Supreme Court · Associate Justice
Sandra O'Connor
Republican appointee: Appointed by Ronald Reagan (R)
Served 1981–2006 · 25 terms
Confirmed 99–0
Biography
Sandra Day O'Connor was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. A moderate conservative, she was considered a swing vote.
Source: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Ideology over time
O'Connor and the 16 justices who overlapped with O'Connor, 1981–2005
- Sandra O'Connor
- 95% credible interval
- Peer, appointed by a Democrat
- Peer, appointed by a Republican
- Court median
How to read this
Martin–Quinn scores place each justice on a single liberal–conservative dimension, estimated from their votes across terms, with scores allowed to shift from one term to the next. Higher is more conservative. The shaded band is the credible interval: wider when the record is thin, especially in a justice’s first terms, and narrower as votes accumulate.
Where O'Connor sits among all justices
Career average, every justice in the data set
O'Connor’s range across terms
Served alongside O'Connor
16 justicesClosest career average first. Filled dot: the peer. Ring: O'Connor.
How O'Connor voted
Every argued case O'Connor took part in, newest first, with how O'Connor voted in each: with the majority, in dissent, or in an equally divided Court. A Liberal or Conservative tag is the Supreme Court Database’s coding of who prevailed in the case, not a rating of the justices.
Data notes
The Decisions page’s argued cases with this justice’s vote from the Supreme Court Database. “Majority” includes a concurrence; a vote that dissented in part is coded by the side the justice took overall. Cases the justice sat out and equally divided cases are left out of the percentages. “Wrote” means authored an opinion. Source: Supreme Court Database (Spaeth et al.).