Sandra Day O'Connor

View Webcast (4 minutes - requires RealPlayer to view)

Thursday, June 19, 2003
8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Keynote: Women and the Law

Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court when she took her seat as an associate justice in September 1981, following President Ronald Reagan's historic nomination. After graduating high in her class from Stanford Law School in 1952, O'Connor discovered that no law firm was willing to hire a woman, except as a legal secretary. Rebuffed by the private sector, she turned to public service and built an impressive legislative and judicial career in her home state of Arizona, serving as an assistant attorney general (1965-69), state senator and the nation's first woman senate majority leader (1969-75), Maricopa County Superior Court judge (1975-79), and Arizona Court of Appeals judge (1979-81). Justice O'Connor donated the first installment of her papers to the Library of Congress in 1991, and in 2002 she published with her brother H. Alan Day a warmly received family memoir Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, which provides insight into the influences that family and place have had on her life and career.

Web site:
www.supremecourtus.gov/about/about.html