. On Sunday, November 18, 2007, New York Times reported in an article titled "Seized by Alzheimer’s, Then Love," that she is relieved to see her husband of 55 years so content.
In spite of her accomplishments at law school, no law firm in California was willing to hire her as a lawyer, although one firm did offer her a position as a legal secretary. She therefore turned to public service, taking a position as Deputy County Attorney of San Mateo County, California from 1952–1953 and as a civilian attorney for Quartermaster Market Center, Frankfurt, Germany from 1954–1957. From 1958–1960, she practiced law in the Maryvale area of the Phoenix metropolitan area, and served as Assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965–1969. In 1969 she was appointed to the Arizona State Senate and was subsequently re-elected as a Republican to two two-year terms. In 1973, she was elected majority leader. In 1975, she was elected judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court and served until 1979, when she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals by Democratic governor Bruce Babbitt. During her time in Arizona state government, she served in all three branches.
