O'Connor's legacy poses challenge for new appointee

Americans lost a voice of reason last week when Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her resignation.

After nearly a quarter-century on the high court, the 75-year-old Reagan appointee, the first woman to serve in the position, is returning to private life.

Despite the historical significance of her landmark status, O'Connor is leaving a legacy that transcends being the answer to a future Jeopardy question. Her greatest contribution, perhaps, was her ability to separate herself and her opinions from the realm of partisan political thinking.

This is no small achievement.

Although her appointment came at a time when the partisan divide was less pronounced, her tenure straddled the period in our history when that divide became increasingly prominent. That prominence seems nearly ubiquitous now, and can be seen in the way both sides have organized their efforts to influence how O'Connor's replacement will be chosen.

Activists on each side of the argument have focused on the issue of abortion, long the most divisive and controversial in the political arena.

When Reagan was faced with a court opening in 1981, he faced great political pressure to choose someone who would help the court overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in favor of a woman's right to privacy extending to abortion.

O'Connor did not, ultimately, prove to be that person. But she did prove to be someone to be counted on to keep the country's constitutional ship on a straight course, not veering toward any extreme.

Although she stood as a defender of a woman's overall right to choose abortion, O'Connor also sided with the court's conservative faction in "lesser" abortion decisions.

It was no contradiction to the woman who believed strongly in intense debate. In her book, she wrote that "a nation that docilely and unthinkingly approved every Supreme Court decision as infallible and immutable would, I believe, have severely disappointed the founders."

As such, she struck a personal course that more often than not put her in the mainstream of majority public opinion. It was a trail she blazed as a moderate Republican in the Arizona Senate, where she earlier had become the first woman to serve as a legislative majority leader.

The political skills she honed early on served her — and the American people -- well in her term on the Supreme Court, where she was often faced with casting the fifth and deciding vote on top issues of the day, including the historic Bush v. Gore decision that ended the deadlock over the 2000 presidential election.

That decision caused as much hand-wringing among liberals as her general defense of abortion rights did with conservatives. But it also cemented her stature as a constitutional free-thinker. Indeed, no less a rival than Antonin Scalia, one of the court's staunchest conservatives, over the weekend called O'Connor a star who "shaped the jurisprudence of this court more than any other associate justice."

The challenge now falls to the president to fill O'Connor's very consequential shoes. If he does so in a manner consistent with the legacy of wisdom and careful consideration she leaves behind, Americans will be well-served.