O'Connor: Direct And Pragmatic
For many years, transcripts of Supreme Court arguments did not identify which justice had asked a given question. Nonetheless, it was usually easy to tell Sandra Day O'Connor's questions apart.
They were short, sometimes just one word, such as "Why?" And she often challenged lawyers arguing cases big or small to tell her the real-world effect that a Supreme Court ruling on the matter would have.
O'Connor, who announced her retirement Friday at age 75, was a pragmatist among ideologues, a centrist whose vote could often be a tiebreaker on the court's most contentious issues. Off the bench, she was both generous and demanding, and fully aware of the intimidating effect she had on other people.
The toughness and independence of her upbringing on an Arizona a ranch showed in O'Connor. She could be short-tempered and blunt, and she did not suffer pesky reporters lightly. She was accustomed to asking the questions, not answering them.
Her gaze, with cool blue eyes, is direct and uncompromising. When asked a question she disliked, such as when she would retire, she sometimes said nothing at all.
The first woman to serve on the court, O'Connor was a crucial vote in holding the middle ground on landmark rulings from abortion to abuses in money and politics.
O'Connor held the center while the court became more conservative in the 24 years since President Reagan appointed her. Still, she often sided with the more conservative justices, as in the ruling that handed Bush victory in the 2000 election.
In 1992, O'Connor voted to uphold the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, calling it "a rule of law and a component of liberty we cannot renounce."
She added that some state restrictions on abortion were permissible as long as they did not represent an undue burden on a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.
She was in the majority when the high court outlawed capital punishment for the mentally retarded. She was in the minority with the conservative wing of the court when more liberal justices ruled that juries, not judges, must make the crucial decisions that can lead to a death sentence.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration moved to dismantle preferential treatment for minorities. O'Connor was a critical vote in thwarting the administration's plans.
She was the crucial vote when the court upheld affirmative action policies on the nation's college campuses. She played a crucial tie-breaking role as the author of the court's final word on race-conscious legislative redistricting.
She often told interviewers and law students that she was stunned when President Reagan picked her as the first woman nominee to the high court.
"My concern was whether I could do the job of a justice well enough to convince the nation that my appointment was the right move," she said in during a discussion at Cardozo law school in 2000. "If I stumbled badly in doing the job, I think it would have made life more difficult for women, and that was a great concern of mine and still is."
"We proceed case by case as they come to us, and not with any overarching objective that the court itself" has developed, O'Connor has said. "We aren't here trying to develop something in the sense of where the country should go."
She voted to uphold a public Christmas display including a creche, but voted to bar a public Christmas display of a creche alone. Her view was that the Constitution prohibits any government action that is intended to send a message endorsing religion. Her vote determined the outcome in both cases.
The only member of the court who had held elective office, she co-authored the majority opinion supporting a law to clean up the system for financing political campaigns. O'Connor was a state senator and county judge in Arizona.
She was outwardly comfortable with that powerful role, and with the social and professional obligations that came with the job. She traveled widely to give speeches, was a regular on the Washington social circuit and wrote a best-selling autobiography about growing up on an Arizona cattle ranch.
In a one-sentence statement, O'Connor cited her age and said she "needs to spend time" with family. She and her husband, John, a former classmate at Stanford, have three sons, Scott, Brian and Jay.
John O'Connor has been in declining mental and physical health for several years. For a time, he accompanied his wife to court nearly every day, sitting quietly in a reserved section near the front of the courtroom or in a chair near a window in her airy chambers.
Although she has probably made more public appearances than her colleagues on the court, and gave dozens of interviews about her book, she and her husband have maintained their privacy about his health and what effect it might have on her work.