Sandra Day O`Connor

Posted by Maggie on Monday, September 21, 2009 | Leave a Reply

It was on this day in 1981 - 28 years ago - that the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O'Connor, making her the nation's first female Supreme Court justice. The confirmation vote was unanimous, 99-0, and she took the bench four days later, on September 25.
She was nominated on July 7 by President Reagan, who'd promised in his 1980 campaign that he would appoint a woman to the court.
Sandra Day O'Connor went to law school at Stanford, graduating third in her class - the very same class in which future Chief Justice William Rehnquist graduated first. While at Stanford Law, the two future justices dated briefly. In 1993, a dozen years after O'Connor's appointment, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (appointed by Clinton) became the second female Supreme Court justice.