# Sandra Day O'Connor *Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1981–2006* Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American lawyer, legislator and judge. She sat as an associate justice of the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] from 1981 until 2006, the first woman to hold a seat on that Court.[^1] President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, nominated her, and the [[United States Senate]] confirmed her without a dissenting vote.[^1] Before joining the Court, O'Connor was a judge in Arizona's state courts. Earlier, she was elected to the Arizona Senate, where, as Republican leader, she became the first woman to lead the majority in any state senate.[^1] Her majority opinions include *Grutter v. Bollinger* and *Hamdi v. Rumsfeld*.[^1] She announced her retirement on July 1, 2005, and [[Samuel Alito]] took her seat on January 31, 2006.[^1] ## Early life and education She was born Sandra Day in El Paso, Texas, on March 26, 1930. Her parents were Ada Mae (Wilkey) and Harry Alfred Day, a rancher.[^1] Her childhood was divided between El Paso and the family's 198,000-acre cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona. Because the ranch was distant from any school, she spent much of her schooling living with her maternal grandmother in El Paso, where she attended the private Radford School for Girls.[^1] In 1946 she finished sixth in her class at Austin High School in El Paso.[^1] She had two younger siblings. Her sister, Ann Day, served in the Arizona [[Legislature]] from 1990 to 2000.[^1] With her brother, H. Alan Day, she co-wrote *Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest* (2002).[^1] Stanford University admitted her at 16. She received a B.A. in economics, magna cum laude, in 1950.[^1] She then attended Stanford Law School and graduated near the top of the class of 1952.[^1] While there, she worked on the *Stanford Law Review*, whose editor-in-chief at the time was [[William Rehnquist]], later chief justice.[^1] ## Early career and marriage On December 20, 1952, she married John Jay O'Connor III, a law student one class year behind her, at her family's ranch.[^1] After law school, she could not find a paid position at a law firm because of her gender.[^1] She took a post as a deputy [[county attorney]] in San Mateo, California, after offering to work without pay or an office. After a few months, she began to receive a small salary.[^1] When her husband was drafted, she went with him to Germany. For three years, she worked there as a civilian attorney for the Army's Quartermaster Corps.[^1] The couple then settled in Maricopa County, Arizona, where she opened a law firm. They had three sons, born in 1958, 1960 and 1962.[^1] After her second son was born, she left legal practice for five years. During that time, she volunteered with the Maricopa County Young Republicans and worked on Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.[^1] She was an assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965 to 1969.[^1] In 1969, the [[governor]] of Arizona appointed her to a vacant seat in the Arizona Senate. She won election to the seat the next year, and by 1973 she was majority leader, the first woman in any state to hold that post.[^1] ## Supreme Court career During his 1980 campaign, Reagan pledged to name the first woman to the Court.[^1] On July 7, 1981, he announced his choice of O'Connor to succeed the retiring [[Potter Stewart]]. The formal nomination followed on August 19, 1981.[^1] Anti-abortion and religious organizations opposed the nomination. Her record included a 1970 preliminary vote in the Arizona Senate for a bill to repeal the state's criminal-abortion statute and a 1974 opinion against a measure to bar abortions in some Arizona hospitals.[^1] Republican senators Don Nickles, Steve Symms and Jesse Helms told the White House they objected to the nomination, but all three voted to confirm her.[^1] The Senate's confirmation vote was unanimous.[^1] On the Court, O'Connor usually voted with the conservative justices but sometimes joined the liberal justices. She often wrote separate concurrences that narrowed the scope of a majority's holding.[^1] She co-wrote, with two other justices, the lead opinion in *Planned Parenthood v. Casey* (1992), which preserved legal access to abortion. She was also a partial author of the per curiam majority opinion in *Bush v. Gore* (2000).[^1] ## Retirement On July 1, 2005, O'Connor sent President George W. Bush a letter announcing her retirement, to take effect once her successor was confirmed. The letter gave no reason. A Court spokeswoman said she was leaving to spend time with her husband.[^1] On July 19, Bush nominated [[John Roberts]] of the D.C. Circuit for her seat. O'Connor said Roberts was "good in every way, except he's not a woman".[^1] Chief Justice Rehnquist died on September 3, 2005. Two days later, Bush withdrew the Roberts nomination for O'Connor's seat and named Roberts to the chief justiceship instead.[^1] Samuel Alito was nominated for her seat in October 2005 and joined the Court on January 31, 2006.[^1] When she died, she was the last surviving member of the Burger Court.[^1] ## Post-Supreme Court career After leaving the Court, O'Connor became chancellor of the College of William & Mary, succeeding Henry Kissinger.[^1] She continued to give speeches and host conferences on judicial independence. In a March 2006 address at Georgetown University, she argued that certain political attacks on the courts endangered Americans' constitutional freedoms. She said: "Any reform of the system is debatable as long as it is not motivated by retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with."[^1] On November 7, 2007, the Constitution Project held a conference on her opinion in *Strickland v. Washington* (1984). There, she pointed to the lack of adequate counsel for many of the poorest defendants and urged "merit selection for judges", a cause she had long supported.[^1] On August 7, 2008, she and former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid published a *Financial Times* editorial on the threatened imprisonment of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.[^1] On November 19, 2008, she wrote the introductory essay for a *Denver University Law Review* issue on judicial accountability.[^1] In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[^1] ## Personal life, illness and death After her appointment, the O'Connors moved to the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C. She was a baptized Episcopalian.[^1] In 1988, she was successfully treated for breast cancer.[^1] Her husband lived with Alzheimer's disease for almost two decades before his death in 2009, and she worked to raise public awareness of the disease.[^1] After retiring, she moved back to [[Phoenix]], Arizona.[^1] Back problems led her to use a wheelchair and move into assisted living by 2017.[^1] In October 2018, she disclosed an early-stage dementia diagnosis and withdrew from public life.[^1] Her sister Ann Day died on May 7, 2016, after a drunk driver struck her car in Tucson.[^1] O'Connor died in Phoenix on December 1, 2023, at age 93, of complications from advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.[^1] Chief Justice Roberts described her as a "fiercely independent defender of the rule of law". President Joe Biden called her an "American icon".[^1] ## Legacy and awards She is chiefly remembered as the Court's first female justice and as the deciding vote in the 5–4 *Bush v. Gore* ruling that gave the presidency to George W. Bush.[^1] Some commentators argue that the appointment of her successor, Samuel Alito, largely reversed her jurisprudential legacy.[^1] In March 2019, Evan Thomas published a biography of her drawn from interviews and her archives. It became a [[New York Times]] bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.[^1] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia contributors, *Sandra Day O'Connor* (revision 1382036229, retrieved 2026-10-26) — biography, Arizona career, nomination and confirmation, opinions, retirement, post-Court activity, death and legacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O'Connor