ABSTRACT

O’CONNOR, SANDRA DAY (b. 1938) First woman to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sandra Day was born on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas, and grew up on her family’s cattle ranch in Arizona. She attended Stanford University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1950 and a law degree two years later. In 1952 she married John Jay O’Connor, III, and eventually gave birth to three sons. After graduating from law school she could not fi nd a job in private practice because few law fi rms at the time were willing to hire women, so she turned to government service, eventually becoming assistant attorney general for Arizona in

1965. During those years she was active in civic affairs and Republican Party politics, and in 1969 the Arizona governor appointed her to a vacant seat in the state senate. She won election in her own right in 1970, and after her reelection in 1972, became the fi rst woman in U.S. history to serve as a majority leader in a state senate.