Born: March 26, 1930, El Paso, Texas, U.S.
Sandra Day O’Connor is an American jurist, the first woman associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Born in El Paso, Texas, on March 26, 1930, and educated at Stanford University, O’Connor first entered public office as an assistant attorney general in Arizona (1965-69); she later served as a state senator (1969-74) and a superior court judge (1974-79). In 1979, she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. She was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Supreme Court in July 1981 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in September. Initially a strong conservative, in the late 1980s O’Connor became more of a centrist on a court sharply divided between conservatives and liberals. In several cases, she upheld abortion rights.
