The imprint that O'Connor leaves on the high court

In matters of church and state, O'Connor has also played an important role, particularly with her development of the so-called endorsement test to determine whether certain government actions involving religion violate the First Amendment's establishment clause. Elements of O'Connor's test are evident in both the majority and minority positions in the two recent Ten Commandments decisions, analysts say.

Over the years, O'Connor has voted consistently in a number of areas, but conservative critics say she is too unpredictable in high-profile, blockbuster cases. They say it appears she is attempting to do what she believes is best, rather than simply ruling in accordance with the dictates of the law and the Constitution.

These critics say her pragmatic, case-by-case approach in many areas has fostered confusion among lawyers and lower-court judges who can never be sure what the law is until O'Connor has ruled in each case.

In contrast, Justice Antonin Scalia is seen as seeking to develop a jurisprudence of binding principles - bright-line tests and rules that can consistently be applied across a range of cases. This difference in approach has frequently placed the two justices on a collision course in major cases.

"Scalia has often described his view of the rule of law as the law of rules," says Eugene Volokh, a 1993-94 O'Connor clerk and now a UCLA School of Law professor. "I think Justice O'Connor's view is the work of the law is making law work," he says.

"Sometimes she likes clear, bright-line rules," Professor Volokh says. "Sometimes she thinks they just don't fit with the complexity of the world."

One example of O'Connor's concern about the potential damage that can be done by bright-line rules arises in a case involving the religious use of peyote by native Americans. In a 1990 decision written by Justice Scalia, the court announced that the First Amendment's free exercise of religion clause does not protect the religious use of peyote against enforcement of general antidrug laws.

O'Connor disagreed. She believes that the First Amendment requires the government to avoid interfering in religious worship unless it is absolutely necessary to achieve a major government objective.

"Although it may provide a bright line, the rule the court declared ... does not faithfully serve the purpose of the Constitution," O'Connor wrote in 1997. She said the court would never adopt a similar rule limiting the First Amendment's free-speech protections, and should not encumber a portion of the same amendment only a few words away.

"Given the centrality of freedom of speech and religion to the American concept of personal liberty," she wrote, "it is altogether reasonable to conclude that both should be treated with the highest degree of respect."

O'Connor was nominated in 1981 to the seat vacated by Potter Stewart. In naming O'Connor, President Reagan fulfilled a 1980 campaign pledge to name a woman to the high court.

Her nomination was confirmed by the Senate 99 to 0. She was sworn in as a justice on Sept. 25, 1981.

Analysts say that several aspects of O'Connor's early life laid the foundation for her later work at the high court. Among them: her childhood on a remote cattle ranch in Arizona, her public service in Arizona as a lawmaker, and her work as a state trial judge and appeals court judge.

But perhaps most important was her search for work in 1952. After graduating third in her Stanford Law School class, she was unable to find a job as a private-sector lawyer because none of the major firms in California would consider hiring a woman. Only one firm offered her a spot - as a secretary.

Thirty years later, among those involved in her selection as a Supreme Court nominee was William French Smith, then attorney general. In the 1950s, Mr. Smith was a partner in the California law firm that declined to hire O'Connor as a lawyer but offered her work as a secretary.

Ms. Jones, who is also a recent law-school graduate, says she never once thought her gender might be a roadblock to a legal career. "I am embarrassed at how much I took it for granted," she says.

"It was good for me to be able to sit down with Justice O'Connor and hear her say, 'I graduated way at the top of my Stanford Law School class and couldn't get a job except as a secretary at a law firm. No one would take me seriously, and I had to make my own opportunities for myself.' "

Jones adds, "It gives you a nice appreciation of how very far we've come in what amounts to one lifetime."

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