Sandra Day O'Connor made history in 1981 when she was appointed a member of the US Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. In Dublin this week, she spoke to Legal Affairs Correspondent, Carol Coulter
Born in 1930, Judge Sandra Day O'Connor still carries the fresh, athletic appearance of a woman reared on a ranch, who combined academic and professional distinction with a love of the outdoor life. Relaxed and courteous, she is nonetheless quick to correct any misapprehensions about how she perceives her function as a Supreme Court judge - to uphold the constitution rather than to express personal opinions.
Her family owned a cattle ranch that stretched over 300 square miles of Arizona. By the age of eight, she was riding horses, helping with cattle, and able to shoot a .22 rifle.
However, she was also sent to a private girls' primary school in El Paso, Texas, and from there eventually went on to study law at the prestigious Stanford University Law School, where her fellow students included William Rehnquist, later to become one of the most famous conservative judges on the US Supreme Court.
She has a strong political as well as legal background, and served as Republican leader in the Arizona state senate prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court.
Her appointment was widely seen as ground-breaking for women at the time.
"It opened a lot of doors for women, it opened opportunities on scale that was unprecedented," she told The Irish Times yesterday. But when asked if she considered that women brought any specific insights to the law, she replied emphatically, "No. A wise old woman and a wise old man will reach the same conclusion.
"This is not to say that women don't help to bring some diversity of background to the court," she added.
"This is important in a small group. Some have broad trial experience, I've held public office as a senator and been a legislator, others have administrative law experience, or have been law professors."
Although generally associated with the Republican majority on the court, Judge Day O'Connor has voted to uphold the controversial abortion decision in Roe v Wade, where it was held that the right to privacy extended to a woman's right to opt for abortion.
"This is an issue on which people across the country are very deeply divided," she said. "It is an area on which consensus is hard to reach."
She also upholds the rights of individual states to impose the death penalty, if they so wish, and did not shirk from doing so as a judge in Arizona. She has always been a strong defender of the constitutional guarantees of the autonomy of individual states in many areas. But she was one of the five-four majority on the Supreme Court that recently ruled that the imposition of the death penalty on people who were "mentally retarded" was "cruel and unusual punishment". This is outlawed by the US constitution.
"In previous cases, the court has had to come to terms with whether this is a concept that can change over time," she said. "The resolution in this case was whether we perceived a national consensus on the matter. The majority thought there was a national consensus, and that an indication of that consensus was the number of states that had changed their laws on it in the recent past."
She spent three years in Germany in the 1950s, when her husband was drafted into the US army. She visits Europe often, and when she leaves Dublin on Wednesday travels to a meeting in Moscow.
How does she feel about the tensions between the EU and the present administration? She is reticent, saying carefully, "I trust they'll be resolved over time. We have too much in common not to resolve them."
Judge Day O'Connor is in Ireland as part of a summer school in law jointly organised by the law schools in Fordham University, New York, UCD and Queen's University Belfast. She also has a number of other engagements.