Essay On Sandra Day O Connor

Sandra Day O’ Connor was a hardworking and revolutionary woman that never gave up even despite extremely challenging career obstacles. Her extreme strength with these obstacles made her able to become the first woman supreme justice. Sandra was born on March 26th, 1930 in El Paso, Texas. Her parents, Ada and Harry O’ Connor, were also hardworking and owned a ranch they called “Lazy B.” At Lazy B, Sandra learned her core values of being a country cowgirl but also, to be on time and studious. Her parents were super supportive of her and her needs with school work which allowed her the ability to skip two grades in high school and to enroll in Stanford University at only Sixteen years old. From there, she went on to get her bachelor’s degree and …show more content…
Instead, she went on to work as a civilian lawyer for the Quartermaster Corps in Germany during 1955-1957. While working there, she got married to John O’ Connor, who she had met while at Stanford University, in 1956. Soon after, Sandra and John went on to have three sons, Scott, Brian, and Jay and because of this, she decided to take a break from work to care for them. She returned in 1959 by opening her own law firm in Arizona. She then went on to become an Assistant Attorney general in 1965 and to work for the superior court in …show more content…
Some important cases that she worked on were the 1982 ruling of Mississippi University for women vs. Hogan, the 1999 ruling of Aurelia Davis vs. Monroe, and the 2000 ruling of Stenberg vs. Carhart. For the 1982 ruling of Mississippi University for women vs. Hogan, Sandra wrote that the University of Mississippi should not have an exclusive women-only policy for nursing as it followed stereotypical views that only women were nurses. The 1999 ruling of Aurelia Davis vs. Monroe was important as it dealt with sexual harassment in public schools. Before the ruling, public schools that received federal funds could be held unaccountable to sexual harassment of students and did not have to help to make the situation better. The ruling of 5-4 votes allowed for this to end with Sandra being a part of the majority votes. The 2000 ruling of Stenberg vs. Carhart banned abortions of partial- birth, which allowed for women to abort their babies in the 3rd trimester (6 months or more) leaving their babies almost to fully grown to die. In a video describing Sandra’s views as a nominee she explains that she was against abortion and other kinds of contraception. So obviously, the case was important to her allowing her to vote in the majority votes of 5-4 for it to be