She was the first female Supreme Court member in US history: Who is Sandra Day O'Connor?

The Supreme Court is considered the most powerful constitutional court in the world. Of course, it was a dramatic irony that this court, which symbolized itself and its mission with a woman, did not have a single female member for nearly 200 years.

Sandra Day O'Connor, who passed away last month, would make history as the first female member of this powerful court in 1981. The influential magazine of the period, Time, Justice… At Last! It would memorize the historicity of this election with its cover based on a play on words that also refers to the femininity of Justice, the symbol of the court.

Interim summary: Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female member of the US Supreme Court, retired in 2006. The retired judge, who was diagnosed with dementia in the last years of her life, died on December 1, 2023, at the age of 93.

Ronald Reagan, the president of the time who elected the first female member to the Court, promised during the 1980 election campaign that he would elect the first female member to the Supreme Court if he was elected president, to suppress criticism that he was not sensitive enough to women's problems. Although this promise was known, when O'Connor announced her name, there was still a storm in the country. Mainstream media and members of the opposition Democratic Party were sympathetic to the selection of a woman as a candidate for the Supreme Court, but they criticized that a local court judge who was unknown to the legal community and had no national duty experience was "not the right woman" for such an important federal position.

Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. A moderate conservative, O'Connor was known for her precisely researched opinions. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, she was considered a swing vote for the Rehnquist Court and the first four months of the Roberts Court. Before O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was an Arizona state judge and earlier an elected legislator in Arizona, serving as the first female majority leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate.

When Reagan announced her name, Sandra Day O'Connor was a member of the state appeals court in Arizona and had never held federal judicial office. Moreover, before becoming a state judge, she was a local politician and leader of the Republican Party caucus in the Arizona state Senate. Despite this, the biggest reaction to O'Connor was not the opposition Democrats, but the ultra-conservative segments who were supporters of Reagan. Because O'Connor, during her political career, did not openly oppose the Supreme Court's 1973 "Roe vs. Wade" case law, which provided legal protection for abortion...

O'Connor's confirmation interview before senators in the US Senate in the summer of 1981 was the first 'hearing' broadcast live on US television. So much so that the number of journalists in the hall would even exceed the number of journalists following the Watergate scandal hearings. She won everyone's hearts with her convincing and insightful answers to the critical and controversial questions asked by male senators one after another. She became a member of the Supreme Court by receiving the approval votes of all 99 senators who participated in the voting in the 100-seat Senate.

Although she sits in one of the most powerful seats in the country in Washington DC, it took time for the male-dominated judiciary to accept her. So much so that in the first hearing sessions, some of the party's lawyers either raised their voices and suppressed her when she asked a question or responded by looking at the other 8 male members, not at her. She would have to frequently send denials of "8 Men, 1 Woman" to the newspapers, as the US media habitually continued to use the phrase "9 Men" instead of the Supreme Court for decades, even after her membership.

This was a world that was not ready for a woman, not only psychologically but also physically. For example, there was no women's toilet in the building where the members' offices were located since it was never thought that a woman could be a member. She had to go to the toilet used by employees in the other building.

“I cared more about not being the last female member than about being the first female member,” she would later share her feelings. She was afraid of making people say, "Women can't do this job." She was the most hard-working member of the court, the one who read the most, listened the most, asked the most questions, and was the most curious to learn. Ultimately, she made a tremendous contribution to starting a process in which the 'being a woman' of the member elected to this court would not be newsworthy.

The loneliness of O'Connor, who was the only female member of the court for 12 years, ended in 1993 when Bill Clinton chose Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ketanji Jackson, chosen by Biden in 2022, is the 6th female member in the history of the Supreme Court. With the two female members chosen by Obama and 1 female member chosen by Trump, today's Supreme Court has 4 female members against 5 male members, a situation that no one could have imagined when Sandra Day O'Connor was born and raised.

Sandra Day was born and raised on a large cattle ranch in the Arizona countryside, where there was no electricity and water was obtained from wells, she spent her childhood and youth learning the limitations of being a girl or young girl in this environment full of cowboys. This challenge would also be what would give her self-confidence and determination. She would learn how to use a rifle, hunt, ride a horse, change a car tire alone, and do heavy physical work when she was a child. In addition, she acquired a passion for reading, an advantage of being the only child of parents who loved reading and acquired plenty of books and quality publications.

After completing her primary and secondary education, some years going to school 50 km away and some years at a boarding school, she managed to study economics and then law at Stanford University. She rejected two of the marriage proposals she received from three of her friends in law school. (One of them was William Rehnquist, who would become a member of the Supreme Court in 1972 and presided over the Supreme Court for 20 years between 1986 and 2005.) She accepted the proposal of her school friend John O'Connor and they got married in the early 1950s.

While she was a law student, she became the first female editor in the history of the Stanford Law Review. Despite this historic success and finishing school third, she would again face the reality of being a woman in the world of the 1950s. William Rehnquist, who graduated with a lower average than him, would start working with US Supreme Court member 'Justice Robert Jackson, a job that would pave the way for her future high judicial career. All of her male schoolmates had gone straight to work in a court or large law firm.

Although Sandra Day O'Connor applied to all 40 law firms looking for Stanford Law Graduates through advertisements posted in the school, not a single one of them agreed to interview her. The answer to the question why was always the same: "We do not employ female lawyers." She couldn't even get a response from the ordinary provincial law firms where she applied to become a lawyer. Finally, a company agreed to interview him. When she went to the Los Angeles-based law firm Dunn & Crutcher on the day of the interview, she learned that the job interview was not for a lawyer but for a secretary position. Your only question in a job interview is “Can you type fast?” She would never forget the weight of what happened.

Due to her husband's military service and work as a lawyer, she was busy raising her newborn children, first in Germany and then in Arizona. When she decided to return to working life after her children reached a certain age, she chose politics because the legal world was still very distant from women.

With her performance as a state senator, which began in the late 1960s, she rose to the leadership of the Arizona state senate majority group of the Republican Party, of which she was a member, within a few years. Thus, she once again made history as the "first female Senate majority leader" in US history.

Her leadership, which earned her the respect of even her Democratic opponents, would lead her party to nominate her for Governor of Arizona. However, when the opportunity arose to return to law, which she was passionate about, O'Connor refused to accept this very important leap in politics and would leave politics and become a member of the state appeals court.

Everyone in the Arizona public saw the decision as a serious step back in the career of this successful woman. Until her phone rang one morning in June 1981...

When she answered the phone, there was Reagan cabinet Attorney General William French Smith. Secretary Smith was informing her that US President Reagan wanted to have a personal interview with her for a federal position. In a twist of fate, Minister Smith was the then-partner of the law firm that offered O'Connor a secretary position when she applied for a job as a lawyer nearly 30 years ago. O'Connor couldn't help but tease, "Looks like there's another secretarial job."

When she announced that she decided to retire with a statement that shocked everyone a quarter of a century later, everyone, including Democrats, Republicans, those who criticized her decisions, and even those who thought she was "not the right woman for the court", agreed that she was the right person for the court. It was considered one of the most important 'justices' in the history of the US Supreme Court. What was even more striking was that 'being the first female member' had almost no role in this.