Sandra Day O'Connor
O'Connor became the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 after being appointed by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed, in a 99-0 vote, by the Senate. She would go on to set a much broader legal legacy. "O'Connor has emerged from the shadow of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the Court's conservative bloc with her own brand of pragmatic and centrist-oriented conservatism," an online biography at The Oyez Project notes. "This tendency to moderate, in turn, enhanced her importance in an often-splintered Court."
