It's easy to forget how groundbreaking it was for Sandra Day O'Connor to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2005, women hold prominent posts in the Senate, the Cabinet, the private sector and -- of course -- on the nation's highest court. Women account for almost half of law school enrollment, according to the American Bar Association.

But in 1981, when O'Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice, they were 35 percent of the class. It was common at the time for male litigators to take over cases from their female colleagues, said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center.

O'Connor "had an incalculable impact on women lawyers in many ways, not the least of which was to open the eyes of male lawyers to the capacity of women lawyers," Greenberger said Friday after O'Connor announced her retirement. "She is certainly the guiding light and star for women lawyers."

Beth Brinkmann, a partner in the Washington office of Morrison & Foerster, agreed. "There's no question that she opened the doors to advancement for women lawyers and judges across the country. How different my life and the lives of other women lawyers would be without Justice O'Connor."

In 1952, when O'Connor graduated third in her class from Stanford Law School, just 4 percent of law students were female. A law firm offered her only a secretary's position; her first job was as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo County, Calif.

"The gender walls that blocked me out of the private sector were more easily hurdled in the public sector," O'Connor said in commencement remarks last year at Stanford Law School.

After years raising a family, working part-time and becoming active in civic life, in 1965 O'Connor resumed a full-time law career in Arizona, where she grew up. She served as an assistant attorney general, a member and ultimately majority leader of the Arizona Senate, and a judge on the Maricopa County Superior Court and the state Court of Appeals.

Not a very traditional career path.

"There was some controversy at the time -- even though ultimately she was confirmed (by the U.S. Senate) 99 to nothing -- about the fact that she had taken this unusual route," Greenberger said . "Her background and her varied experiences turned out to be part of what has made her such an extraordinarily powerful and effective justice."

O'Connor's emphasis on leading a rich and balanced life was inspiring, said Jennifer Mason, a former O'Connor clerk who is now a visiting assistant law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

"She had a keen sense of her role in history and brought her wealth of life experience to her service as a Supreme Court justice."

O'Connor led Mason and others in an aerobics class three mornings a week and yoga one morning a week. The justice mentors her former clerks -- who she treats like family -- and takes great interest in their lives, Mason said.

Even women lawyers who don't know her personally feel a special connection to O'Connor. Often, the audience at a speech would sit in rapt silence, or well up with tears, listening to her experiences, Greenberger said.

"I'm frankly sitting here in mourning," said Martha W. Barnett, who was the second female president of the American Bar Association. "It has given me enormous comfort to know that a lawyer and jurist with her sense of humanity and dignity and good common sense sat on the Supreme Court of the United States." Divided response

When President Reagan appointed O'Connor, the response was divided. Some wrote to chide her for daring to take a seat that otherwise would have gone to a man, Mason said. Many wrote to thank her for breaking ground for women.

The enormity of the reaction surprised the justice.

"I had no idea when I was appointed how much it would mean to many people around the country," she said in a 1982 interview with Ladies' Home Journal. "It affected them in a very personal way -- people saw the appointment as a signal that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for women. It's important to parents for their daughters, and to daughters for themselves."

It also threw the high court staff into a tizzy over whether the brass plaque on her door should say Ms. or Mrs. -- naturally, all the previous justices were Mr. Eventually, all the plaques were labeled simply "Justice," said Deborah Jones Merritt, a law professor at Ohio State University, who clerked for O'Connor during her first term.

"She viewed that position with a sense of honor and also great trepidation," Merritt said. "I heard her say once to a large group, 'It's very well to be the first, but you don't want to be the last.' " 'Remarkable change'

Corinne Cooper, who got her law degree from the University of Arizona Law School in 1978, was a young lawyer in Phoenix when O'Connor was named to the court.

"It was just a remarkable change in the range of possibilities, and although I understood that President Reagan was doing this in a fairly calculating, political way, it was also deeply moving to me," Cooper said.

"We still don't take anything for granted," said Cooper, who retired from teaching law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law and returned to Arizona, where she started a communications consulting business for lawyers.

Still, as evidence of how much has changed, Cooper noted that it has gone almost without notice that the Bush administration official guiding the nomination of O'Connor's successor will be Harriet Meirs -- the first woman to serve as White House counsel. 2005, Newhouse News Service

Reach Katherine Reynolds Lewis at katherine.lewis@newhouse.com. Reporters Jonathan Tilove and Bruce Taylor Seeman contributed to this story.

©2005 The Oregonian

return to the top

<< Previous