The late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will be eulogized Tuesday under the vaulted ceiling and vast stained-glass windows of the Washington National Cathedral by Chief Justice John Roberts and President Joe Biden – two men who first met O’Connor in 1981 when she was nominated to the Supreme Court.
Roberts, then 26, had just joined the Ronald Reagan administration when he was enlisted to help O’Connor prepare for her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Biden, then 38, was the committee’s top Democrat.
O’Connor, the child of a pioneering ranch family and a former Arizona state senator and judge, aced that hearing and became the first woman on America’s highest court. She also became, by the end of her quarter-century tenure, the most influential sitting justice on social policy issues, such as abortion rights, and the division of power between the states and Washington.
When O’Connor announced her retirement in July 2005, Roberts, then a federal appellate judge, was initially selected to fill her seat as an associate justice. But before his Senate hearing could be held, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist died and President George W. Bush switched Roberts to that vacancy.
As two national leaders address the congregation and a televised audience at Tuesday’s memorial, they will manifest their personal experience with the woman who made history.
In 1981, Biden voiced some wariness regarding the Reagan nominee but was quickly won over.
“Don’t wall yourself off,” Biden said during a Judiciary Committee hearing, knowing she was all but confirmed. “Your male brethren have not done it. Don’t you do it. You are a singular asset, and you are looked at by many of us not merely because you are a bright, competent lawyer but also because you are a woman. That is something that should be advertised by you. You have an…
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