Center Court

July 7, 2003

ITEM DETAILS
Type: Magazine article
Author: Evan Thomas & Stuart Taylor Jr.
Source: Newsweek
Notes: Date is approximate

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Article Text

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Justice Sandra Day O'Connor got her job through affirmative action. It was obvious to officials in the Reagan Justice Department, as they searched for a Supreme Court justice in the summer of 1981, that she lacked the usual qualifications for the high court. "No way," Emma Jordan, an assistant to the then Attorney General William French Smith, recalls thinking. "There were gaps in her background where she had clearly been at home having babies. She had never had a national position. Under awards, she had something like Phoenix Ad Woman of the Year." No matter. President Reagan wanted to appoint the first woman justice, so he named O'Connor.

Last week O'Connor in a sense returned the favor by playing the critical role in the most important affirmative-action case in decades. She cast the fifth and deciding vote and wrote the court's opinion in upholding the right of the University of Michigan Law School to use race as a factor in admissions. As a practical matter, her ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger gives a powerful judicial boost to affirmative action in education, a source of legal confusion and bitter debate in recent years. O'Connor, a moderate Republican, was hailed as a somewhat unlikely hero by liberal groups. She is seen as living proof that affirmative action works. There are now two female Supreme Court justices (the other is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who did have the usual qualifications), and half the seats in America's law schools are filled by women. And one of the Bush

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