O’Connor wasn’t elected - mainly because her opponent was able to raise more money, but the knowledge and exposure she gained in the process helped serve as a springboard to history.Īfter serving as assistant attorney general of Arizona from 1965-69 and becoming the first woman to serve as Arizona’s state majority leader in 1973, O’Connor was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1981 by then-President Ronald Reagan to replace the retiring Potter Stewart. 2h ago WLWT - Cincinnati President Joe Biden visiting. Supreme Court justice, balances political and court life with raising her three sons in Arizona. So O’Connor decided to run for a judge position in Arizona, but back then, judges in Arizona were elected, not appointed. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female U.S. I had to figure out some way to practice law and do some of the things I wanted to do in the legal profession.” Supreme Court in 1981.“I couldn’t get a job in a law firm because law firms wouldn’t hire woman lawyers,” O’Connor said in 2011 at the Aspen Ideas Festival. She served as a judge in Maricopa County Superior Court, and later the Court of Appeals, before her nomination to the U.S. She would eventually serve as assistant attorney general and as a Republican state senator in the Arizona Legislature - she rose to the position of majority leader - in the 1960s and 1970s. O'Connor began earning money from that job before she left, accompanying her husband to Europe. When there was no office for her, she said, "I got along with your secretary pretty well maybe she'll let me put my desk with hers," Hirshman wrote. She had heard that the county attorney had once hired a woman, so she applied to him. "She was going to have a long uphill journey to get to the place she had thought so blithely was hers by right."Įventually, O'Connor found a job working as a deputy attorney for San Mateo County, but for no pay. "Her early life had prepared her to expect to do anything as long as she, no excuses, did the work," Hirshman wrote. Hirshman wrote that O'Connor had no reason to think that being a woman was problematic. And it just came as a real shock because I had done well in law school, and it never entered my mind that I couldn't even get an interview," she said to Gross in 2013. I should have followed what was going on, but I hadn't. "I was a woman, and they said, 'We don't hire women,' and that was a shock to me. In 1952, the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher did interview O'Connor and suggested she work as a legal secretary for them because they would never hire a female lawyer, Linda Hirshman wrote in her book "Sisters in Law," a biography of O'Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. O'Connor had 40 rejections from law firms that wouldn't grant her an interview on the basis of her sex. In an interview with NPR's Terry Gross, O'Connor said she had seen notices on the Stanford bulletin board and called firms asking for an interview and not one of them gave her an interview. She met her future husband, John O'Connor, and the two dated for 41 consecutive nights.Īfter graduating law school in 1952, O'Connor interviewed with San Francisco and Los Angeles firms, but none of those businesses had hired a woman as a lawyer, and they were not about to break that tradition. how she balanced work with family, and how her ultimate ascent from. By the time of Rehnquist's proposal, Sandra Day was dating another law school classmate, John Jay O'Connor III. In this candid interview with Bill Moyers, Sandra Day OConnor discusses womens.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |