Sandra Day O’Connor made history when she was sworn in as the first female Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States on September 25, 1981. O’Connor garnered considerable political and public support and, in the year following her unanimous confirmation, she received more than 60,000 letters from the public, a record among Supreme Court justices.
O’Connor was born Sandra Day in 1930 in El Paso, Texas. She graduated from high school two years early and was admitted to Stanford University, where she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics. She also attended Stanford Law School, where she served on the Stanford Law Review. She met and married her husband, John Jay O'Connor III, during her final year. His was one of four separate proposals she received while at Stanford.
Despite her credentials, O’Connor struggled to find work in the legal field due to biases against women as attorneys. She was first offered work as a secretary but finally became a Deputy District Attorney in San Mateo County, California. After her husband was drafted, she moved with him to Germany and served as a Civil Attorney for the Army.
O’Connor returned to the United States in 1957, settled in Arizona, and assembled a private practice with another attorney, eventually becoming Assistant Attorney General for the state. In 1969, she was elected as a Republican to the Arizona Senate and rose to become the first female Majority Leader. She served as Superior Court Judge in Maricopa County from 1975 to 1979, when she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals in Phoenix.
As an Associate Justice, O’Connor was lauded for her objective, well-researched opinions. After she retired from the Supreme Court in 2006, she wrote several books, including Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court and the children’s books Chico and Finding Susie. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
In 2018, she announced that she had been diagnosed with early-stage dementia and withdrew from public life. First: Sandra Day O'Connor, a biography of her life, was released the following year.