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Watch: Sandra Day O’Connor’s legacy in her own words
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, has died aged 93.
She died on Friday morning in Phoenix, Arizona due to complications related to dementia and a respiratory illness, a statement by the US Supreme Court said.
A moderate conservative, Justice O’Connor was appointed to America’s highest court by former president Ronald Reagan in 1981.
She served as justice for more than 24 years until her retirement in 2006.
She left the bench to care for her husband, John Jay O’Connor, who was battling Alzheimer’s disease. President George W Bush appointed Justice Samuel Alito as her replacement.
In a statement, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called Justice O’Connor “a daughter of the American Southwest” who “blazed a historic trail as our Nation’s first female Justice.”
“She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor,” Justice Roberts said. He added that she was a “fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education.”
Justice O’Connor was born in El Paso, Texas, and grew up on her family’s cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona. She then went on to receive her law degree from Stanford University.
In her first job, she said she had agreed to work for nothing, with no office, for a county attorney in San Mateo, California.
“No-one gave me a job,” Justice O’Connor told the International Bar Association in 2011. “It was very frustrating because I had done very well in both undergraduate and law school and my male classmates weren’t having any problems.”
Despite the difficulties of being a woman in law, she went on to become Deputy County Attorney of San Mateo County in California and later Assistant Attorney General of Arizona.
A Republican, she was appointed to the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and was re-elected to two two-year terms. A groundbreaking politician, she became the first woman anywhere in the US to serve as a majority leader in a state senate.
In 1974, she left party politics and was elected to the Maricopa County Superior Court, before being appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals in 1979.
During his campaign for the presidency, Ronald Reagan vowed to appoint a woman to the US Supreme Court, in what some reporters at the time said was a bid to tackle his low polling among women.
When nominating her to the court in 1981, Mr Reagan said that she was “truly a person for all seasons, possessing those unique qualities of temperament, fairness, intellectual capacity, and devotion to the public good”. The Senate approved her nomination in a unanimous vote of 99-0.
She was regarded by many as the most powerful woman in the country at the time, as Justice O’Connor was a decisive vote on influential Supreme Court cases.
Among her most impactful decisions was her 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v Casey, which reaffirmed women’s right to abortion. Her replacement, Justice Alito, would go on to author the majority decision that overturned that right in 2022.
Justice O’Connor was also the deciding vote in the Bush v Gore case in 2000.
That year, Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore fought a closely contested election for the presidency, and legal battles over a recount ensued.
Justice O’Connor voted with the 5-4 majority to halt any legal challenges to the results of the election, effectively putting President George W Bush in the White House.
But she ruled against the Bush administration’s post-9/11 detainee policy in 2004, in which the court decided that due process was required for US citizens who are detained.
“A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens,” Justice O’Connor wrote in the court’s plurality opinion.
In an open letter in 2018, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with dementia, saying it marked the end of her role in public life.
“How fortunate I feel to be an American and to have been presented with the remarkable opportunities available to the citizens of our county,” she wrote. “As a young cowgirl from the Arizona desert, I never could have imagined that one day I would become the first woman justice on the US Supreme Court.”
“I hope that I have inspired young people about civic engagement and helped pave the pathway for women who mayhave faced obstacles pursuing their careers.”
On Friday, senior politicians of major both parties were quick to pay tribute to O’Connor.
“Sandra Day O’Connor was a trailblazer,” wrote House Speaker, Republican Mike Johnson. “Justice O’Connor inspired a generation of women – including the five female Justices that succeeded her – to chart a path that previously seemed unattainable.”
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski hailed O’Connor as “an inspiration who impacted an entire generation of young women who saw that it was possible to serve our country in the highest office”.
And Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said the late justice’s “example showed us that anything and everything is possible”.
Justice O’Connor is survived by three sons and six grandchildren. Her husband died in 2009.
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