Posted on 10/17/2020 5:25:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
Watching the Senate confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett reminded me of the promise my father made to my sister Maureen to put the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.
It's a great piece of POTUS-SCOTUS history I haven't told in many years.
Democrats and the media said a lot of nice things this week about the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon who in 1993 became the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court.
But I don't remember hearing anyone - unfortunately, including the Republican senators - pay homage to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, or to my father Ronald Reagan, who put her there in 1981.
My father made his promise to my sister Maureen during the Republican primaries of 1980, when she was simultaneously campaigning for his campaign and the Equal Rights Amendment.
My father's campaign team thought it was not a good idea for Maureen to be a public advocate for the ERA, since the Republican Party was against it at the time.
In fact, they were so concerned that my father might lose Republican votes in the primaries and not get the presidential nomination that the advisors called Maureen into campaign headquarters.
Lyn Nofziger, Mike Deaver, my father and several others in the office discussed with Maureen how they could get her off the campaign trail.
When they were done talking, Maureen looked at the staffers and said:
"If you can get your candidate to promise me that if elected the first person he will nominate to the Supreme Court will be a woman, I will stop campaigning for the ERA today."
Their candidate - our father - said, "Deal" and reached out his hand. He and my sister shook on it.
Later in the summer of 1980 at the Republican National Convention in Detroit, when Maureen and her friends showed up wearing big "ERA" pins, the campaign staff thought that she had gone back on her promise and they were upset.
But if you looked closely at that "ERA" button, its fine print said, "Elect Reagan Anyway."
During the campaign against Jimmy Carter my father said if he was elected he'd put a woman on the Supreme Court, and less than a year later he kept his promise to his daughter and the voters and chose Justice O'Connor.
So when people look back and thank the people who put the first woman on the Supreme Court, you can look to Ronald Reagan, but you also have to look to Maureen Reagan.
Maureen was tough as nails and she was brave. Can you imagine anyone doing what she did today?
Ronald Reagan with three staffers on either side, and they're all telling her she has to get off the trail because it'll hurt the campaign - and she has the courage to say, "OK, I understand. But here's my deal...."
Only seven people knew that story. All of them but me are gone.
My sister, who died of cancer on Aug. 8, 2001 at age 60, shared what happened at that meeting with me on the day it happened. We talked a lot during my father's campaigns and through the 1990s.
Maureen stood up to everyone, even her stepmother Nancy Reagan, and she had more courage than anyone in the Republican Party.
She used to say things like, "The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that it'd take the Republicans a week longer to become communists."
She'd be right at home in the current political madness.
And she'd have a right to be proud that she did something in 1980 that helped make it possible that someday we'd get a Supreme Court Justice with the brains and class of Amy Coney Barrett.
Oh, how I wish my sister Maureen were alive today.
Sandea Day O’Connor was a waste. Because of her, Affirmative Action still exists.
How quickly they forget.
No matter your thoughts on O’Conner I do not recall her blatantly using SCOTUS to legislate like the finally dead rbg.
That’s a great story.
Sandea Day O’Connor was effectively the Supreme Court. 4 voted one way, 4 voted the other, and whatever Sandea voted became the LAW OF THE LAND. She is still alive after all this time.
John Riggins to Sandra Oconnor: Hey babe loosen up!
Exactly. His kids with Jane Wyman were the best.
Interesting note of history:
Maureen Reagan shared her father’s wit.
LMAO!I remember that!
She didn’t make up state approved systemic racism (Affirmative Action), but she voted to keep it when it should’ve been thrown in the dustbin of history.
“John Riggins to Sandra Oconnor: Hey babe loosen up!”
Right before he slid under the table dead drunk.
Riggo was a character to say the least.
The fact that Sandra Day O’Connor is not a household name shows that she did her job well without making herself the big deal. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by virtue of promoting RBG, was pushing to become a rock star, when all she needed to be was a Justice.
Women of a peculiar nature will now claim to remember “where i was when i heard RBG died”.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey#The_O’Connor,_Kennedy,_and_Souter_plurality_opinion
“In a plurality opinion jointly written by associate justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter, the Supreme Court upheld the “essential holding” of Roe, which was that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion prior to viability.”
Yep...there has been no plethora of documentaries, media praise, etc. about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the actual first woman Supreme Court justice, because she was appointed by the ‘wrong’ President and generally ruled the ‘wrong’ way...most people probably think the “notorious RBG” was the first woman justice.
All of those ridiculous memes going around about all of the freedoms women gained “because she [RBG] said ‘I dissent’.” Completely oblivious that granted them no freedoms, women could in fact speak long before anyone ever heard of RBG, and if she said “I dissent”, that means her opinion was not the ruling of the Court.
Grutter v. Bollinger
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger
“Supreme Court’s decision
The Court’s majority ruling, authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, held that the United States Constitution “does not prohibit the law school’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”
...
“In the majority were Justices O’Connor, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas dissented. Much of the dissent concerned a disbelief in the validity of the law school’s claim that the system was necessary to create a ‘critical mass’ of minority students and provide a diverse educational environment.”
...
“A lawyer who filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of members and former members of the Pennsylvania legislature, State Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, said that Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority decision in Grutter v. Bollinger was a “ringing affirmation of the goal of an inclusive society.” In both Grutter and Gratz, O’Connor was the swing vote.”
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_v._Rumsfeld
“Plurality opinion
Justice O’Connor wrote a plurality opinion representing the Court’s judgment, which was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Breyer and Kennedy. O’Connor wrote that although Congress had expressly authorized the detention of enemy combatants in its Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9/11, due process required that Hamdi have a meaningful opportunity to challenge his enemy combatant status.”
[Scalia, Stevens and Thomas diseented.]
Sandra Day O’Connor
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor#Foreign_law
“Foreign law
O’Connor was a vigorous defender of the citing of foreign laws in judicial decisions.[78]
...
In the speech she noted the 2002 Court case Atkins v. Virginia, in which the majority decision (which included her) cited disapproval of the death penalty in Europe as part of its argument. This speech, and the general concept of relying on foreign law and opinion,[80] was widely criticized by conservatives. In May 2004, a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives responded by passing a non-binding resolution, the “Reaffirmation of American Independence Resolution”, stating that “U.S. judicial decisions should not be based on any foreign laws, court decisions, or pronouncements of foreign governments unless they are relevant to determining the meaning of American constitutional and statutory law.”[81]
O’Connor once quoted the constitution of the Middle Eastern nation of Bahrain, which states that “[n]o authority shall prevail over the judgement of a judge, and under no circumstances may the course of justice be interfered with.” Further, “[i]t is in everyone’s interest to foster the rule-of-law evolution.” O’Connor proposed that such ideas be taught in American law schools, high schools and universities. Critics contend that such thinking is contrary to the U.S. Constitution and establishes a rule of man, rather than law.[79]”
What does this have to do with Maureen Reagan and President Reagan?
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