Sandra Day O'Connor, First Female Supreme Court Justice, Reveals Dementia Diagnosis



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After law school, she and her husband settled in Phoenix, where they raised three sounds. She became a public sector lawyer and took an interest in Republican politics. In 1969, the Arizona governor appointed a vacant State Senate seat, which she kept in subsequent elections, rising to the rank of the Senate majority leader, the first woman to hold the post.

At the beginning of the Supreme Court in 1988, Justice O'Connor learned how to bad cancer and underwent a mastectomy. She did not miss a day of court.

When President George W. Bush called Justice O'Connor on the day she announced her retirement, he remarked, "For an old ranching girl, you turned out pretty good," a reference to her Western roots.

Justice O'Connor was conservative but not an ideologist, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a model for how to judge and conduct themselves on the bench, said Mr. Chemerinsky, who argued before Justice O'Connor as a lawyer.

"She was never caustic or sarcastic; There were never any personal attacks on other justices, "he said of her opinions. "She was truly a decent person, and that decency was reflected in the courts."

Justice O'Connor led an illustrious life, said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, who clerked for Justice O'Connor in the 1990s.

"She was a lawyer, she was a politician," Mr. Volokh said. She was an advocate for civics education. She was also a mother and a wife, which I think was tremendously important to her. "

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