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Revision as of 20:19, 3 June 2004 by 66.75.141.142 (talk) (→Law in the center of politics)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) has been a US Supreme Court Associate Justice since 1981.
Her life and history
O'Connor was born in El Paso, Texas. She married John Jay O'Connor III in 1952 and has three sons Scott, Brian, and Jay. She received her B.A. and LL.B. from Stanford University. She served as Deputy County Attorney of San Mateo County, California from 1952-1953 and as a civilian attorney for Quartermaster Market Center, Frankfurt, Germany from 1954-1957. From 1958-1960, she practiced law in Maryvale, Arizona, and served as Assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965-1969. She was appointed to the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and was subsequently reelected to two two-year terms. In 1975 she was elected Judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court and served until 1979, when she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. President Reagan nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat September 25, 1981 as the first female on the court. In recent years, she has been seen as the "swing vote" of the court.
Law in the center of politics
The first woman appointed to Supreme Court, O’Connor has proven herself over the past twenty-one years to be a very self-assured, assertive Justice who has a knack for avoiding the political intransigencies with which many other officials in such lofty government positions are plagued. Dedicated to the “federalism revolution,” she is rigid in her practice of approaching each case she hears as narrowly as is possible, making sure to keep away from generalizations which might later paint her into a corner when hearing other cases. It is both O’Connor’s dedication to asserting her judicial power over that of other federal instruments and her pragmatic circumspection that has given her a putative hold over the deciding centrist vote for the preponderance of the Rehnquist Court’s cases and, consequently, extremely influential decisions governing the country.
On December 12, 2000, O’Connor joined with her conservative Brethren to decide a case in which the White House went to George W. Bush. Never before had such a maneuver been made by a court, let alone successfully, and it transferred a large amount of authority to the Supreme Court. O’Connor and her judicial coevals further cemented a position from which their decisions would carry even more weight. She has played an important role in other notable cases, including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and Lawrence v. Texas. Some would aver that, in making her decisions, O’Connor not only considers the merits of the case and her personal viewpoints as per the law, but valorizes the efficacy of a potential decision in furthering the power of the court as the savior of America, a truly Supreme branch among those three in whose charge the United States lies.
O’Connor’s freedom to swing vote is a huge source of power. For in a day and age in which consistency is gold and switching sides is rarely tolerated, O’Connor bypasses both enfeebling extremes. O’Connor’s independence is maintained by a healthy indifference to both the political tide and her conservative status. To put it simply, she is never bound by her decisions. As was seen in Bush v. Gore, her minimalist pronouncements perhaps defy any attempt to apply similar logic in a later case. She eliminates rule of law and bypasses precedent, giving her great rein in the future, no matter how similar the case.