My subsequent years as an assistant attorney general and as a state senator prompted me to seek office as a Superior Court judge. Life always takes unexpected turns-mine certainly did. The work I did gave little hint that the Phoenix courthouse would someday bear my name. A couple of such appointments were made by federal district court Judge David Ling. As part of our plan to meet expenses, I accepted a number of appointments to defend indigents in the criminal justice system. We had a humble practice and tended to specialize in whatever we could get. I established a neighborhood law office in partnership with Tom Tobin. Once again, I failed to find a law firm that would consider hiring a woman. Wally Craig, who later became a federal district court judge here in 1963, was the hiring partner. John accepted a position in the law firm of Fennemore Craig. On John's discharge from the Army in 1957, we came to Phoenix. I gave up my hard-won job and followed John to Germany, where I obtained a job as a lawyer in the Quartermaster Market Center in Frankfurt am Main. John and I were married, and within a year he was drafted, then accepted in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, and assigned to a post in Germany. In time, I persuaded the District Attorney of San Mateo County to give me a job as a deputy.
There was one half-hearted offer of a job as a legal secretary. When I graduated from law school in 1952, I received no offer of employment as a lawyer. I did not know where a law degree might lead. He practiced law then in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and years later was appointed a federal district court judge. That was not to be, and, in time, I entered law school at Stanford. My ambition as a child was to be a cattle rancher like my father. How is it that the name of a cowgirl from Eastern Arizona would be carved in stone on this large new federal courthouse in Phoenix? As many of you know, I grew up on a cattle ranch in Greenlee County, miles from any town. The dedication of the Phoenix courthouse is an occasion that has, for me, a sense of unreality. It is a great pleasure to be in Arizona this week to participate in the dedication of not one, but two, new federal courthouses-one in Tucson and one in Phoenix. The following is a compilation of Justice O'Connor's comments given at the dedication ceremonies. In October 2000, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor visited Arizona to dedicate two new federal courthouses: the Sandra Day O'Connor United States Federal Courthouse in Phoenix and the Evo Anton DeConcini United States Federal Courthouse in Tucson.
0 kommentar(er)
