Evan Thomas: Self-restraint and civility the keys to Sandra Day O’Connor’s power on US Supreme Court
Foreign dispatch
Sandra Day O'Connor in front of the US Supreme Court building in September 1981. She was the first woman to take a seat on the US Supreme Court. Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
When Sandra Day O’Connor first arrived at the Supreme Court in the autumn of 1981, she found it to be a cold place.
At her investiture, Chief Justice Warren E Burger paraded the newly robed O’Connor down the court’s front steps, exclaiming to reporters, “You’ve never seen me with a better-looking justice.” She smiled gamely; she was used to this sort of thing.
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