1930-
Supreme Court Justice

Fate Can Be a Strange Thing.

Attorney Sandra Day O'Connor, third in her law school class of 102 students, graduated in 1952 from Stanford Law School. That year, as law firm after law firm turned her down since she was a woman, she was finally offered a position as a legal secretary at a firm where a lawyer named William French Smith was a partner. She turned it down. Nearly thirty years later, U.S. Attorney General William French Smith had a hand in recommending her appointment as the first female Supreme Court justice.

A Solid Beginning.

Sandra Day was born on 26 March 1930 in El Paso, Texas. Her parents, Harry Day and Ada Mae Wilkey Day, owned a ranch comprising nearly two hundred thousand acres of land on which they raised two thousand cattle. Their home was a simple four-room building made of...