'She was supposed to be so politically astute, but she missed the big story, which was the rise of the Republican right,' Hirshman said. She said O'Connor's body of law now faces a reckoning from a more conservative court than the one she left. 'I think she was a very good symbolic first female - and that matters,' said Linda Hirshman, author of “Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World.” Wade despite personal opinions on abortion Previous rulings: Sandra Day O'Connor voted to uphold Roe v. O'Connor also joined the conservative majority on the court to end the Florida recount in 2000, effectively handing George W. Near the end of her tenure, O'Connor, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, was a centrist whose vote often proved decisive on issues ranging from civil rights to the limits of government at the dawn of a new century. Everybody wanted to see her,' she said.īursts of interest in the court are a reminder of O'Connor's outsized importance to it. 'It's the same pressures, the same stress just because of the nature of it being a historic appointment.' 'It very much took me back to Justice O'Connor's appointment,' McGregor said. Supreme Court, said the recent events have reminded her of what she witnessed. Ruth McGregor, the former chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court and a clerk for O'Connor during her historic first term on the U.S. A history: Sandra Day O'Connor - with a work ethic gained on a ranch - embodies Grand Canyon state

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