NPR Host
for 191 years, this nation's highest court was a men's only club. In 1981. Sandra Day O'Connor broke the gender barrier. But when she decided to write her first book, it wasn't about the court but about her childhood growing up as a cowgirl on the Lazy B ranch in Arizona, are now in a new book. She writes about the institution where she's lived for the last 22 years the Supreme Court. Yesterday, Justice O'Connor sat down with NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg to talk about her latest work entitled the majesty of the law.

Nina Totenberg
Sandra Day O'Connor was not exactly a household name in 1981, a mid level appeals court state judge who had previously served in the Arizona Senate. She was by her own account, not exactly nationally recognized for her scholarship or judicial writing. So she didn't take it very seriously one day in 1981, when she got a call from the Attorney General of the United States, asking her to come to Washington, DC See to discuss a vacancy on the US Supreme Court.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I wasn't genuinely excited about the prospect of me being on the court because I didn't think I would be.

Nina Totenberg
Do you think it was an affirmative act? A good affirmative act, but

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
an affirmative act? Well, certainly the president reached out to decide, I want to appoint a qualified woman to the court and I'm going to do it if I have the chance. And he did. That was out of the ordinary.

Nina Totenberg
But he had to look beyond what who the normal cast of characters would be? I think so. Indeed, President Reagan had promised during the campaign to appoint a woman to the court if he had the chance, and though many in his administration thought his statements did not and should not bind him. The President was of another mind in an era when there were few women on the bench and even fewer who were conservative, a state judge not even on Arizona's highest court. Got the nod. She arrived with no experience in the federal courts. Indeed, the first argument she ever witnessed in the Supreme Court was as a justice. She had a green staff, none of whom had worked at the court before. And she says quite candidly that for the first few years she felt buried by the work. In that first year, even the male threatened to bury her,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
we had more male than we could even open. So, finally, Justice Powell, the kindest man that ever was sad that he would cut off his right arm by letting me hire his second secretary. And he did and she came to our chambers and sorted things out and showed us how it should operate. And that was a godsend.

Nina Totenberg
O'Connor is kept some of those early letters and included some in her book.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I heard from a great many women in the country who said things like this, I cannot begin to describe with what delight I view the surprising headlines in the newspapers the day of your nomination. I actually stood there with my mouth hanging open and an idiotic grin on my face, feeling overwhelmingly euphoric and proud. Many of her correspondence however, we're not nearly so pleased. For example, a postcard I received, addressed a woman judge elect O'Connor care of the White House, Washington DC. Back to your kitchen on home female. This is a job for a man and only he can make the rough decisions, take care of your grandchildren and husband signed a senior citizen.

Nina Totenberg
As she made her rounds around Washington in the country. O'Connor found the media attention almost fixating as she puts it everywhere that Sandra when the press was short ago, still, I wondered if is the only woman on the court she was ever lonely.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I didn't have time to worry about who could I talked to I had to worry about how to do that job. And were you worried you couldn't Certainly I was. It's a hard job.

Nina Totenberg
When Justice Ginsburg arrived, it made things better?

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
Oh it was just night and day, the minute Justice Ginsburg arrived, the media pressure was off, I think for both of us, and we just became two of the nine justices. And it was just such a welcome change.

Nina Totenberg
O'Connor by temperament a cautious and guarded person in her book describes only her deceased colleagues and their nicest traits. She writes about how the court functions as an institution about its history and customs. But she writes nothing about her famous role as a so called swing justice, the fifth indecisive vote on questions of race and abortion, for instance,

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I think it's ridiculous because all nine people have to cast a vote, and there's no way to single out one is being more significant than another doesn't work. That way,

Nina Totenberg
what she does talk about with some passion is the subject of women in the law and in American society. The transformation of opportunities for women is apparent in her own life. When she graduated third in her class from Stanford Law School in 1952. The bulletin board she says we're plastered with job openings, but not for women. At the Los Angeles firm of Gibson done and Crusher, where she pulled strings just to get an interview, she was told that they didn't hire women lawyers and had no expectation that they ever would. But if she could type well enough, she was told she might qualify for a job as a secretary. Her husband to be one year behind her in law school was not pulling in any income. And as she puts it, we did hope to be able to eat. So one of us had to work and that was me. I finally learned that the district attorney in San Mateo County, California, had once had a woman lawyer in his office. I made a point went to see him. It was very nice man. And told him I was very eager to get a job and would like very much to work in his office. But the DA said he had no openings and no office space he could put her in.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I went back to the Lazy B ranch to start getting ready for the wedding and wrote him a very long letter, explaining all the reasons why I thought that I would be helpful to him in the office and offering to work for nothing if that was necessary, and offering to sit in the room with his secretary if she would have me.

Nina Totenberg
That is how Sandra Day O'Connor got her first job as a lawyer. In the beginning, she did not get paid and she did share an office with the DEA secretary. But soon there was a vacancy. She got a salary and an office. Oh, and that law firm that offered her a job as a secretary. One of the partners turned out to be the Attorney General, who recruited her in 1980. One William French Smith. In 1989. He asked her to speak in Los Angeles on the occasion of the firm's 100th anniversary.

Sandra Day O'Connor [automatically transcribed, may contain inaccuracies]
I had a great deal of fun speculating on where I might have been in the Gibson done hierarchy. By then had they offered me a job as a lawyer and saying I just had to settle for a smaller firm of nine. Way back in Washington, DC

Nina Totenberg
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, although this year there is again talk that she might retire at the end of the term. The Justice says she has quote, no plans to retire. It is a typically firm answer, but also typically with a touch of enigmatic wiggle room. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

NPR Host
And you can hear a longer version of Nina's interview with Justice O'Connor, as well as Justice O'Connor reading an excerpt from her new book at our website npr.org .