Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the late 1980s, as the Supreme Court justices were discussing a case, Antonin Scalia ranted against affirmative action. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first and then still the only woman on the High Court, replied, "Why, Nino, how do you think I got my job?" This is one of the few revelatory moments in Biskupic's bio of the retiring O'Connor as sharp-tongued, humorous and utterly realistic. It's also, as Biskupic shows in a close study of O'Connor's jurisprudence, a bit misleading: for most of her career on the Court, the conservative O'Connor voted against affirmative action. With access to justices' once private papers, longtime court observer Biskupic, now with USA Today, sheds light on the internal workings on the Court, but not much on the internal workings of the very private O'Connor's mind and heart. Biskupic does show the justice gaining confidence and force on the Court, particularly after her fight against breast cancer in 1988. As O'Connor faces retirement, Biskupic clarifies her judicial legacy, sometimes seeing the glass as half full, sometimes as half empty: praising her lack of ideology but also noting a lack of vision in a justice who often "step[s] to the brink, and then back[s] away"—a mixed legacy that will be debated for years to come. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was supposed to be enjoying this Christmas as her first in retirement after an illustrious quarter-century of service on the nation's highest court. But with John G. Roberts Jr. now chief justice, Harriet Miers still White House counsel and Samuel A. Alito Jr. awaiting Senate hearings in January, O'Connor continues to sit on the court, asking her usual precise and well-prepared questions of advocates, writing her usual clear and straightforward opinions and, in short, performing one last coda to one of the most remarkable judicial performances in the history of the Supreme Court.

With celebrations, tributes and toasts to O'Connor on indefinite hold, Joan Biskupic's biography is a most welcome prelude. This highly readable and engaging work is not an authorized biography; O'Connor is among the justices most committed to keeping the court's inner deliberations secret and has opposed the early release of justices' papers to the public. Unable to rely on interviews with the justice herself, Biskupic, a lawyer who covers the Supreme Court for USA Today (and used to do so for this newspaper), has painstakingly researched her subject by interviewing family members and former clerks and mining the personal papers of other justices, notably those of Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun.

What emerges is a powerful and persuasive account of O'Connor as the most astute political leader on the court since Justice William J. Brennan, the elfin Irishman from New Jersey who was the intellectual fulcrum of the Warren Court in the 1960s. Brennan famously quipped that the most important skill for any justice on the nine-member court was "counting to five." O'Connor, Biskupic tells us, has been a genius at this kind of math for more than two decades.

The origins of O'Connor's extraordinary tenure are told briskly. The childhood of the only Supreme Court justice ever inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame was spent largely on the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona, a place where women had presumptive equality because there was so much work to do. Her father was taciturn and demanding; when a teenage Sandra Day had a flat tire while driving lunch to the ranch hands, she fixed it herself and got there anyway -- only to be reprimanded by him for being late. Years later, when reporters sought comment on his daughter's ascension to the court, he continued to pore over his ranch ledgers and told them, "I'm Harry Day, and I'm busy."

O'Connor's big academic break was attending Stanford University, as her father had wished to do. She was a superb student, entering at age 16, finishing a bachelor's degree and a law degree in a mere six years and graduating near the top of the same Stanford Law School class of 1952 as the future Chief Justice Rehnquist. She was one of only a handful of women but a robust and fearless participant in class discussions. Over cite-checking for the Stanford Law Review, she met and fell in love with her fellow law student John O'Connor, whom she soon married.

While Rehnquist rocketed to a Supreme Court clerkship after Stanford, his future colleague on the court faced blunt sex discrimination at the bar; law firms, O'Connor later recounted, would consider her as a secretary but not a lawyer, with one even asking her if she typed. O'Connor's response was resourcefulness and resilience. She talked her way into a job in a local prosecutor's office. She worked as a government lawyer when her husband was stationed in Germany serving in the Judge Advocate General Corps. She opened a storefront law office in a shopping center when she and her husband settled back in Phoenix. Biskupic repeatedly cites her "no-nonsense, no-pity" mantra: "That's the way it is. . . . Deal with it."

Biskupic gives a fascinating account of O'Connor's political astuteness; she was appointed and reelected as an Arizona state senator, then rose to become majority leader of that body. Later, she became a judge on an Arizona trial court and an intermediate appeals court. Diligent, alert, energetic and adept at politicking, she was a master of the telephone call and the handwritten note, and she helped organize everything from Republican presidential campaigns in Arizona to her classmate Rehnquist's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

But O'Connor was also traditionalist enough -- she took five years off to raise her three sons -- to impress Republican Party strategists as their kind of "sharp gal." Crucially, she backed off from stances that might have been too overtly feminist; Biskupic shows how, as a senator, she initially supported the Equal Rights Amendment but did not press the issue. She similarly retreated from an early vote for a 1970 bill to decriminalize abortion, mentioning her personal abhorrence for the procedure in her brief job interview with President Reagan.

In short, she threaded the needle, outshining male counterparts while remaining within conventional gender expectations. Friends invited her, with unwitting prescience, to a fishing expedition with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (who would later famously escort her down the Supreme Court steps as his colleague) because "Sandra can discuss anything: from changing diapers to world events."

The same stealth brilliance characterized O'Connor's rise to leadership on the court, as Biskupic tells it. In her early years, Chief Justice Burger and the then-regnant liberal justices assigned her few major opinions, except one finding sex discrimination in a male student's exclusion from an all-female nursing school. Biskupic reveals Justice Brennan's surprising snippiness toward his new colleague, who he feared would become a reliable vote for law-and-order positions that would undo the Warren Court's rights revolution. And indeed, O'Connor, together with her close colleague Rehnquist, did favor states' rights positions -- which reflected their experience of the importance of state government in the West but clashed with the Warren Court's view of the federal government as the chief fountainhead of social and economic policy and the chief guardian of constitutional rights. But O'Connor's instincts on the court, as in the legislature, were centrist, and her chief mentor and friend in the early years was Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., the moderate Virginian who had long provided a crucial swing vote.

Biskupic identifies O'Connor's successful battle with breast cancer in 1988 as a turning point. She endured surgery and chemotherapy without missing a single court sitting. She fended off reporters' prying prurience with an exasperated statement: "I am not sick. I am not bored. I am not resigning."

And she started crafting 5-to-4 majorities on issues from abortion to affirmative action to corporate liability to the separation of church and state. "Now she was exercising more than the swing vote," Biskupic writes. "Nearly twenty-five years younger than Brennan and an emboldened survivor of breast cancer, O'Connor had figured out how to line up votes as effectively as Brennan could. . . . She had bested the men at their own game."

Biskupic thus convincingly counters accounts describing O'Connor's use of the swing vote on the court as somehow capricious or indecisive -- accounts that sometimes smack of sexual stereotyping. Rather, Biskupic portrays O'Connor as socially astute, intellectually muscular and entirely deliberate in leading the court toward centrist positions: on abortion, permit but discourage; on church and state, acknowledge but do not endorse religion; on affirmative action, use race as a factor in admissions but not racial quotas. Such centrist positions overwhelmingly track public opinion while infuriating the far-right factions who have thought the Supreme Court should be their prize since Reagan won in 1980. Biskupic shows, however, that such positions were not just political compromises but expressions of a kind of constitutional common law. Other conservative justices before O'Connor had also adapted the Constitution's original principles to new circumstances by articulating similar tests. O'Connor, as Biskupic portrays her, was not just a swing vote operating case by case but the author of constitutional standards that would govern future cases: Abortion regulations may not impose an "undue burden" on women seeking the procedure, religious symbols may not appear to the "reasonable observer" to endorse a faith, the federal government may not "commandeer" state officials and so on.

At the book's close, Biskupic quotes the justice's own characteristically matter-of-fact words: "There's only nine of us, so everyone has a very key vote. It's not a question about gaining power or influence. We try to persuade by the strength of the argument in a particular case." Yet O'Connor's own persuasive power has made her the most influential woman in American history.

Reviewed by Kathleen M. Sullivan
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (November 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006059019X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060590192
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #74,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Judicial Biography at a most Opportune Time, October 25, 2005

By	Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (Hardcover)

One measure of a solid judicial biography is how complete a picture it fills out of the justice as a person. By this, and other measures, Joan Biskupic has contributed an important study of the Justice just at the point when it is most helpful--her perhaps extended "retirement" from the Court. Biskupic is the former Supreme Court reporter for the Washington Post and, more recently, USA Today. Her long time vantage point observing the Court extends at least back to the early 1990's, and this rich perspective strengthens the book.

The initial four chapters sketch out in appropriate detail O'Connor's personal and professional history. Biskupic particularly well interweaves personal developments with O'Connor's deep involvement in Republican politics (close ties to Goldwater; co-state chair for Nixon in 1972), service in the Arizona legislature, and her period as a Superior Court and appellate judge in the state system. Also, her early and close personal ties with William Rehnquist during this pre-Court Arizona period are well discussed. Strange as it may seem, her legislative record suggested sympathy for abortion rights, and this would cause her later problems during her confirmation, even though she lost interest in passing the ERA. These initial chapters give the reader a pretty solid grasp on O'Connor as a person, her values and ambitions, her competitive nature, and political skills (such as cultivating a friendship with Warren Burger) during this period.

The next several chapters are of particular interest given recent developments at the Court. The confirmation process was smooth, except for allegations by an Arizona national abortion opponent (and neighbor of O'Connor) that she was in favor of abortion. This occurred even though, according to Bikupic, O'Connor had told President Reagan she was "personally against abortion." A chapter also is devoted to her transition to the Court and the development of some of her early positions: tough on criminal justice issues and habeas corpus availablity; pro-state authority and opposed to federal intervention; pro-death penalty. Biskupic is particularly effective in articulating the Justice's positions on various issues, without invoking a large number of cases which could bury the reader. O'Connor's policy positions and approach stand out with clarity as a result.

I found the most interesting section of the book focused on what might be termed the "O'Connor techniques." This relates to how she was able to perhaps out-Brennan Justice Brennan in exerting persuasive influence on her colleagues, especially as more GOP-nominated justices joined the Court. But the author's account of how O'Connor would draft opinions to pick up additional votes is extremely valuable. In short, this technique involved incremental "straddling" of different positions, abstaining from crafting broad constitutional rules without the potential for future doctrinal evolution, never deciding more than needed to be decided. For example, accepting some state limitations on abortion, but avoiding having to pass (until the Webster decision) on the continuing constitutionality of Roe. Her maneuverings on the church/state issue is another example that is discussed. This is the kind of "meaty" analysis one hopes to find in a judicial biography--and it is here in abundance.

Biskupic favors the argument that the Justice shifted to a more moderate position during her final terms. Only to some extent I agree, but Biskupic makes her case in an effective fashion. The chapter on Bush v. Gore is very straightforward and dispassionate--unusual given the reams of paper devoted by commentators to examining this controversial decision. The author was also able to include a final section on the death of the Chief Justice and how O'Connor, the perpetual survivor, continues to move forward. The research is impressive; many interviews are drawn upon. The narrative though over 300 pages moves along quite smoothly for the most part. Certainly, a rewarding read for anyone interested in the Court during this current period of its transition.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Portrait of a Unique Woman, November 1, 2005

By	E. H. Hayes - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (Hardcover)

With the current focus on President's Bush's efforts to "pack" the Supreme Court with ideological conservatives, Ms. Biskupic's book is even more timely and important. "Sandra Day O'Connor-How the First Woman on the S. Ct. Became Its Most Influential Justice", is an excellent and insightful biography of a key figure on the Court today. Writing with a journalist's eye and a lawyer's anaylsis, Ms. Biskupic manages to distill complex legal cases into comprehensible events. This is no small feat and it makes the O'Connor biography accessible to everyone interested in the vital issues we confront today (abortion, affirmative action, sexual discrimination, death penalty etc).
This biography provides an insider's pespective on how justices are chosen, vetted, and confirmed within the political process. We learn insights about Justice O'Connor's friendship with the late Chief Justice Rehnquist and her lobbying efforts on his behalf when he was first nominated to the bench. We see the deftness with which Justice O'Connor handled her own successsful confirmation process. Yet the most exiciting part of Ms. Biskupic's book is Justice O'Connor's rise to becoming one of the most influential members of the Court; it reads almost like a great novel (notwithstanding the 1000 scholarly and informative footnotes) with pace, excitement and surprise.
The books underscores the point that Justices can be shaped by the Coourt as well as shape its case law.
"Sandra Day O'Connor" is a must read for anyone interested in the last quarter century of American and Supreme Court history.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Review of the Little Known Court, November 22, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice (Hardcover)

Although it isn't structured that way, this book really seems to have three major components:

First this book provides an insight into how the third core of our Government functions. It's a story of people, none of them are stupid, but like all people they have moments when they are smarter than at some times. It is also a story of how the other two, more political arms of the Government tend to force the courts to 'make law' so that they can then complain that the courts are 'making law.' The Terry Schivo is a classic example. Thrown to the Congress, who didn't want such a political hot potato, they could then complain about the decision.

Second, this is a story of how a nominally arch conservative person, gets to the court and moves distinctly towards the center. In the current debate over replacement justices. The far left, and the far right are screaming a lot. It's a comfort to know that the middle is probably pretty safe.

Third, this is a good biography of an extremely competent lady who came a long way from a remote ranch in Arizona. It clearly makes her out as a woman who served herself, her family, and our country very well.

Ms. Biskupic, a lawyer herself, has done a supurb job.