Video: '7/7/81: 1st Female High Court Justice'

(Tuesday, July 7, 1981, 10:54 a.m. EDT) — President Ronald Reagan announced today that he would nominate Sandra Day O’Connor, a 51-year-old judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“She is truly a ‘person for all seasons,'” Reagan said this morning, “possessing those unique qualities of temperament, fairness, intellectual capacity and devotion to the public good which have characterized the 101 ‘brethren’ who have preceded her.”

White House and Justice Department officials expressed confidence that Judge O’Connor’s views were compatible with those espoused over the years by Reagan, who has been highly critical of some past Supreme Court decisions on the rights of defendants, busing, abortion and other matters.

O’Connor would be confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Sept. 21, 1981, by a vote of 99–0, and sworn into office four days later.