When Mr. Reagan met with his aides to discuss a potential replacement, he recalled his promise and said he wanted a female justice. One of the aides reminded Mr. Reagan of his "one of the first" formulation. Mr. Reagan observed that President Carter had not had any Supreme Court vacancy to fill and said this one might be his only chance. After this exchange, it was clear that Mr. Reagan considered his campaign promise unambiguous, and Attorney General William French Smith, who had once been Mr. Reagan's lawyer in Hollywood, got the message.

Although Mr. Smith had a list of 20 candidates, including eight men, he never sent it to Mr. Reagan. The attorney general narrowed the list to four women, one of them a moderately conservative Arizona appeals court judge named Sandra Day O'Connor.

Because others on the list had more imposing legal credentials, Judge O'Connor was no sure thing. But she had a friend in court -- literally -- in William Rehnquist, then an associate justice, whom she had briefly dated when they were both students at Stanford Law School, and the endorsement of her home state senator, Barry Goldwater, then Mr. Conservative of the Republican Party. Attorney General Smith liked her, too. Most important, as Mr. Reagan later said, he was "charmed" by Judge O'Connor. When he interviewed her in the White House, they spent much of the time discussing horses and Judge O'Connor's childhood on an Arizona ranch. Mr. Reagan never interviewed anyone else.

The appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor involved more than personal chemistry. Mr. Reagan was no lawyer -- indeed, he delighted in telling anti-lawyer jokes -- but he was consistent in identifying the kind of people he wanted on the high court, or for that matter, any court. As Mr. Reagan saw it, judges should interpret the law, not make it, a broad and relatively inclusive conservative rubric that in his eyes embraced everyone from Sandra Day O'Connor to Antonin Scalia to Robert Bork to Anthony Kennedy. Mr. Reagan didn't believe in litmus tests and didn't ask Judge O'Connor how she would rule on specific issues. As far as I can determine, Mr. Reagan never put such a question to any judicial nominee. His reluctance to do so did not stop Senate conservatives from questioning Judge O'Connor about abortion, which she said she opposed.

While Mr. Reagan avoided a narrow judicial screening, he delighted in making a bold political statement. He liked the symbolism of being the first president to put a woman on the Supreme Court, and later, when he named Justice Scalia, being the first to nominate an Italian-American justice. Today, Mr. Reagan might have been tempted to make a similar splash by naming a Latino.