{"id":14954,"date":"2023-11-30T05:26:37","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T13:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14954"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:39:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T07:39:15","slug":"issue-of-the-week-human-rights-personal-growth-economic-opportunity-war-environment-disease-hunger-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14954","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: Human Rights, Personal Growth, Economic Opportunity, War, Environment, Disease, Hunger, Population"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93<\/em>, The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

America has been saying goodbye to a lot of extraordinary women leaders lately. None moreso than Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman justice on the Supreme Court, who died as this post was being written early in the morning after the night of November 30 (which changed the subject of our post entirely), with the December 1 obituary on the front page of The New York Times just posted by the Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The context of O’Connor’s rise to the Supreme Court is worth branding on the brain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan promised to put the first woman on the Court. Reagan was considered to be out of the mainstream, with no real chance of winning at first. Even with all the impossible problems that were not his fault that haunted Jimmy Carter, it’s hard to beat a sitting president, and Reagan was considered to be a right-wing loose cannon, seen by many as having only the credentials of acting and TV getting him elected as governor of California, and worrisome to many Americans in terms of his ideological views. It was a different America and a different world in so many ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reagan went on to do many historic things, some highly laudable and some deeply concerning, but for the purposes of this commentary, he became the conservative hero who captivated the Republican Party and the country–the Great Communicator who personified the Republican Party for three and a half decades. But he was worried about being elected at the end of the seventies in an America in which equality on many levels was far more important and powerful politically than it is today. The last Republican First Lady and then current Democratic First Lady at the time campaigned together for the Equal Rights Amendment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reagan needed to get ahead of the issue. So he promised to put the first woman on the Supreme Court if elected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s worth branding on the brain the social, cultural, political context we’re in today compared to then. Reagan looks moderate by comparison today in many ways, from conservative to liberal on various issues (the latter which he had branded as a politically scary word) compared to the extremists not even focussed on issues per se in the Republican Party today (not all, but with those in control too often, and too many others who may disagree, enabling in the end.) And beyond politcal party, the disintegration of the culture in general from then to now. It’s tempting to go into a long piece here about how we got from there to here, and the crossroads we are at where everything from the worst to the best possibilities exist. Up to all of us of course. Starting with educating oneself on the lost history of virtually everything by so many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we’ll focus here on the passing of Sandra Day O’Connor, the most powerful woman in America in her time, a model who broke the glass ceiling of sexism, and agree with her or not–we did both at times–who acted with dignity, integrity, fortitude and grace. We could use a lot more of all of the above right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s tomorrow’s front page article in the Times. It contains a video linked to of her last interview which she instructed could not be released until after she had died. It is a crime against history to miss it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Linda Greenhouse, Dec. 1, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a crucial period in American law \u2014 when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket \u2014 she was the most powerful woman in the country.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor in 2005. Although William H. Rehnquist served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court of that period was often called the O\u2019Connor court, and she was referred to as the most powerful woman in America.Credit…Matt York\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, the first woman on the United States Supreme Court, a rancher\u2019s daughter who wielded great power over American law from her seat at the center of the court\u2019s ideological spectrum, died on Friday in Phoenix. She was 93.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court announced her death in a statement, saying the cause was complications of dementia. She grew up in Arizona and lived there most of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a public letter<\/a> she released in October 2018, when she was 88, the former justice, who had not been seen in public for some time, announced that she had been diagnosed with the beginning stages of dementia, \u201cprobably Alzheimer\u2019s disease,\u201d and consequently was withdrawing from public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although William H. Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate, served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court during that crucial period was often called the O\u2019Connor court, and Justice O\u2019Connor was referred to, accurately, as the most powerful woman in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandra Day O\u2019Connor\u2019s Last Times Interview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times sat down with Sandra Day O\u2019Connor in 2008 to discuss her groundbreaking life and work as the first woman on the Supreme Court. She spoke with us with the understanding the interview would be published only after her death.<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Very little could happen without Justice O\u2019Connor\u2019s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court\u2019s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O\u2019Connor thought it should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public\u2019s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O\u2019Connor paid to current events and the public mood. \u201cRare indeed is the legal victory \u2014 in court or legislature \u2014 that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,\u201d she wrote in \u201cThe Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice,\u201d a collection of her essays published in 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Judge O\u2019Connor during a Senate confirmation hearing in 1981. She was a judge on a midlevel appeals court in Arizona when President Ronald Reagan nominated her to the Supreme Court.Credit…George Tames\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When President Ronald Reagan named her<\/a> to the Supreme Court in 1981 to fulfill a campaign promise to appoint the first female justice, she was a judge on a midlevel appeals court in Arizona, where she had long been active in Republican politics, though she had friends in both parties. Fifty-one years old at the time of her nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. As the court moved to the right during that period, her moderate conservatism made her look in the end like a relative liberal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLiberal\u201d was undoubtedly not her self-image, but as the court\u2019s rightward shift accelerated after her retirement \u2014 her successor, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was notably more conservative \u2014 she lamented publicly that some of her majority opinions were being \u201cdismantled.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat would you feel?\u201d she responded to a questioner in 2009, who asked her reaction to decisions that had undermined some of her rulings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice O\u2019Connor spent an active retirement, sitting as a visiting judge on federal appeals courts around the country and speaking and writing widely in support of two causes, judicial independence and civics education. She also catered to her six grandchildren, taking them on trips and writing two children\u2019s books based on her own colorful childhood on a remote Arizona ranch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her husband, John Jay O\u2019Connor III, whom she met when they were both students at Stanford Law School and married shortly after her graduation in 1952, died of Alzheimer\u2019s disease in 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your Thoughts on Sandra Day O\u2019Connor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court justice was once considered the most powerful woman in America. How has her career shaped your life or community, as a woman?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite graduating near the top of her law school class, she was offered only a secretarial position when she applied for a job at a major law firm. The notion that a woman might sit on the Supreme Court seemed distant indeed, not only then but even on the brink of her own appointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Justice O\u2019Connor was sworn in by Chief Justice Burger on Sept. 25, 1981, as her husband, John, held two family Bibles.Credit…White House\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The idea seemed so novel that Ronald Reagan\u2019s promise during his 1980 presidential campaign made front-page news. Only two years before that, a Broadway comedy, \u201cFirst Monday in October,\u201d featured a conservative female Supreme Court justice, and the very idea was played for laughs. When life imitated art on July 7, 1981<\/a>, Paramount moved up the release date of the movie version<\/a> of the play by five months, releasing it in August. Ultimately, of course, it was Sandra O\u2019Connor who had the last laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a Supreme Court Historical Society event marking the 30th anniversary of her appointment, the retired justice recounted her reaction upon learning that she was the president\u2019s choice to succeed Justice Potter Stewart<\/a>, an Eisenhower appointee who had retired after 23 years. \u201cIt made me very nervous,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s all right to be the first to do something, but I didn\u2019t want to be the last woman on the Supreme Court. If I took the job and did a lousy job, it would take a long time to get another one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n