Aziz Huq Writes About Justice O’Connor
What Sandra Day O’Connor Could Teach Today’s Supreme Court
For much of her tenure, the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the most important vote on the Supreme Court.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, she voted with the majority in more closely decided cases than any other judge on the bench. The first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court — it took only 190 years after the tribunal first docketed a case in 1791 — was in effect also the most influential justice on the court, because she stood at its ideological center. Her run as the swing vote, particularly from 1999 to 2005, was longer than any other post-war justice — and came to an end only because she chose to retire to care for her ailing husband.
On many questions, O’Connor surely fulfilled the expectations of Republicans who pressed President Ronald Reagan to appoint her in 1981. A former state senator and Senate majority leader in Arizona, O’Connor was a zealous steward of the states’ rights. Her vote and voice shaped a series of cases curtailing Congress’ power, especially when it came to the enforcement of civil rights of those employed by state or local governments. When it came to race and equality, her opinions took key steps toward the unforgiving stance adopted by the Roberts Court — although O’Connor herself was far less dogmatic on affirmative action than her successors on the bench. Of course, she stayed aligned with most of her fellow Republican appointees in Bush v. Gore.
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