John Yang:
O'Connor's tenure on the Supreme Court is notable not just because she was the first woman, but also because of what she did in her 24 years there.
Joan Biskupic is the CNN Supreme Court analyst and author of "Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice."
Joan, along those lines, you write in the book that her appointment didn't just change the court; it transformed the court. What do you mean by that?
Joan Biskupic, Author, "Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice": It really did, John.
And it's great to be with you, even though at this moment we really feel some sadness, along with the weight of history, for how influential Sandra Day O'Connor was.
I like to say that she made history certainly by being the first woman justice on the Supreme Court, but, also, she was a real politician on the court. She came knowing how to count votes, knowing how to work consensus. And she had a very pragmatic style that involved not just trying to find the center of the law in America, but also trying to find the center of the court.
So there was no one like her before 1981, and there will be no one like her going forward. She influenced so many important areas that I — that you all just touched on, abortion rights, religion, racial affirmative action. But her overall approach was to ensure that, when those nine justices got together in the conference room with nobody else but them, that everyone walked away feeling like they got something.
Now, people were critical of that sort of consensus-building, center-of-the-court approach she had, but it really did steady the law in America in a way that we don't have right now.
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