Sandra Day O'Connor: A Life of Action
The best full-length biography of Justice O’Connor
is:
Biskupic, Joan. Sandra Day O’Connor: How the
First Woman on the Supreme Court Became its Most Influential
Justice. New York: Harper, 2005.
These two studies are briefer but still useful:
McFeatters, Ann Carey. Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice
in the Balance. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2005.
Maveety, Nancy. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: Strategist
on the Supreme Court. Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1996.
Justice O’Connor has provided two memoirs for
portions of her life
O’Connor, Sandra. Lazy B. New York:
Random House 2002.
A lively account of her girlhood on an Arizona ranch.
O’Connor, Sandra. The Majesty of the Law.
New York: Random House 2004.
Reflections on her career as lawyer and jurist.
Wikipedia, whose entries on modern figures must often
be used with caution, has quite a balanced piece on
Justice O’Connor. You’ll find the links
to online versions of many of her opinions as well as
many magazine and newspaper articles by and about Justice
O’Connor especially useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_day_o%27connor
If you’d like to learn more about Justice O’Connor’s
home state when she grew up on the Lazy B, you might
want to look at:
Melton, Brad, and Dean Smith, Eds. Arizona Goes
To War: The Home Front And The Front Lines During World
War II. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003.
Thanks to Sandra Day O’Connor and thousands like
her, the place of women in the American legal profession
has been completely transformed in the decades since
she graduated from law school. These books can introduce
you to the history of the nation’s female lawyers:
Morello, Karen. The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer
in America, 1638 to the Present. New York: Random
House, 1986.
Drachman, Virginia G. Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers
in Modern America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1998.
These provide background on the world of Arizona politics
and government in the decades when Sandra O’Connor
began her career in public service:
Smith, Zachary A., Ed. Politics and Public Policy
In Arizona. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
Iverson, Peter. Barry Goldwater: Native Arizonan.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Justice O’Connor’s Supreme Court career
spanned the Chief Justiceships of two jurists: Warren
Burger and William Rehnquist. The Supreme Court Historical
Society’s “History of the Court” is
a fine starting point for studying both periods:
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_history/02_c15.html
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_history/02_c16.html
If you’d like to delve deeper, I’d suggest
some of these books:
For the Burger Court:
Maltz, Earl M. The Chief Justiceship of Warren Burger,
1969-1986. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2000.
Yarbrough, Tinsley E. The Burger Court: Justices,
Rulings, and Legacy. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO,
2000.
And for the Court’s Rehnquist years:
Belsky, Martin H., Ed. The Rehnquist Court: A Retrospective.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Gottlieb, Stephen E. Morality Imposed: The Rehnquist
Court and Liberty in America. New York: New York
University Press, 2000.
Keck, Thomas Moylan. The Most Activist Supreme
Court in History: The Road to Modern Judicial Conservatism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Maltz, Earl M., Ed. Rehnquist Justice: Understanding
the Court Dynamic. Lawrence, KS: University Press
of Kansas, 2003.
Tushnet, Mark V. A Court Divided: The Rehnquist
Court and the Future of Constitutional Law. New
York: W.W. Norton Co., 2005.
Yarbrough, Tinsley E. The Rehnquist Court And The
Constitution. Oxford: New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
On the web, Stanford Law School’s Stanford Lawyer
Website includes of a September 2005 roundtable discussion
of the Rehnquist Court from the alumni magazine that
was the alma matter of both Justices O’Connor
and Rehnquist:
http://www.law.stanford.edu/publications/
stanford_lawyer/issues/72/sl72_TheRehnquistCourt.pdf
You’ll find some helpful material in earlier issues
of History Now as well:
“Women in American Politics in the Twentieth Century”
by Sara Evans in our March 2006 issue:
/historynow/03_2006/historian6.php
And Virginia Scharff’s “Women of the West”
in the September 2006 issue:
/historynow/09_2006/historian5.php
I can’t close without recommending two personal
favorites. Both are geared to younger readers. First,
Justice O’Connor’s delightful children’s
book Chico (New York: Dutton, 2005) relating
a childhood adventure involving her beloved pony, a
newborn calf, and a rattlesnake. Finally, a wonderful
book by Lisa Tucker McElroy (in collaboration with the
Justice’s granddaughter, Courtney O’Connor),
Meet My Grandmother: She's a Supreme Court Justice
(Brookfield, CT: Milbrook Press, 1999).
