Ruth Bader Ginsburg says Sandra Day O'Connor held her own as a justice. | AP Photos 'A woman's voice may do some good'

The following essay is part of a series in which dozens of women will reveal what women they most admire. The series is part of “Women Rule,” a unique effort this fall by POLITICO, Google and The Tory Burch Foundation exploring how women are leading change in politics, policy and their communities. See more essays here.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court, served with distinction for some months more than 25 years. Collegiality is the key to the effective operation of a multimember bench. Justice O’Connor, in my view, has done more to promote collegiality among the court’s members, and with our counterparts abroad, than any other justice. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote of that quality: “Sandra has a special talent, perhaps a gene, for lighting up the room … she enters; for [restoring] good humor in the presence of strong disagreement; for [producing constructive] results; and for [reminding] those at odds today … that ‘tomorrow is another day.’”


Of all the accolades Justice O’Connor has received, one strikes me as describing her best. Growing up on the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona, she could brand cattle, drive a tractor, fire a rifle with accuracy well before she reached her teens. One of the hands on the ranch recalled his memory of Sandra Day to author Peter Huber, “She wasn’t the rough and rugged type,” he said, “but she worked well with us in the canyons — she held her own.” Justice O’Connor did just that at every stage of her professional and family life.

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When she joined the court in 1981, she brought to the conference table experience others did not possess at all or to the same degree: the experience of growing up female in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, of raising a family of doing all manner of legal work — government service, private practice, successful candidacies for public office, leadership of Arizona’s Senate and state court judicial service, trial and appellate. Hard worker and quick learner that she is, she mastered mysteries of federal law and practice and held her own from the very start.

Her welcome when I became the junior justice is characteristic. The court has customs and habits one cannot find in the official rules. Justice O’Connor knew what it was like to learn the ropes on one’s own. She told me what I needed to know when I came on board for the court’s 1993 term — not in an intimidating dose, just enough to enable me to navigate safely my first days and weeks.

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At the end of the October 1993 sitting, I anxiously awaited my first opinion assignment, expecting — in keeping with tradition — that the brand-new justice would be slated for an uncontroversial, unanimous opinion. When the list came around, I was dismayed. The chief justice gave me an intricate, not at all easy, ERISA case, on which the court had divided 6-3. (ERISA is the acronym for the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, candidate for the most inscrutable legislation Congress ever passed.) I sought Justice O’Connor’s advice. It was simple.

“Just do it,” she said, “and, if you can, circulate your draft opinion before he makes the next set of assignments. Otherwise, you will risk receiving another tedious case.” That advice typifies Justice O’Connor’s approach to all things. Waste no time on anger, regret or resentment, just get the job done.

Justice O’Connor was a dissenter in that case. As I read the bench announcement summarizing the court’s decision, she gave an attendant a note for me. It read: “This is your first opinion for the Court, it is a fine one, I look forward to many more.” (Remembering how good that note made me feel, I sent similar notes to Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan when they announced their first opinions for the court.)

As the first woman on the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor set a pace I could scarcely match. To this day, my mail is filled with requests that run this way: Last year (or some years before) Justice O’Connor visited our campus or country, spoke at our bar or civic association, did this or that; next, words politely phrased, but to this effect — now it’s your turn. My secretaries once imagined that Justice O’Connor had a secret twin sister with whom she divided her appearances. The reality is, she has an extraordinary ability to manage her time.

Why does she go to Des Moines, Belfast, Lithuania, Rwanda, when she might rather fly-fish, ski, play tennis or golf? In 1990, she explained it this way to the 16th Annual Olin Conference: Women in Power:

“For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show. … As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.”

Of her journeys abroad, her former law clerk, Ruth McGregor, later chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, said: “Justice O’Connor has worked tirelessly to encourage emerging nations [to live under the rule of law]” by “maintain[ing] democratically elected legislatures … and independent judiciaries”; at the same time, she strongly “remind[s] us that “this country could lose the rule of law if we do not act to protect our precious heritage.”

There was a time in 1988 when Justice O’Connor’s energy flagged, long months in which she endured rigorous treatment for breast cancer. Though tired and in physical discomfort, she didn’t miss a sitting day on the court that busy term. Once fully recovered, she spoke of that hard time; her account, carried on public television, gave women afflicted with that trying disease hope, the courage to continue, to do as she did. She went back to the 8 a.m. exercise class she inaugurated at the court long before it was predicted she could. “[T]here was a lot I couldn’t do,” she said, “[b]ut I did a little, I did what I could.”

What she could do became evident years later, when the U.S. Olympic Women’s Basketball Team visited the Supreme Court. Justice O’Connor led the team on a tour ending at “the Highest Court in the Land,” the full basketball court on the building’s top floor. The team practiced some minutes, then one of the players passed the ball to Justice O’Connor. She missed the first shot, but the second went straight though the hoop.

Each case on the court’s docket attracted Justice O’Connor’s best effort, and she was never shy about stating her views at conference or in follow-on discussions. When she wrote separately, concurring or in dissent, she stated her disagreement directly and professionally. She avoided, as I do, castigating colleagues’ opinions as “Orwellian,” “profoundly misguided,” “not to be taken seriously” or “a jurisprudential disaster.”

In the 12½ years we served together, court watchers have seen that women speak in different voices, and hold different views, just as men do. Even so, some advocates, each term, revealed that they had not fully adjusted to the presence of two women on the high court bench. During oral argument, many a distinguished counsel — including a Harvard Law School professor and more than one solicitor general — began his response to my question: “Well, Justice O’Connor … .” Sometimes when that happened, Sandra would smile and crisply remind counsel: “She’s Justice Ginsburg. I’m Justice O’Connor.” Anticipating just such confusion, in 1993, my first term as a member of the court, the National Association of Women Judges had T-shirts made for us. Justice O’Connor’s read, “I’m Sandra, not Ruth,” mine, “I’m Ruth, not Sandra.”

As a retired justice, she sits on benches of appeals courts in diverse parts of the country at least three sessions a year. And she has taken on an array of “off the bench” activities. Prime among her current undertakings, Sandra created and is promoting a website — www.icivics.org — designed to educate middle school students about the three branches of government. She also champions judicial independence, urging that it is best served by appointment, rather than election, of judges. She writes in her memoir, “Out of Order,” that she regularly welcomes foreign judges who visit the United States and travels abroad to meet with lawyers and judges, many times at the request of the State Department.

Some years ago, Justice O’Connor made a surprise appearance one night in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “Henry V.” Playing the role that evening of Isabel, queen of France, she spoke the famous line from the Treaty scene: “Hap’ly a woman’s voice may do some good.”

Indeed it may, as Justice O’Connor has constantly demonstrated in her quarter-century of service on the Supreme Court, and no doubt will continue to demonstrate, in all her endeavors.