When the couple returned home to Arizona in 1957, O'Connor again struggled to find work, eventually convincing another man to open a law office with her. Four months later she was made a full employee, only leaving, reluctantly, after her husband was drafted to the Judge Advocate General's Corps in Frankfurt during the Korean war. No one would even speak to me.'Įxhibiting the persistence and initiative for which she would later become renowned, O'Connor sought out a county attorney in San Mateo, California, who she heard had once had a woman on his staff, and agreed to work for nothing until he could pay her a salary. 'It was very frustrating because I had done very well in both undergraduate and law school and my male classmates weren't having any problems. But the world wasn't ready for an ambitious, intelligent woman who could hold her own in conversation and shoot a jackrabbit at 50 yards. In 1952, O'Connor graduated near the top of her class, got married – not to Bill, but John Jay, a colleague on the Stanford Law Review – and excitedly entered the outside world. She and 'Bill' quickly became friends, then more than friends, as they bonded over regular games of bridge and charades. It is also here that she first encountered William Rehnquist, who went on to become Supreme Court chief justice in 1986. It was here that O'Connor met the 'inspirational' professor Harry Rathbun, who convinced her to stay on and take a graduate law degree. Yet unlike her father, whose aspirations to study at Stanford fell by the wayside, O'Connor left home to live with her grandmother and attend school in El Paso – and, eventually, earned the Stanford place her father had coveted. The oldest of three children, O'Connor had taken on much of the responsibility for running the family ranch on the border of New Mexico and Arizona. And all the more impressive considering the only job she was offered following graduation from Stanford Law School was as a legal secretary. O'Connor's rise to the top of the American judiciary came in 1981, by which time she had already served as an assistant attorney general, a state senator and an appeals judge for Arizona. In 2000, O'Connor played a seminal role in arguably the most controversial decision the Supreme Court has made when it resolved the contested Bush v Gore election. These qualities have defined the 81-year-old through much of her life and career, as she rose from unemployed law graduate to one of the most powerful women in American history. O'Connor has a twinkle in her eye as she speaks, and it is clear she enjoys recounting this tale of early grit and chutzpah.
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