00:00 And today I rise along with my colleagues representing all of Arizona, Republicans and
00:07 Democrats alike, to honor the life and legacy of the most influential Arizonan in history,
00:18 Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
00:22 Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court,
00:27 died on Friday at the age of 93. The court said in a statement that O'Connor died in
00:32 "phoenix of complications related to dementia and a respiratory illness."
00:37 She grew up in Arizona and lived there most of her life.
00:40 O'Connor was sworn in as the first female Supreme Court Justice in 1981,
00:46 an appointee of then-Republican President Ronald Reagan.
00:50 She was conservative by nature, having grown up in an Arizona ranch family.
00:55 But her pragmatism and knack for consensus-building put her at the court's ideological center.
01:01 As a former Republican state senator and later Arizona's Senate Majority Leader,
01:07 another first-in-the-nation achievement, O'Connor understood how to strategize with
01:12 colleagues to get a majority decision. Over her quarter-century tenure, O'Connor avoided
01:18 sweeping pronouncements and voted for incremental change. And over time, her views became more
01:24 liberal. She was a pivotal vote on some of the most contentious issues of her era,
01:29 including preserving a woman's right to abortion and upholding affirmative action on college
01:35 campuses. O'Connor once compared her tenure to walking on wet cement, saying, "Every opinion
01:42 you offer, you've left a footprint." She retired from the court in 2006, replaced by the more
01:48 ideologically rigid conservative Justice Samuel Alito. After retirement, she dedicated herself
01:54 to improving civics education. In 2009, former Democratic President Barack Obama presented
02:01 O'Connor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor a president can give.
02:07 [END]
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