![]() ![]() From her requirement that her law clerks attend morning aerobics sessions, to intimate details of chambers deliberations, to her warm and rocky relationships with her fellow justices, we get a sense of what her life was like on the court. In First, Thomas provides the lay reader as well as the legal professional with all of the details one would want to know about the first woman Supreme Court justice. Her law clerks largely dismissed this out of hand given her inclination to consider social context in reaching legal conclusions. When it came to women’s issues, she was so staunchly pro-gender equality that she denied that her gender influenced her decision making on the high court. ![]() While, privately, she agreed with John that she likely clinched the nomination. Despite her professional successes before landing on President Ronald Reagan’s list of prospective Supreme Court nominees in 1981, O’Connor has publicly said she doubted her prospects of being named to the Court. Thomas finds that throughout her life O’Connor tended to be wracked by self-doubt and lack of self-awareness, but maintained great confidence nonetheless. Her years as Arizona senate majority leader had prepared her for such toughness, where she described “how her ‘heart pounded’ and her ‘legs trembled’ at the thought of just standing up before her colleagues.” (pg. She expected attorneys, who had previously been used to getting away with shoddy work, to be prepared and concise. As a Maricopa County Superior Court judge O’Connor was not well received by attorneys who practiced in her courtroom. ![]() Her husband John O’Connor looks on.ĭrawing heavily on her husband John O’Connor’s diaries and interviews with colleagues and former law clerks, in First we get a true sense of a life lived as a trailblazer. She was rebuffed by every law firm she applied to out of law school, offered instead a job as a legal secretary, but rose to prominence in the Arizona Senate, Arizona Court of Appeals, and finally, the United States Supreme Court.Ĭhief Justice Warren Burger swears in Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman U.S. O’Connor was a woman of contrasts, raised on an Arizona ranch, but educated at Stanford. In this deeply researched biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court bench, author Evan Thomas deftly presents the reader with an understanding of a vastly multi-faceted figure. She was a global ambassador for the rule of law, and a role model for a generation of young women who saw her break the glass ceiling and were inspired to believe they could do the same.” - Evan Thomas, First: Sandra Day O’Connor (pg. For most of her twenty-four-plus years on the Court, from October 1981 to January 2006, she was the controlling vote on many of the great societal issues, including abortion, affirmative action, and religious freedom, so much so that the press came to call it the O’Connor Court. “O’Connor was the most powerful Supreme Court justice of her time. First: Sandra Day O’Connor - A Book Review ![]()
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