- Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor died Friday at the age of 93
- O'Connor was the first woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court, nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981
- She retired in January 2006, allowing Republican President George W. Bush to choose her replacement
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has died at the age of 93 in Phoenix, Arizona.
The first woman to sit on the highest court in the United States died of “complications due to advanced dementia,” the court said.
O'Connor was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, unanimously confirmed to the Senate and served from 1981 to January 2006, where she retired to care for her husband who had Alzheimer's disease.
The former attorney was a moderate conservative and considered a tie-breaking vote under former Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
She often sided with her conservative colleagues at court, but sometimes also with the liberals.
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has died at the age of 93
Sandra Day O'Connor (right) is shown in an Easter 1940 family album photo taken on a family farm in Arizona
She spent her childhood on the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona, where she branded cattle, rode tractors and fired guns.
The house had no running water or electricity until O'Connor was seven years old.
O'Connor was able to incorporate literature, as his parents subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Vogue, Time magazine, the Saturday Evening Post and more.
“They were raised to believe that if you had money, you traveled a lot, got a good education and lived frugally,” the judge's brother's wife recalled for a 1989 profile of O'Connor in The Washington Post.
At age six, O'Connor was sent to live with her grandmother in El Paso so she could attend better schools, and she was so smart that she skipped two grades.
At the age of 16, O'Connor enrolled at Stanford University and graduated magna cum laude in 1950 with a degree in economics.
She attended Stanford Law School, where she served on the Stanford Law Review alongside future Chief Justice Rehnquist.
Sandra Day O'Connor (right) is sworn in to the Supreme Court by Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger (left). Her husband John O'Connor (center) holds the Bible
During their time at the law review, she dated Rehnquist, but said no when he proposed.
“We went to a few movies,” she told Fox News in 2003. “He was a brilliant, entertaining young man.”
O'Connor began dating John Jay O'Connor III during her senior year of law school and they married in December 1952.