Photograph by Dane Penland, Smithsonian Institution, Courtesy of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In conjunction with The Remnant Trust at IPFW
Sandra Day O’Connor
“Advancing the Rights of Humanity”
Note: This is a ticketed free event. All tickets have been distributed; however, there will be a stand-by line the night of the event. At 7:20 p.m. any unoccupied seats will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis to those individuals. There is no guarantee you will be seated from the stand-by line.
The first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 until her retirement from the bench in 2006. Nominated to the court by President Ronald Reagan, she served for 24 years. For many years she was a crucial swing vote on the court because of her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence and her relatively moderate political views.
O’Connor attended Stanford University where she majored in economics, with the intention of applying that knowledge towards the operation of a ranch of her own. A legal dispute over her family’s ranch, however, stirred her interest in law, and O’Connor decided to enroll at Stanford Law School after receiving a baccalaureate degree in 1950. She completed law school in just two years.
Facing a difficult job market after leaving Stanford, O’Connor turned to public service. When O’Connor’s husband graduated from Stanford a year later, the army immediately drafted him into the Judge Advocate General Corps. John O’Connor served in Frankfurt, Germany, for three years, with Sandra serving as a civilian lawyer in the Quartermaster’s Corps.
When the O’Connors returned to the U.S. in 1957, they decided to settle in Phoenix, Arizona, where she served as a politician and jurist. When a state senator resigned to take an appointment in Washington, D.C., Arizona Governor Jack Williams appointed O’Connor to occupy the vacant seat. O’Connor successfully defended her senate position for two more terms and eventually became the majority leader, a first for women anywhere in the U.S., and paved the way for her role as a justice.