Dole leadership prize honors life of the late Sandra Day O’Connor, a ‘quintessential American’

Son of first woman on U.S. Supreme Court reflects on O’Connor’s journey

The late Sandra Day O’Connor overcame stifling 1950s-era gender barriers widely imposed on law school graduates to build a career culminating with appointment as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The list of rejections received by the Stanford University graduate included the influential California firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher that employed William French Smith, who decades later became U.S. attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. One of Reagan’s campaign promises was to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court.

Ironically, it was Smith who dispatched a Justice Department attorney, Ken Starr, to conduct the pre-nomination interview with O’Connor in the living room of her Arizona home in 1981.

“Smith’s law firm in Los Angeles that he left to become attorney general was one of the firms that turned mom down, but offered her a job as a legal secretary,” said Scott O’Connor, the late justice’s eldest son. “So, during the interview she got to really twist the knife.”

Reagan nominated O’Connor and, despite conservative backlash tied to abortion politics and gender bias, she won unanimous confirmation in the U.S. Senate. She served on the nation’s highest court for 24 years, wrote more than 600 opinions and was viewed as a swing vote on a divided court. She retired in 2006 and passed away in December 2023.

On Thursday, the Robert Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas presented the late justice with the $25,000 Dole Leadership Prize. It’s a bipartisan award presented to individuals or nonprofits engaged in public service that demonstrated the importance of engaging in political and civic affairs. She was the Dole Institute’s first posthumous recipient.

Other recipients include Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Secretary of State James Baker, U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum and professor Temple Grandin.

In terms of Justice O’Connor, the award honored her service in all three branches of Arizona government, her prominent role on the U.S. Supreme Court and her dedication in retirement to the nonprofit organization iCivics. It’s an educational program offering millions of students annually the opportunity to engage in civics.

“She was the quintessential American,” said Scott O’Connor, who accepted the prize on behalf of his mother. “She understood our country. What it could be. She respected its institutions and felt it was our obligation to do all we could do to make them function better, not to tear them apart.”

He said her selection by Reagan demonstrated that anyone could reach the highest echelon of U.S. government if qualified and passionate for the work. She grew up on a family cattle ranch about 9 miles from the nearest paved road in a home without running water until she was age 7. She enrolled at Stanford at 16 and earned a law degree by 21.

Her legal career began in San Mateo, California, where she served as a county attorney without a salary. She shared a desk with a receptionist. Her husband, attorney John Jay O’Connor, was drafted and both worked for the military in Germany for three years before returning to the United States and moving to Maricopa County, Arizona.

She left private practice in the late 1960s to become an assistant attorney general in Arizona. For a portion of that time, O’Connor and another woman in the office worked three-fourths time for one-half pay while raising young children.

O’Connor was subsequently appointed to a vacancy in the Arizona Senate and over two-plus terms became the first woman to serve as a Senate majority leader of any state.

“She enjoyed the work,” Scott O’Connor said. “It was extremely challenging, but she soon realized the typical state legislator wasn’t necessarily the most ethical, the most high-minded person you might want to spend the rest of your career with.”

The Republican chose not to seek reelection to the state Senate. She served for four years on the Maricopa County Superior Court prior to appointment by the governor to the Arizona Court of Appeals. She was on the state appellate bench until nominated by Reagan in 1981.

“All of that happened to a little ranch girl from the middle of nowhere,” Scott O’Connor said. “It was just astonishing. It gave our family great hope for America — that it works.”

Scott O’Connor said the life experiences of his mother — a childhood on a cattle ranch, breaking gender barriers, serving in the three branches of government — offered an awareness of American life not shared enough by modern appointees to the federal judiciary. He said too many federal judges “come through a cloistered existence.”

“They don’t know what it’s like to pass a bill that is controversial,” he said. “They don’t know what it’s like to run for public office. They don’t know necessarily what it’s like to represent the poorest indigent clients in a strip-mall law office.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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