Washington – Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice to serve on the Supreme Court, which served as its ideological centerpiece for more than two decades, is being remembered during a funeral service at the National Cathedral on Tuesday.
O’Connor Died December 1 in Phoenix At the age of 93. President Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts will eulogize the late justice at the invitation-only gathering, which will be broadcast live. Nine justices and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy attended the ceremony.
“Her principles are profound and of the highest order, and it is not necessary to agree with all her conclusions to recognize that her desire for civilization is genuine and her belief in the ability of human institutions to change life for the better. Adhered to,” the president said. “How she embodied such traits under such pressure and scrutiny helped to empower generations of women in every area of American life.”
Mr. was in the Senate for more than 30 years before becoming the Vice President. Biden recalled taking O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court when he was the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“A man for all the seasons we saw in that trial, Americans and the world should look to him through his extraordinary service as a justice and, I might add, as a citizen,” the president called O’Connor. “A pioneer, breaking barriers in the legal and political world, and the spirit of the nation.”
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The funeral follows Vice President Kamala Harris, the late Justice, jurists, members of Congress and members of the public paying tribute to O’Connor. He lay in peace Monday in the Supreme Court’s Great Hall.
During a private ceremony at the courthouse, Justice Sonia Sotomayor paid tribute to her “living role model” and praised O’Connor as a “living example of how women can rise to any challenge and assert themselves in male-dominated spaces. Do it with grace.”
“The nation was well served by the steady hand and intelligence of a justice who never lost sight of how the law affected ordinary people,” Sotomayor said.
Nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed unanimously by the Senate, O’Connor is the first female justice in the court’s 191-year history. More than four decades after her historic confirmation, four women now sit on the Supreme Court.
He spent much of his 24-year tenure at the center of the court and was an important swing voter in divisive cases, particularly those related to abortion. In 1991, O’Connor, with Kennedy and Justice David Souter, ruled in Roe v. Wade wrote the majority opinion in the case that reaffirmed the right to abortion. In 2003, he wrote the majority opinion in a case allowing the narrow use of race in university admissions decisions.
More than 15 years after O’Connor left the Supreme Court, the court’s conservative justices now hold a 6-3 majority. Overturn the roe And Complete racially sensitive admissions programs. The majority opinion striking down the constitutional right to abortion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, who replaced O’Connor on the high court.
Born in 1930, O’Connor grew up in southeastern Arizona on his family’s cattle ranch known as “Lazy B.” He graduated third in his class from Stanford Law, two spots behind his future Supreme Court colleague, Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
O’Connor met her husband, John Jay O’Connor, while attending law school. He died in 2009 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Before joining the Supreme Court, O’Connor served in the Arizona State Senate and became the first woman to serve in any state senate after becoming majority leader of that chamber. He began his career in the judiciary in 1974, when he was elected to the Maricopa County Superior Court and later as a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals.
O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court in 2006 at the age of 75 to care for her husband after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. But after leaving the bench, he became an advocate for civics education and founded the iCivics group in 2009.
President Barack Obama presented O’Connor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2009. He died of complications related to advanced dementia and respiratory disease.
