Sandra Day O’Connor, who made history as the first female Supreme Court justice, died Friday morning. He is 93 years old.
O’Connor, who retired from the bench in 2006, 25 years after his nomination by President Ronald Reagan, died in his home state of Arizona from complications of advanced dementia and respiratory disease.
In 2018, O’Connor announced that she had been diagnosed with “early stages of dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s disease.”
Her husband, John O’Connor, died of complications from Alzheimer’s in 2009.
Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan. Corbis via Getty Images
A moderate conservative, O’Connor is best known for co-authoring the majority opinion in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the judge ruled that state laws restricting abortion should not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking the procedure. .
“Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic moral principles, but that does not control our decision,” O’Connor said from the bench, reading a summary of the decision. “Our duty is to define the freedom of all, not to impose our own moral code.”
That decision was overturned in June 2022 by the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization. Jackson, which returned responsibility for deciding procedural restrictions to the states.
The opinion in that case was written by O’Connor’s successor, Samuel Alito.
O’Connor stands next to her husband, John O’Connor (center) and is sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice by Chief Justice Warren Burger. Corbis via Getty Images
O’Connor also signed the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, which ended weeks of drama in the 2000 presidential election by overruling then-Vice President Al Gore’s demand for a recount in Florida.
He also authored the decision in Grutter v. Bollinger 2003, which held that race-based affirmative action programs did not violate the 14th Amendment — a decision also overturned by the high court last June.
The granddaughter of a pioneer who traveled west from Vermont and founded the family farm some three decades before Arizona became a state, O’Connor has a tenacious and independent spirit that comes naturally.
As a child growing up in the remote countryside, he learned early to ride horses, herd cattle and drive trucks and tractors.
O’Connor co-authored the Planned Parenthood v. Casey majority opinion, ruling that state laws restricting abortion should not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking the procedure. AP
“I don’t do all the things that man does,” he told Time magazine in 1981, “but I fix windmills and mend fences.”
After her elevation to the Supreme Court, O’Connor remained the only woman on the bench until she was joined in 1993 by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Currently, the Supreme Court has four women: Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
O’Connor was well-liked by many of his colleagues.
Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings as she seeks to become the first woman to occupy a seat on the US Supreme Court. Getty Images
When he retired, Justice Clarence Thomas called him “an excellent colleague, civil in dissent and gracious when in the majority.”
O’Connor could, however, express his views tartly.
In one of his last acts as a judge, a dissent against a 5-4 decision to allow local governments to condemn and seize private property to allow private developers to build shopping plazas, office buildings and other facilities, he warned that the majority would not be wise to hand over more power. to those in power.
“The ghost of a curse hangs over all property,” he wrote. “There is nothing to prevent the state from replacing … any house with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”
By wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
