Transcripts For CSPAN3 Sandra Day OConnor - First Woman On Supreme Court 20240713

Senate confirmation. The Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and good afternoon. My name is john heubusch. I have the honor of being executive director of the Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and institute. Thank you for coming out. If you would, in honor of our men and women in uniform who defend our freedom around the world, please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance. [in unison] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation, under god, indivisible with liberty john thank you, please be seated. In the fall of 1988 when president Ronald Reagan broke ground at the sight of his future president ial library, im not sure he could have imagined that his foundation, the one bearing his name would one day also be operating a robust institute in washington dc, one just steps from the white house he would soon leave behind for his beloved homeland ranch in the west. However, i do know that todays celebration honoring Justice Sandra day oconnor is exactly the type of gathering in his name that he envisioned. History intrinsically links president reagan and Justice Oconnor, and it is an honor and privilege for the Reagan Foundation and institute to host this forum. Before we begin our celebration, i would like to express gratitude to our friends in the room who still carry the flame of our 40th president , and those who share a deep love and admiration for our first woman on the Supreme Court. First, thanks to the Oconnor Family for joining us on this historic day. Thanks as well to our partners who share in our Civic Mission and who have helped us craft our agenda for this afternoon, npr, absent, dunn and crutcher, the aspen institute, the Supreme Court and the library of congress. [applause] the force behind todays event is a longtime member of the Reagan Foundations board of trustees, a partner at ibsen done gibson, dunn and crutcher, ted olson. Ted served as solicitor general of the u. S. From 20012004. Prior to that he served as assistant attorney general and the office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration from 19811984, and as ive it counsel to president reagan during his second term. Teds commitment to the principles of equality, liberty and justice not only served president reagan, but also helped him carry his legacy into the 21st century. It is his leadership that led to todayis worthy celebration of Justice Oconnor. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to the stage mr. Ted olson. [applause] thank you, john. And thank everyone of you for being here. Everyone that has been involved in this is very, very excited, and we are full of anticipation. It is an honor to be with you 38 years to the day after Sandra Day Oconnor took her seat as the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Our constitution was adopted september 17, 1787. The government had created, including the Supreme Court, began functioning in 1789. Nearly 200 years later, on this date in 1981, Justice Sandra day oconnor became the 102nd and first female Supreme Court justice. Think about that for a moment. It took nearly two centuries to put the first woman on the United States Supreme Court. I was privileged to be in court that day. President reagan was there, members of the cabinet, senators, representatives, justices, and members of the press and public watched as a commission signed by president reagan, and the oath of office was administered by the chief justice. Then Justice Oconnor was escorted to the bench and took her seat. It was a special, emotional moment, and i feel emotion talking about it, but much too long in coming. Justice oconnor served for 25 years on the Supreme Court with brilliant, a keen understanding of the constitution and of the American People, compassion, insight, wisdom, grace and dignity. She had spent her early on a 198,000 acre cattle ranch in arizona. And she was the last justice, i believe this is correct, to serve in elected office and as a state Appeals Court judge. As a justice, she had a sharp, incisive sense of humor, and instinct for the Pivotal Point in cases that came before her, and a passion for preparation. Hers was often the first question asked during oral argument. I had the privilege of arguing a number of cases before her, and i was very careful every time to try to be ready for that first question. Woe to the lawyer who was not prepared, fumbled, or responded with evasion. It did not work. She zeroed in like a laser beam, and you did not get away. About 11 months ago, Justice Oconnor wrote to the American People informing us of the progression of dementia meant that she had to step back from public life. It was devastating to read that this terrible disease was robbing her and robbing us of that unstoppable mind. 25 years ago, president reagan wrote to the American People in much the same way. He announced that he was beginning what he called, the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. Justice oconnor is on that same, tragic, sunset journey, which is why we at the Reagan Institute were moved to organize a celebration of her legacy. How we wish she were here, but how grateful we are that she was a brilliant, perfect pioneer on our highest court, and that we can celebrate her while she still enjoys the company of family back home in arizona, a place where the sunsets are among the most beautiful in the world. Along with other things to celebrate, we honor her as a Bridge Builder, an idea she reflected on in a stanford 2004 commencement address, just days after the passing of president reagan. She told the students that one of the most important bridges that Ronald Reagan built was a bridge to equality, one that made it possible for a wide range of willing americans to build their own bridges as public servants. She, of course, was referring in part to her own nomination. Today we are fortunate to welcome many of the people who have crossed that bridge that Justice Oconnor built throughout her career, from former clerks to sitting justices of the United States Supreme Court, and many others. They will tell us about who this incredible woman was, how she was raised on that ranch in arizona, how she developed into the ideal jurisprudential pioneer to be the first of her gender to sit on the Supreme Court, surmount the barriers she so gracefully overcame, so i welcome you to this celebration and thank our outstanding moderators and speakers. This will be a lovely, happy day. Thank you. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a Bridge Builder and trailblazer, celebrating Justice Sandra day oconnor. Please welcome the executive director of the Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and institute, john heubusch. The first panel, i just want to say i covered the court. I started covering the court in 1999, so i had the joy and privilege of covering Sandra Day Oconnors time on the court. To my far left is evan thomas, author of 10 books including a biography of Sandra Day Oconnor. To his immediate right, jay oconnor, on the board of the civics project Justice Oconnor, transformational civics project she brought to children in this country, and to my immediate left, edwin meese iii, he served as attorney general of the u. S. From 19851988. Please join me in welcome the welcoming this extraordinary panel. [applause] i have the absolute joy of setting the table for the rest of the day and getting a sense of what it was like through the early arc of Justice Oconnors career, which brought her to the attention of president reagan, and then the world. We are going to try to break it down for you in the coming hour, and start by talking about her outstanding biography in arizona, her time on the Arizona State legislature, and we will close with a conversation about her confirmation. As a point of personal privilege, and again because it is the theme of this panel, i started Stanford Law School in the fall of 1992, and i can say without a doubt, i would not have gone to law school but for knowing that Sandra Day Oconnor had gone before me. And i say that i say it because i really wonder often if Justice Oconnor knows how many tens and thousands of young women took steps they would not have otherwise done but for her leadership and modeling. So its a particular honor to be in this conversation today. I want to start at the ranch where it all started. And Justice Oconnor so often says she is such a creature of that upbringing at the lazy b ranch. Evan, if you could set the table for us a little bit. Give us a sense of how that upbringing, weve all heard some of the stories, but that upbringing reflects on the person that Sandra Day Oconnor becomes. inaudible 160,000 acres. Took a man on horseback a whole day ride across it. 2000 cows. Beautiful. The day family. Mr. Day. Sandra day oconnor said we called it our own country. The king was mr. Day, who was a magnificent man. A great, more than a cowboy, he was a manager of cowboys. A guy who could fix anything, handle anything, deal with anything and he taught selfreliance to his daughter and to anybody who was around him, and the story she liked to tell, sandra liked to tell, was when sandra day was 15 years old, one of her jobs was to take lunch to the roundup which was ray across the prairie. She got up at 5 a. M. And loaded up the truck. As she headed out there she had a flat tire. She is a slight girl. She had to jump on the jack to change the tire. She got there and her father looked at her, you are late. She said, dad, i had a flat tire. He said, next time leave earlier. That was the story she told her clerks. The message was pretty clear, no excuses. Get it done. Obviously mr. Day had a huge influence on her and he was a loving, powerful father. He could be an intimidating guy. Sandras mother was maybe even more important because mrs. Day was a elegant woman, out on this dusty ranch, subscribed to vogue. Mr. Day could be a little tough on her in the evening, could be a little bit of a bully. The way she dealt with him was not by being submissive and not by rolling over but also not by getting into stupid fights. And she had a way, a graceful way of finessing things and walking away from stupid f ights, knowing when to engage and when not to, and sandra watched her mother and father and i think that was an incredibly valuable lesson for her on how to deal with difficult situations. When people do not always get along. But when not to take the bait. That was a big thing for her. I wonder, jay, if you want to amplify a little bit the ways in which she was just entirely a product of that biographical setting, that she really was in some sense quintessentially, she really, right, i think, throughout, played so deeply to this persona she had of just being utterly independent, someone for whom i think as evan said was very feminine but also extremely tough. And not apt to be intimidated by anyone. Had she been born in connecticut, would she have been a completely different person . I think she would have been. She herself saw the lazy b as foundational to who she was. She loved the lazy b. She ended up as a schoolgirl, the closest town 30 miles away wasnt a great school. So, her parents decided we have got to send her away to school and she went to school in el paso, texas, with her grandmother and aunt. She stayed with them and she went to school with her cousin. And she missed the ranch terribly. Would always love spending time there. And at the ranch, help is 30 miles away and even in the town, they probably do not have the parts you need. Problems will happen on the ranch. Things break. Problems happen. What she learned as evan described already is that when problems happen you have to deal with them in a very pragmatic way. You cant rely on some expert to save the day because that maybe way too long. You cannot wait for weeks. You had to result with just the people at the ranch. Fix things yourself. If youre out alone you have to fix things by yourself. I think that was foundational to her persona. I think the other part, she grew up in the depression era. You know, times were thin. You never never throw anything away. She was definitely a product of her environment and her generation. I wonder you could take us fairly quickly just to the educational piece of this, because that again, i think, the notion that she was going to law school was at some level, we so internalized it, but it was incredibly improbable. She went to stanford in 1946 with a lot of veterans. Guys in bomber jackets were glad to be alive. She loved stanford. She said, its utopian. Because they have this wonderful course there called western civilization. I read her final exam when she was a 17yearold freshman and it is a brilliant exegesis on madison and jefferson, and you can see her appreciation of the rule of a law as a 17yearold. Talk about foundations. She was very independentminded. At stanford, you go to law school after three years. She had a b plus, average, which she did, she had great grades. The story i always remember was that she theres a parking lot and she went out and her dad gave her car. She painted a parking space for herself. Her parking space. She went to the law school. One of five women in her class of 150. Law review. She applied to 40 law firms in los angeles and san francisco. She got one interview. With gibson, dunn and crutcher. They asked her how well do you type . She said, soso. She loved to tell that story of course. She was never bitter about it. She said, didnt make it in the private sector so she went to a local d. A. She said i will do it for free. He said, i do not have a place for you. Ill work off your secretarys desk, and she did. She mastered that. Had a brief sojourn in the private sector in phoenix a couple of years later, but, you know, she cant make it in the private sector, but the Public Sector worked well for her. I have to turn this over to general mays because he told me something that cracked me up. What wouldve happened had given, gibson, dunn and crutcher, given her the job. She probably would be retired lawyer from gibson and crutcher living out her retirement and never would have achieved a remarkable position that she did in the supreme that was a bracing reminder to me of why that story works out in the end, because ive told in a much more grumpy fashion until you corrected me. Im going to ask evan to do one more thing, which is you are going to have to talk about the relationship between Sandra Day Oconnor and chief Justice William h renquist, because that was an intriguing part of your research. My wife and i had access to the Oconnor Family, to her parents because we were looking for love letters because john and sandra had a great marriage, a true, lifelong loving romance. Were going to the papers and there are not any love letters. We went into her chambers at the Supreme Court and her secretary took us down to a storage clause oset. And there was a box marked correspondence. And there were love letters between john and sandra in the book. But there were also 14 love letters from William Rehnquist to saturday. William rehnquist and sanded theyra day were classmates. He was number one in the class. They went out first year. The story they told always was we went to the movies a few times. It was actually a little bit more than that. Double features. [laughter] and, bill rehnquist third year, he got a job as a Supreme Court clerk with Justice Stevens, justice jackson. And he was lonely. He started writing sandra and remembering their romance. About letter seven, he said, sandy, will you marry me . When i took that letter out of the box i gave a little yelp. They had not told their own families. I love this, justice blackmun, he sat next to Justice Rehnquist when sandra came in the court, blackmun turned to Justice Rehnquist and said, no fooling around. Basically nobody knew. And the sweet thing about this is they ended up having a great friendship. Yes, sandra turned them down. She strung him along for a little while but she did turn him down in a gentlemen. Way. They both married the loves of their lives. They had a very quiet but real friendship at the court. Justice rehnquist quietly lobbied the Reagan Administration or at least the attorney general to put her on the court. I feel i need to give jay an opportunity to respond if he wants to respond. How was it to find out that your mom had a love letter from Justice Rehnquist . Im sure my dad knew more about the relationship. That wasnt something she would have hidden from my dad, but she never disclosed it to her three sons. Evan, called up and said, i found some interesting letters. So, we were definitely surprised. She had handled that very quietly. And jay, i think i want to stay with you. The thing that was interesting to us is what we had seen with, uh, chief justice with her relationship with the rehnquist family is they were devoted friend for such a long time and throughout their, before their ten year on the court, after what evan talked about happened, his family traveled with my moms family on some trips. They had the basis for a longstanding friendship that endured throughout the time of the court and later on. They spent a lot of time together with one anothers familiesin in d. C. So, there was a really wonderful, initially interesting relationship that turned into a warm, professional relationship and a close friendship over the years. I know this is not the panel i know this is not the panel we will talk about doctrine but i think this could be the panel where we talk about work ethics. Just as we turn to her time in the Arizona Legislature, i wonder if you could just talk to the extent that you have recollections of what it was like to be raised by someone who by every account was a juggernaut, was just nonstop energizer bunny, go, go, go. I remember the first stories i heard about her was having kids in strollers, running around doing legal work and doing political work. Thats all true, right . Absolutely. She is a force of nature, no doubt. So, she was in arizona. She worked in all three branches of government. She was clearly the best known woman in the state of arizona in the government. And started off in the Attorney Generals Office. Became the majority leader of the state senate, was the first woman in the country to hold that position. And then went on to become a state court judge. We knew her as mom. And the famous line is she would have these long work sessions at the, at the state senate and one of her colleagues said with Sandra Day Oconnor there is no miller time. She would go from long hours and do one thing and she was constantly in motion. She would come home from a very demanding job, and she ran the family. She was responsible for overseeing the household and getting our dinner done. And organizing our camps and our activities and her way when she got home, she did not sit down and hang out. She would go home and be productive. Her way of relaxing was by going and playing on the weekends two or three sets of tennis and then 18 holes of golf. We were exhausted. We never got rest until she went off to washington, thank god. Im really exhausted just by hearing that account. But i wonder, evan, would you amplify a little bit and then i am going to ask general needs the same question, but that time on the Arizona Legislature was absolutely. Formative i wonder if you could talk a little bit about how she got herself there but help us understand what that did to help vault her into what would become the next thing. There are a couple of stories about her in the legislature that are revealing. One is that she had to deal with, this was the arizona legislator in 1970. There was a lot of drinking, men misbehaving and she had to deal with that. She was the majority leader. First woman ever to be the majority leader of a state senate. To get the budget passed, she had to deal with the House Appropriations committee chairman. Tom goodwin. Tom goodwin was a drunk by 10 a. M. He was just impossible to deal with. Sh finally called him on his drinking. He looked at her and said if you were a man i would punch you in the nose. She said, if you were a man, you could. I like to tell that story. Its a one off. She did not go around having confrontations, putting down men. That is a funny story but that is pretty singular. Far more often, she just learned not to be baited, not to take the bait, not to get into stupid fights, to get to the point, she was very efficient. She had thick skin. She was very politically shrewd. This is the second story, very revealing. The equal rights amendment in 1972 was, for a while, almost noncontroversial. It was in the republican platform and the democratic platform in 1968 but by the mid70s it had become controversial and it was making its way to the states, ratified in many states but Phyllis Schlafly was running a campaign against it. And so, it comes to arizona. Majority leader oconnor introduces the era to the Arizona Legislature, introduces it. Then lets it die in committee. The activists were furious at her. What the hell are you doing . You are the majority leader. She kept quiet,. She realized he could not was not going to pass the arizona legislator. Why make a big emotional, virtuous signaling show when something is not going to pass . Instead, she used her powers to amend every single law in the state of arizona that discriminated against women. There were many of them about owning credit cards, owning property. Arizona law in 1970, 8hour work week, was discriminatory to women. She had a list. She made a list of all of the laws. One by one. Some short measures and some in full measure. She did what she could. She achieved what she could in the state and let the other thing past on. I love that story, because i think it is such a quintessentially pragmatic thing to do. And i think that, for me, that with such a stunning revelation about, you dont always know what you do not know. I wonder, general mays, if you could answer a version of the same question when we spoke on the phone to prepare for this, you noted she was the last person to have served in a legislature. We have not had anyone subsequently who brings that skill set to the court. I know you got to know her after, but can you talk a little bit about some of the skills she took away from that time, and the ways in which it became applicable in her later life . I what you to explain why it is important to have a former legislator on the Supreme Court. Theres two things. One was her personal relationships. We learned those being in a governmental body of people who all have very strong egos. The most charitable way of putting it. And theres a way of getting along with those people and making progress and getting things done. And she certainly, i think, probably had that from an early stage from what i have heard even today. But she certainly in her legislative work was able to work well with people. She had that sense of priorities that evan mentioned. What was important and what wasnt important. Those qualities also search are very well later on in the Appellate Court in arizona and ultimately the Supreme Court. Tha experience wast part of her formative years that made her such an important person and an affect a person. There is one other thing that is kind of interesting. Evan mentioned she had a short time in private practice. I didnt find out until much later that the person that she had the private Practice Partnership with, tom tobin, was the brother of my law partner. In san diego when i was practicing law, i guess about the same time. I never had the chance to meet her then. It was interesting. I think probably you can say that she, it implied by both of the speakers, and that is she learned a lot from every experience she had and utilize those qualities when she came and culminated in a very effective on the Supreme Court. I want to get to the confirmation process but i think i want to loop back to jay, because one of the thing i am pulling out of evans book and in this conversation, it is sometimes hard to reconcile these two people we are hearing about, one who sort of spoke the truth. She was not one to hide her thoughts. She, time and time again by the time she came in the court she was pretty plain, including with oral advocates, she called it like she saw it. Yet, were hearing about somebody he was very canny and savvy and political. Im having trouble squaring the truth teller oconnor with the one who was just a very adept reader of people and knew how not to get in fights. I think i also want to have you take a run at squaring the other thing that i think evan said, shes a deeply feminine woman. She came across at her confirmation hearing. She was not in any way trying to be a man in a mans world. But yet she was incredibly effective in a mans world. That was an enormous compound question. [laughter] you can choose to ignore parts one or two. Can you flesh out some of those contradictions . On your latter question, on sort of her approach as a woman, when at the time she was, you know, before being on the court, by the time she was nominated on the court, there were not as many example figures, Women Leaders in politics and obviously not in the judiciary. It was really sort of a different time, and it was a real transition for the country where women had played very traditional roles. You fast for today and there is a very different view towards women and womens issues and so forth. Evan framed her and his book as areal bridge from the traditional role of the woman to the modern era. I think that was an apt description. She was very effective in her professional relationships and social relationships. In dealing with difficult issues but doing it in her own way. And she certainly was not strife. She did not consider herself a feminist. She was not strident, outspoken on womens issues but she felt very strongly on the importance of more euqual representation and rights for women and her approach was very much to overcome the obstacles and lead by example. Her approach was not to complain about things. Her approach was to try to take pragmatic action with respect to her own career and respect to the her own thing she was dealing with. I think that was her real approach there. One thought. Yes, she could be very scary to a journalist. I know journalists that were scared of her. She had these eyes that she weaponize. I ran into a candidate, the author of the famous, she has beams of fire, he said. She could just bore a hole through you. But. But she had great political skills and one things that i noticed. Her friends measures, she was not a gossip. And in washington, it is not easy to be powerful or to be part of the washington swirl. She loved social life. It is difficult to do that. It is difficult to be a Supreme Court justice and not gossip. She just didnt. She could have opinions but she did not gossip. That made her much more effective. And that was it took that selfdiscipline that she had and her clerk gossiped. They can speak to this but she did not like it. They were badmouthing the from other chambers and spreading wicked stories. She did not want to hear about it. That gave her a kind of a power, that selfdiscipline gave her power. And even at home, she made a practice of not trashing colleagues, not trashing other people with whom she interacted. She would let us know what was going on. But she was very fair and generous to other people and was not highly scott told me. Her son scott said there are three rules on the household. Be home by 6 p. M. Dont speak ill of others and dont hit your brother. She had a little more challenge with the last one. So this brings us to general meese. You will have to tell us how this person comes into the national limelight. We know that president reagan makes a Campaign Promise. Hes going to tap a woman. Can you help us understand what is going on behind the scenes at the white house . How is this woman, who still may be not the most prominent woman on a court, how she becomes the Sandra Day Oconnor that we all know . Well, i started because of what was mentioned here. This time, by this time, of course, the korean war is over. Were in a time of relative peace, progress economically and things were going forward. There were economic problems in the country and so on, but this was time when women were actually starting to achieve things which had not really happened yet in the legal profession, as was mentioned earlier here. There was in her class there were five women. My class was 58. I think there were six. The most interestingly we started with 150 men and six women. We graduated 80 men and two women. Not too many people made it through it all. Very difficult for women but women were starting to achieve positions in business and some of the other professions. And starting to a few in law practice. So, for that reason, if this became an issue in 19 1980 during the campaign. By that time women had advanced over that 20 year period. The question was raised a lot of time and Ronald Reagan did not actually promise to appoint a woman, but he said he would like to appoint a woman. And one of the reasons he had to be a little care for was he did not have that many women who had had long experience. And were in that group that you would normally select justices from. And so, that was, but he was very much interested in that. So that was definitely a consideration. John was very helpful to me. Going back into the archives. There were not a lot of memos prior to the appointment of Justice Oconnor but there were at least one or two in the white house staff who wereletting him know this would be a very good thing to do. Thats why he asked bill smith, the attorney general at the time, to go and, he wanted to have a selection of people, highly qualified lawyers and judges from other benches, but he wanted to be sure that there were women among them. And so, when they came to him and the list, and it narrowedw down after a lot of work at the department of justice. I remember correctly out of a group of probably eight or 10 in the first major cut he made, there were i believe two women. Ultimately as he went through, he had decided that Sandra Day Oconnor was the one he wanted, had more vetting of her. The things we have heard today already, what he had heard about her. The fact that she had been in the legislature. He particularly, i think it, thought it was important that a judge had legislative experience. Understood what it was to be a legislator, so they were not making the citizens in a vacuum the fact she had had that experience in the legislature, understood what making law is, something judges are not supposed to do. But understand how the representation of the people works into the law themselves so they would have an appreciation of what their job was to do in interpreting the law. All of these things, but i think especially what we heard today about her early life, the fact she worked on a ranch, i cannot help but think it became a major factor and Ronald Reagan thinking very highly of her. Evan, i guess i want to ask you to amplify that. What was the, what was the secret sauce that she brought to, to, the selection process, and what is it that president reagan responded to . I spoke to ken star who was William Smiths special assistant. He wrote a memo. From the point of view of the Attorney Generals Office, they asked president reagan in october 1980 and said one of the first appointments would be a woman. In the Attorney Generals Office they thought that was a political promise. Reagan was down 10 points in illinois with women. They did not take it seriously. They thought they would get bob rourke. Bob bork. The warren court was deemed to have gone too far and one thing Ronald Reagan was going to do was appoint justices that will push the pendulum back a little bit. So, in the office of the attorney general the thought was great we will get bork or somebody like that but the attorney general came to them and said, no. The president says i want a. Woman unless you really cant find one we are going to have a woman. The problem was that, although society was moving, the law was still very male in 1980. Out of 600 federal judges, only eight were women and most of them were liberal democrats. There was maybe one other, Cornelia Kennedy who was qualified on paper but was not deemed to be the kind of personality that would relate to Ronald Reagan. And so, very quickly, justice, judge then, Arizona Court of appeals judge oconnor rose to the top of the pile. With no constitutional experience. She rose to the top of the pile because bill rehnquist was pushing for her. Because the chief justice of the United States had met and liked her, was pushing for her. And there were other people, goldwater gets in the act later. She had a backing. They actually, only two judges were interviewed. Cornelia kennedy and Justice Oconnor. James a. Baker, the president s chief of staff, said the only serious one was oconnor. At the end of the interview both ken starr and john rose went to phoenix to your house and 100 degree heat. She made us salmon mousse. And she passed her little oral quiz with flying colors. And, you know, and then, you know, she was it. She was going to be the nominee. As we get to this there was a little kerfuffle over her nomination, which we can talk about. But thats pretty much what happened as far as i know from the memo ken starr wrote. First, i think i want to Say Something because what you are saying does feel so importantly with the story that Justice Ginsburg always tells. Shes speaking later but she is always at great pains to talk about the men who supported and allied themselves and help her. Just an important piece of this, you know, when he get on our sort of girl power soapboxes about the first justice, to really understand that without having male allies, which Justice Oconnor had extraordinary friendships and relationships with men who were really willing to go to bat for her. I think they are an unsung part of the story. But now i just want to ask jay. It is becoming manifest in your family that this is coming. Salmon mousse notwithstanding, what was it like realizing you were just about to barrel into the biggest thing that could ever happen to anyone . It went in phases. When the seat opened up, the Campaign Promise had been made before and the seat opens up and then the discussion starts happening. Speculation started happening about who it would be. Those arizona senators at the time, Barry Goldwater and dennis the democrat, both suggested her and said she would be a fantastic candidate. Her name was out there is a woman who might fit. The family thought the Supreme Court had so few Seats Available that came up. The odds are long. All of us including my mom thought the odds were low. There was a confluence of so many people independently suggesting her that she became a serious candidate. The Interview Team came out to arizona as evan explained. My dad ended up walking amount to their car to see them off and he asked the question and said, let me ask you a question. You do not have to answer this. How many other people are you having conversations with like this . They said, this is the only one. They realize, ok, this is serious. So, they shared that with the family. Oh, my goodness. This really might happen. But it is such a long shot. She was invited back, interviewed with the team at the white house over sort of a day and a half. And came back from that. She finally got the call. The call came into her and she was in her chambers in state court. The president got on the line with her. Sand she was stunned and excited and just filled with emotion. She called my dad and said, john, it has happened. So, for the family we went to thinking, no, this cannot happen to, my gosh, she has been nominated. For us, it was just, you know, we were thrilled and intrigued. We didnt understand that much about, my brothers and i, about the court. I was the youngest and i was finished my freshman year in college. My younger brother had been a junior in college. So, it was very exciting for us and we were very, very supportive of her going through but it was thrilling. General meese, i know you came to be very good friends with sandra day and john oconnor, can you tell us about initially meeting them and if you had any renovations post meeting with them but what your First Impressions were . My First Impression was that i was very happy that Ronald Reagan had found a woman he thought was appropriate to be on the court because, as we all talked about, the were not that many available candidates but this was one that in any group that she might have been in, she seemed to fit all the different qualifications. We mentioned some of them with the legislative experience, the personality, the vetting that had gone away the various peoples at the department of justice. All of whom came back with very laudatory recommendations. Bill smith, the president put a lot of confidence in bill on judgeships generally. By the time he came over to us in the white house, usually, it was pretty much. We were pretty close to the end of the trail and so, i think my own feeling was this was a very accomplished lady, a person that you would like to work with. Have part of your administration. Even in the august halls of the Supreme Court where you do not have an awful lot of social contact. I must say, we probably had in the ensuing two years, probably more social contact with her than any other member of the court probably, because she was very active socially. And was a very easy person to know. I was extremely impressed with her. Not only with her background but, it was great to have this person as the first woman to be on the Supreme Court. Evan, can you flesh out what concerns were, to the extent that there were concerns, going into confirmation hearings. What were folks worry about . There was really only one issue. It turned out to be minor but for a moment that was that she had as an arizona legislator, she had voted in committee to decriminalize abortion before roe v. Wade. And the right to life folks got onto this and stirred the pot in congress. In 1980, the moore majority was coming on strong and jesse helms was a power in congress. And there was a concern that helms and some others, they were saying, what is this about her abortion record . There was a moment when we thought, whoa, there were demonstrators chanting vote no on o. There was a little flap but several things happenned. Maybe general meese could speak on this. The white house was never bothered by this. They wanted this to go away. They said the people of to the hill. She was a great advocate in her own cost. Own cause. She made friends with Strom Thurmonds wife and charmed jesse helms. The facts were squishy squishier than had been initially suggested and there is one more interesting piece of this. Im very grateful that jay gave me Justice Oconnors diary. She kept a diary. This is her version of the meeting with Ronald Reagan. She said, she was anxious. He said to me there has been a lot of debate about when life begins. And i think we should give the benefit of the doubt to life beginning at conception. She thinks hes warming up to a question on abortion. But he left it at that. He never asked the question. She was on the record that she found abortion personally aborrent. She did not say what should we do about the court. In her confirmation hearings but when the president himself brought the subject up, he did not ask the question. She gave a sigh of relief and they started talking about horses. Now, i think that is because the president , and maybe general nice has a better sense of this, really did not want to know when away. Did not want to have a fight over this. And truthfully, i do not think at that moment she knew exactly where she was on roe v. Wade. Shed never faced the issue as a Legal Counsel. It is a hard thing. She spent many years on the court working her position. She became, her position became the law of the land on abortion, but it took a number of years for her to get there. That is the question i was going to ask you because you said when we had our preparatory call you said the same thing. This was not an issue for the white house. They didnt want to get in a fight about this. Ronald reagan always felt that he should not exact a promise from a judge on how they would rule on cases they had not seen yet. She felt the same way. And that was actually the way in which she got through. She had a lot of questions in the committee hearings. A lot of questions when she went around to meet the different senators. She always took the position that i cannot tell you or make a decision on a case that i have not yet seen on the facts. That was true, because later on the were some abortion cases in which she ruled one way. Because the issues were slightly, in some cases substantially different. Both she and the president had the same idea of not having a quid pro quo. In other words, making a litmus test, you might say on any issue, particularly when you did not know what the facts would be in a future case. It was a matter of the basic ethical feelings on both parts, that this is a subject she was not going to answer a question like that. And speaking of things that we could not contemplate ever happening again, she then sailed through her confirmation hearing with a 991. 990 was the vote. In the senate. She, i think there were maybe a couple of negative votes in the committee. But not any substantial. I dont think so, actually. Senator denton gave her a hard time. Im not. I dont think so. There had been some. There had been some strong questions by him. Senator denton questioned her. But it does lead me to by the way. Not only, but the person who was absent that day sent her a book with an apology had not been there to vote for her. But i do think we have to talk for a minute about the confirmation hearings themselves. They are televised. This was the first time confirmation hearings had been televised. And, you know, of until that time, they were not usually very contentious. As a matter of fact when William Douglas in the 1930s was, probably the most liberal justice ever recommended by franklin roosevelt, he sat outside the hearing room and after he set out there an hour, summit came out and said you can go home, we do not have any questions. Quite a difference from today. That, they were not contentious at that time. And i suspect there were a lot of members of the senate who did not want to be in the position of voting against are either because she had made such a good appearance but also this was the first woman. And that leads me to, and i know were going to talk about this as the day progresses, but this is the media event that turns her into a rock star. This is the thing that she i think still was the most recognized justice. I mean, everybody, stacks of mail being sent to chambers. And she really, at the risk of, overstating it, kind of was the kardashian of the court. She was the person who everybody knew who she was. And young girl would stand in line. I guess im so ambivalent about that, because i think now we are in a moment where celebrity justices have become a thing. It wasnt something she sought out, but it certainly happened. I guess, jay, i would love for you to reflect on being in the eye on this media rockstar hurricane. It was both the first televised hearing and because it was the first woman. It really was an iconic moment for so many women and professional women. And throughout the rest of her life, so many women would come up to her and tell her about remembering exactly where they w ere when they learned she was the first woman to be appointed to the court. And it was a real game changer. She really, its a wellknown figure. At that time, most americans could not name one other justice on the court. They were not, people in d. C. And lawyers with no differently but if you asked, person, name, the people on the Supreme Court. Most people couldnt zer could name zero. They could name her. She was well recognized around d. C. And. Going around town and i think she, for her, i think she felt the next a burden as the first woman and as a recognized figure, about how she would perform on the court. She said many times, it is a good thing to be the first on the court, that you do not want to be the last. She knew all euyes would be on her all eyes would be on her and she had to do her best. Evan, go ahead. To follow up on that, in her diary, she knew everybody was watching. In her first oral argument, she, all eyes are on her, waiting for the first question and she starts to ask the first question. The lawyer talks over her. She wrote in her diary, i felt put down. Thats a very unusual emotion for her. And it didnt last very long. But think about this for a second. She had been a legislator, state court judge. She had not dealt with the u. S. Constitution and she had to learn it that summer. She had to learn all the jurisprudence and the u. S. Constitution that summer. She lost ten pounds. The person preparing her was a young Justice Department aide named john roberts, the current chief justice. We laugh about this a little bit because she was not satisfied with his pace. She could not get it. He couldnt get the stuff. He could not get it xeroxed fast enough to get to her. She was impatient about it. Think of that for a homework assignment. She knew that they were going to be watching her at the Supreme Court. And they are going to pick this up in the next panel, those early days were not easy. Its a cold place. It is marble. She would go into those courtyards and turned her face up to the sun. Because she missed the arizona sun. Her first lunch at the court only four justices showedour up. Remember the brethren of woodward and armstrong . The justices were suspicious of each other. It was not that easy. There was no road met. Justice powell was gracious. Got her secretary. Justice rehnquist was all standoffish in these early years. Justice rehnquist had a terrible back condition and i think that factored in. She was lonely. She knew, as jay said, it is good to be first but you do not want to be last. She did very well. From a letter that Justice Powell wrote his family, she said, shebrilliant. She made her mark right away but it is an intimidating thing to walk into that. One other story about this. They have a wonderful tradition at the Supreme Court shaking hands before they going to conference. Every justice shakes hands of every other justice. Justice bryon white, the allpro half back from the detroit lions, shook her hand so hard he crushed it. The first woman went into her first conference crying. There were tears squirting out of her eyes, because he had crushed her hand. And the other justices, Justice Stevens told us there was a tradition, the junior justice takes notes and gets coffee. Justice stevens said he talked about this. Were not going to ask her to get coffee but they didnt. So, this brings me to the kind of mystery that animates my thinking about Justice Oconnor. Im going to ask you to respond to it. We have talked so much about how we think about her being the first. Im always more curious about how she thought about being the first. And i say it in part because i know she spent her whole career saying it didnt matter. A wise old man and a wise old woman would come to the same conclusion. There is no such thing as female jurisprudence. Were the same. She was very meticulous about saying that her gender did not matter, except to her that it mattered. And i always and mindful of that because when john roberts was tagged to replacer she famously said, hes a very good and excellent choice. Apparently he was now fast enough, that xerox test. When he was tapped, her there he first reflexive, she was flyfishing at the time, and their first comment was, hes a very good choice but it should of been a woman. And i guess that to me encapsulates this ambivalence that it mattered terribly to her that she was the first woman on the court but she also really wanted to make the claim that it did not matter. So, im asking an as your staircase question but i wonder and maybe we can start with you, jay, what did it mean to her . She felt both of those statements were true. From a legal principle she did feel that it is sexist to say that a woman is going to vote differently than a man on a legal issue. She felt strongly and that is what she would always say but i think that she felt that it mattered societally, and she thought that it helped the court to have a variety of perspectives. And so, she, i think she really believed both of those things at the same time. It seemed to conflict with one another but i think they were both true former. She was a nonfeminist feminist. She advance the cause of women rights as much of anybody ever but she never explicitly refered to himself as a feminist. She saw, jay said that i framed the book as hers. That was her frame. She had a poem about a cogo group built a bridge. She used it in her speeches. A pilgrim who builds the bridge so that others may cross. So others may cross. She saw herself in that transitional role. And who better, who better than sandra day, how lucky we were that she was the first. I think general meese, i would ask a slightly different and i remembered her always telling the story about how Justice Scalia would tweak her, you only got this gig because president reagan made this pledge. Having heard that, thats kind of why she got the job she was nobodys bork. She was taken on as a woman. And yet she always said it did not bother her at all when scalia would tease her. Scalia was quite a humorous. He was not trying to put her down. It was a jovial thingy had with the other members of the court and particularly her. I dont think. She had spent her entire life doing things that were mostly jobs held by men. This was not unusual in that sense. But she also was, as everybody has said, she was no longer, she was not a woman. And yet she was able to carry this out in excellent fashion. To me, it was even more than being the first woman on the court. I think one thing she did, she put a human face on the core. Up until then i do not think anybody thought of justices as human beings. This is the thing she added to it because of personality she had as well as the way in which he treated other people. That was a real plus not only for the court but for women and for the country. Youre going to hear a lot about Cherry Blossoms in all the ways that she really did i think become kind of the cruise director on the Supreme Court. Just really mindful of how to treat people with this capacious big heart and infinite patience. I want to thank evan thomas whose book first is really an extraordinary piece of work. I want to thank jay oconnor. And i want to thank general edwin meese iii. 75th attorney general of the United States. On behalf of all of us it has been a joy and a pleasure, starting your day hearing about the truly extraordinary Sandra Day Oconnor. Thank you. Next, from the Ronald Reagan fact president ial foundation and institute, six former law clerks recall working with Sandra Day Oconnor. This is part of an allday conference commemorating the 38th anniversary of Justice Oconnors senate confirmation