“I’ve never done a job that I didn’t think was a stretch.”
Sandra Day O’Connor
I love reading biographies. Not every biography, certainly. They have a reputation for being dry and overly long, and of course some of them are. Worse is when a biography begs the reader to worship at the feet of the subject, showing only the positive while skimming over the negative. So it’s true that not every biography is worth your time. But I’ve read several biographies that are truly moving, and First: Sandra Day O’Connor by Evan Thomas is one of them. I was touched by Thomas’s portrait of this powerhouse woman.
If you’re like me before I read this book, you know Sandra Day O’Connor was a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, but that’s about it. She certainly doesn’t have the same place in popular culture that’s occupied by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example. That said, I wish people knew more about her, because I was inspired by her determination, intelligence, and grit, even if I don’t necessarily agree with her every ruling or viewpoint.
Sandra Day O’Connor—or SOC, as she’s referred to in her husband’s journals—grew up on a ranch in Arizona surrounded by honest-to-goodness cowboys. Her childhood wasn’t what I’d call idyllic, but it was happy. She attended law school at Stanford University where she was one of the few women in the program. She graduated at the top of her class only to find that real law firms cared more about her gender than her legal prowess, so her husband John was offered a well-paying job while firm after firm told her that she’d be more suited to secretarial work.
Undeterred, she won a seat on the Arizona State Senate and managed to find her place in a Boy’s Club, holding her own against snide comments and open mockery. She became a federal judge and was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 by Ronald Reagan. She was the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, and she held the deciding vote for a great deal of her time there.
That’s an extremely bare-bones summary of SOC’s incredible life, so I beg you to read this book to get a fuller picture of her. I got it on audiobook and I found myself making excuses to go on longer walks or car rides to get a few more minutes of listening in. I grew to love and admire the woman who helped pave the way for female lawyers and judges in the U.S., and who was a voice of integrity on the Supreme Court for decades. That’s not to say that she didn’t do some incredibly controversial things—her handling of Bush v. Gore in 2000, for example—but Evan Thomas convinced me that her heart was in the right place even as she made decisions that made a lot of people unhappy. I, like her colleagues on the Supreme Court and elsewhere, came to respect her.
Her relationship with her husband also really touched me. I love stories of couples who stick together and stick it out, even when times are hard. Her husband, John O’Connor, spent a lot of time in his wife’s shadow. In a time when other men might have resented her or tried to keep her down, he was so proud of her and did everything he could to lift her up. In fact, he was one of the ones who helped get her name in front of President Reagan for consideration to the Supreme Court. Sandra and John O’Connor are such a good example of love and mutual support.
Honestly, this whole book was just an inspiration. If you’re looking to learn about a fascinating woman while also feeling uplifted, this is the biography for you.
Happy Reading!
