‘First’: The principled, flinty, historic rise of Sandra Day O’Connor
By
Random House. 476 pp.
Reviewed by
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That O’Connor found herself the highest-ranking woman ever in American government was no accident. Thomas vividly sketches the attributes she used to clear the high barriers to female ascendancy: a knack for brushing past insults, relentlessness belied by a pretty smile, an almost superhuman level of energy, and, not least, a heroically supportive husband. John O’Connor was a successful lawyer in his own right but willing to take a backseat if it meant helping his wife achieve her lofty goals.
This list of assets will sound familiar to
It was the same style of compromise - some might say fence-straddling - that O’Connor would employ as a
O’Connor was temperate on abortion rights cases, resisting numerous attempts by her conservative colleagues to strike down Roe but not issuing the ringing endorsement of reproductive freedom that liberals might have favored. Her split-the-difference standard: States can regulate reproductive rights so long as their rules don’t place an "undue burden" on a woman seeking an abortion. In
First does give us a real sense of Sandra Day O’Connor the human being. Cinematic scenes from her upbringing on the family ranch find young Sandra changing a tire all by herself as she struggles to get the chuck wagon to the cowboys before cattle-branding time. Thomas shows how well her flintiness served O’Connor in adulthood. She faces down Stage 2 cancer and a mastectomy with minimal self-pity, doing chemo on Fridays so she could be back on the bench for Monday oral arguments (a regimen passed on to the equally flinty Ginsburg when she, too, got cancer).
Thomas also reveals O’Connor to be likable and quirky, a woman who yelled, “Hot diggity dog!” when she hooked a trout and who got a charge out of
Thomas gives O’Connor the credit she deserves. As he suggests, even for those made uneasy by her sometimes-pallid support for Roe v. Wade, or nauseated by her ruling with the majority to cut off the
“The first step to getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show,” O’Connor said in a 1990 speech (later quoted admiringly by Ginsburg). “As women achieve power, the barriers will fall . . . And we’ll all be better off for it.” To which so many women - millennial and older, progressive, and conservative - might say in unison: “Amen, sister.”
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