A new biography of the first woman on the Supreme Court details Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s agonizing struggle with her husband’s dementia in the years before she retired and her later angst as she watched the court lunge rightward and faced her own declining health.
Veteran author Evan Thomas captures in “First,” released Tuesday, the woman who lived much of her life in the spotlight yet who, in the quiet of her home, struggled with common health difficulties and the vicissitudes of age.
He writes that O’Connor, who will be 89 on March 26 and has Alzheimer’s disease, generally declined to discuss cases and her approach to the law. But he adds details to familiar court dramas such as Bush v. Gore, the Florida election dispute that culminated the presidential election in 2000.
The 5-to-4, conservative-versus-liberal decision, with O’Connor in the majority, ensured the end of recounts and secured Republican George W. Bush’s victory over Democrat Al Gore. Thomas writes that O’Connor took the lead to craft its legal grounds and inserted a key line in the unsigned opinion limiting it “to the present circumstances” or, as Thomas characterizes it, “a one-time ticket to get out of a jam.”
