“At a dinner party, Sandra had to stop him from eating a stick of butter, which he had mistaken for cheese,” writes Thomas. Social events became awkward as John’s condition worsened. It was a difficult role, O’Connor acknowledged to Thomas, saying in January 2017, “being the husband of me was not an easy job.” She had met John when they were students together at Stanford law school, and he gave up a thriving law practice in Phoenix to move to Washington in 1981. In the early 2000s, she feared leaving him alone at home and brought him to her chambers at the court. Her home life was more complicated in the late 1990s when John first showed signs of his Alzheimer’s. On the Supreme Court from September 1981 to January 2006, O’Connor became a crucial swing vote, steadying the bench and influencing the law from abortion rights and affirmative action, to criminal due process and checks on the Bush administration’s post-Septemwar on terrorism. Her competitiveness – in everything – became legendary.
WHO REPLACED SANDRA DAY O CONNOR TRIAL
She had a compelling personal story and exuded a superwoman persona: the child of a pioneering ranch family in Arizona, she graduated from high school at age 16 and attended Stanford University then after law school, when male-run law firms rejected her, she set up her own office she became a state senator then a trial and appeals court judge, all while raising three boys and engaging in vigorous social and sporting life with husband John. When President Ronald Reagan appointed O’Connor in 1981, the Arizona state court judge, then 51, offered a fresh image of female achievement. Thomas also writes that retired Justice John Paul Stevens told him O’Connor regretted stepping down when she did, in January 2006, and Stevens added, “The Court has never been this far to the right.” It looked like a party-line vote, I know.’ Her craggy face softened and grew sad.” Gore, as she sat in a wheelchair at her assisted living facility,” Thomas recounts of a January 2017 exchange, “she answered, ‘I’m sure I did, but second thoughts don’t do you a lot of good. “Asked if she had any regrets about Bush v.
Thomas writes that O’Connor took the lead to craft its legal grounds and inserted a key line in the unsigned opinion limiting it “to the present circumstances” or, as Thomas characterizes it, “a one-time ticket to get out of a jam.” The 5-to-4, conservative-versus-liberal decision, with O’Connor in the majority, ensured the end of recounts and secured Republican George W. Gore, the Florida election dispute that culminated the presidential election in 2000.
But he adds details to familiar court dramas such as Bush v. He writes that O’Connor, who will be 89 on March 26 and has Alzheimer’s disease, generally declined to discuss cases and her approach to the law. Veteran author Evan Thomas captures in “First,” released Tuesday, the woman who lived much of her life in the spotlight yet who, in the quiet of her home, struggled with common health difficulties and the vicissitudes of age.
A new biography of the first woman on the Supreme Court details Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s agonizing struggle with her husband’s dementia in the years before she retired and her later angst as she watched the court lunge rightward and faced her own declining health.
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