Washington — Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the primary girl to serve on the Supreme Court docket who served as its ideological middle for greater than twenty years, is ready to be memorialized Tuesday throughout a funeral service on the Nationwide Cathedral.
O’Connor died in Phoenix on Dec. 1 on the age of 93. The late justice is ready to be eulogized by President Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts on the invitation-only gathering, which will probably be live-streamed.
The funeral service comes after Vice President Kamala Harris, the late justice’s legislation clerks, members of Congress and the general public paid respects to O’Connor as she lay in repose within the Supreme Court docket’s Nice Corridor on Monday.
Throughout a personal ceremony on the courtroom attended by all 9 sitting justices and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Sonia Sotomayor paid tribute to her ”life function mannequin” and praised O’Connor for serving as a ”dwelling instance that girls may tackle any problem, maintain her personal in areas dominated by males and will accomplish that with grace.”
”The nation was effectively served by the regular hand and mind of a justice who by no means overlooked how the legislation affected odd individuals,” Sotomayor mentioned.
Alex Brandon / AP
Nominated to the Supreme Court docket by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the Senate unanimously, O’Connor was the primary girl justice within the courtroom’s 191-year historical past. Greater than 4 a long time after her historic affirmation, 4 ladies now sit on the Supreme Court docket.
She spent a lot of her 24-year tenure on the courtroom at its middle and was a vital swing vote in divisive instances, notably on abortion. In 1991, O’Connor, with Kennedy and Justice David Souter, authored the bulk opinion in a case that reaffirmed the proper to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. In 2003, she wrote the bulk opinion in a case permitting the narrowly tailor-made use of race in college admissions selections.
Greater than 15 years after O’Connor left the Supreme Court docket, the courtroom’s conservative justices, who now maintain a 6-3 majority, would go on to overturn Roe and finish race-conscious admissions packages. The bulk opinion unwinding the constitutional proper to abortion was authored by Justice Samuel Alito, who changed O’Connor on the excessive courtroom.
Born in 1930, O’Connor grew up on her household’s cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona, known as the ”Lazy B.” She graduated third in her class at Stanford Regulation, two locations behind her future Supreme Court docket colleague, Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
O’Connor met her husband, John Jay O’Connor, whereas in legislation college. He died in 2009 of problems from Alzheimer’s illness.
Earlier than becoming a member of the Supreme Court docket, O’Connor served within the Arizona State Senate and, upon turning into the chamber’s majority chief, was the primary girl to serve within the function for any state senate. She started her profession within the judiciary in 1974 when she was elected to the Maricopa County Superior Court docket after which was a choose on the Arizona Court docket of Appeals.
O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court docket in 2006 on the age of 75 to handle her husband following his Alzheimer’s analysis. However after leaving the bench, she grew to become an advocate for civics schooling and based the group iCivics in 2009.
President Barack Obama awarded O’Connor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2009. She died of problems associated to superior dementia and a respiratory sickness.