A New Order in the Court: Sandra Day O'Connor

Public celebrations for the Brethren's first sister

As the five-minute buzzer sounded summoning Senators to cast their votes, Sandra Day O'Connor, 51, wrung her hands nervously and awaited her fate in an anteroom near the Senate floor. "This is the longest five minutes of my life," she said with an anxious smile. Yet her fate was never in doubt. By a vote of 99 to 0,* the Senate made Judge O'Connor Justice O'Connor, the Supreme Court's first female member in its 191 years. Even Republican Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, the only member of the Judiciary Committee who refused to recommend O'Connor's confirmation, acquiesced this time. He confessed that colleagues warned him they would "laugh me out of the Senate" if he voted no.

When the tally was in, O'Connor received a congratulatory hug from fellow Arizonan Barry Goldwater and descended the Capitol steps. Accompanied by Goldwater, Vice President George Bush and other supporters, she gazed at the imposing marble facade of the Supreme Court across the way and said earnestly: "My hope is that ten years from now, after I've been across the street and worked for a while, they'll feel glad that they gave me this wonderful vote."

All week there were celebrations, formal and informal, public and private, to mark O'Connor's triumph. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who guided the confirmation vote from his position as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, gave a candlelit dinner in her honor at a Pakistani restaurant. In marked contrast to the spicy food in front of them, Nancy Thurmond, the Senator's wife, offered a dulcet toast to O'Connor as "the best thing to come down the pike since Girl Scout cookies." On Thursday, at a ceremony in the Rose Garden honoring federal district and appellate court judges and Supreme Court Justices, President Reagan beamed with pride. Looking intently at O'Connor, the President affirmed that the nation demands of judges "a wisdom that knows no time, has no prejudice and wants no other reward." O'Connor did not blanch or blush.

After the days of public celebration, the induction of the newest Justice began in private with an absence of pomp. In the court's conference room, before the President and Nancy Reagan, her fellow Brethren, retiring Justice Potter Stewart, and her sons, O'Connor placed her right hand on two O'Connor family Bibles held by her husband John. She repeated the judicial oath to "do equal right to the poor and to the rich."