![]() ![]() Similarly, O'Connor voted with the majority to strike down as unconstitutional the "Texas Sodomy Law," which essentially criminalized same-sex sexual activity. O'Connor had expressed her personal abhorrence of abortion, but she stood for a person's right to make privacy decisions about his or her own body and didn't feel the government should be dictating on those matters. But she also upheld the various states' rights to impose reasonable restrictions on access to abortion. Wade, the 1973 decision that decriminalized abortion, O'Connor consistently voted to let the central concept of the ruling stand. She also believed the court should not overturn long-standing precedents because it undermined the integrity of the court.Īnd so, while certain justices, like Antonin Scalia, frequently lobbied to overturn Roe v. Similarly, she carefully weighed questions under "the establishment clause" of the Constitution - the separation of church and state in battles over religious symbols in public places. In 2003, she was the deciding vote in a case upholding affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School, writing, "It is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity." The facts of the case guided her decisions, not a political stance, and she could not be expected to consistently vote with one bloc or another. "She just didn't have any time for such nonsense." "She was consistently seeking for the reason for the difference," McGregor said. Still, she disliked tilting the advantage in either direction based on race. "I don't think she minded being the deciding vote, but she didn't like the frivolous sound of (swing vote)."Ĭharles Blanchard, a former Arizona legislator who is now an attorney based in Washington, D.C., said, "She wasn't a blank check." Not a 'blank check' "It suggests something that's not thoughtful," said Ruth McGregor, a former Arizona Supreme Court justice and a longtime friend to O'Connor. ![]() However, she did not like the term "swing vote." And because she approached each case separately according to its unique facts, she was not predictable as a vote. Then, over the years, as the court shifted farther to the right with subsequent appointments, O'Connor ended up in the middle philosophically. For most of her time there, the Supreme Court was made up almost entirely of Republican appointments. Supreme Court in 1981, she was a solid conservative, which is why President Ronald Reagan nominated her.īut back then, being conservative was not a political stance it wasn't a synonym for Republican. When Sandra Day O'Connor came to the U.S. Editor's note: This is the eighth of The Arizona Republic's 11-chapter profile of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Read the first chapter: An Arizona original with rancher values ![]()
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