The first female justice on the US Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor, passed away at the age of 93.
According to a statement from the US Supreme Court, she passed away in Phoenix, Arizona on Friday morning from complications associated with dementia and a respiratory ailment.
Ronald Reagan, the former president, nominated moderate conservative Justice O’Connor to the United States Supreme Court in 1981.
From her retirement in 2006, she has been a justice for over twenty-four years.
She stepped down from the bench to tend to her husband John Jay O’Connor’s Alzheimer’s. Samuel Alito was appointed by President George W. Bush to succeed her.
Chief Justice John Roberts of the US Supreme Court referred to Justice O’Connor as “a daughter of the American Southwest” and said that she “blazed a historic trail as our Nation’s first female Justice.”
“She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor,” Justice Roberts said. He added that she was a “fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education.”
Justice O’Connor was raised on her family’s cattle ranch close to Duncan, Arizona, after being born in El Paso, Texas. She continued on to Stanford University to earn her law degree.
She claimed that during her first job, she had consented to work for a county attorney in San Mateo, California, for no pay and without an office.
She succeeded in becoming the Deputy County Attorney of San Mateo County in California and then the Assistant Attorney General of Arizona, despite the challenges faced by women in the legal field.
She was a Republican who was appointed to the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and won two two-year terms by reelection. She was a trailblazing politician who was the first female majority leader in a state senate anywhere in the United States.
Justice O’Connor is survived by three sons and six grandchildren. Her husband died in 2009.
