On September 25, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor took the oaths of office as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The formal words ended a barrier that had lasted nearly two centuries of the Court’s existence.
Written and fact-checked by the Discover Today in History editorial team.
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The opening in the Court
The vacancy arose after Justice Potter Stewart announced his retirement. President Ronald Reagan, who had promised to appoint a woman, announced O’Connor’s nomination in July 1981. The Senate confirmed her before the September ceremony. Nomination, confirmation and taking office are separate steps; it was September 25 when she took the oaths and became a justice.
O’Connor had worked as a lawyer, legislator and judge in Arizona. Her career also reflected the constraints faced by women in the profession: prestigious legal credentials did not automatically yield the opportunities routinely open to male graduates. The appointment was historic partly because so many qualified women before her had been excluded from consideration.
The photograph and its limits
The image above shows O’Connor speaking in 2006, twenty-five years after her oath. It is a later portrait, not documentation of the 1981 ceremony. A photograph alone cannot explain how she judged cases or what her arrival meant to colleagues, litigants and the public. That history developed over a long tenure. The Supreme Court’s own exhibition states the date plainly and places the oath within a broader account of women lawyers seeking access to the profession.
The 2006 photograph carries a verified Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license, with the photographer and date identified in the caption. The original 1981 oath is instead established by the Court’s institutional record.
A justice beyond a first
O’Connor became an influential member of a closely divided Court and often wrote opinions or cast votes that shaped outcomes. Her jurisprudence cannot be summarized as a single ideology or as a symbolic appointment. She served until 2006; three other women joined the Court during her lifetime, though the first did not arrive until more than a decade after 1981.
The ‘first woman’ designation is a historical fact, but it should not crowd out her professional work or the many women who built the legal and political routes that made the appointment possible. Her own remarks at the time linked her opportunity to women of earlier generations.
What changed on September 25
The oath did not by itself settle equality in American law or legal employment. It did alter who could sit at the nation’s highest court. From that day forward, arguments and decisions there included a woman justice for the first time. The barrier’s removal mattered precisely because it had persisted so long.
The difference between a ceremonial milestone and its practical effects is worth keeping in view. One date gives us a secure starting point; the consequences belong to the decades of judging and public life that followed.
Opening a seat and exercising power
A nomination can be celebrated as a symbol before it has any judicial consequence. The oath changed O’Connor’s institutional status: she could hear argument, deliberate and vote as a justice. That distinction matters when placing an exact date in a history calendar. Her 1981 swearing-in was not the July announcement and not the Senate’s prior approval.
She joined a Court whose structure originated in the federal judiciary established after the Constitution. The Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789 is a useful companion story: it shows the institution taking shape nearly two centuries before a woman could serve on its highest bench. The elapsed time explains why the word “first” carried such force, while O’Connor’s decisions over subsequent years show why her career cannot be reduced to that label.
The Court’s exhibition also places her in a history of women seeking legal education, admission to the bar and professional authority. A judicial appointment is not a single-person origin story. The 2006 photograph in this article shows the later public figure; its dated caption prevents it from being mistaken for the 1981 ceremony. The institutional record, not the portrait, establishes what happened on September 25.
Sources and method
The date, sequence and background follow the Supreme Court’s “In Re Lady Lawyers” exhibition and the Court’s biographical records. The later portrait is attributed to Kyle Tsui under CC BY 2.0. No dialogue or private thoughts are inferred from the photograph.
Explore another September 25 story: the day’s complete edition.
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