Biden pays tribute to Sandra Day O’Connor, an 'American pioneer'

President Joe Biden honored the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at a funeral service Tuesday at the Washington National Cathedral, celebrating her legacy as an “American pioneer.”

Biden said that O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, “empowered generations of women” and demonstrated that “a woman can not only do anything a man can do, but many times do it a heck of a lot better.”

Speaking to pews full of members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and White House officials, Biden recalled O’Connor as “gracious and wise, civil and principled.” He said she profoundly believed the Supreme Court was a “vital line of defense for the values and the vision of our republic — devoted not to pursuit of power for power’s sake, but to make real promise of America.”

The president applauded O’Connor for “the sacred cause of democracy she devoted her life to,” calling it “one that we must continue.”

O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court after she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. At her Senate confirmation hearing, Biden — who was the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time — quickly voiced his support for her. She went on to serve as a critical swing vote on the court until she stepped down in 2006 to spend more time with her husband, who was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. O’Connor died on Dec. 1 at the age of 93 of complications from dementia.

Addressing O’Connor’s family, Biden said he understood how hard it was to watch both O’Connor and her husband, John, who died in 2009, struggle with disease. Biden saw his own son, Beau, battle brain cancer before his death in 2015.

“I hope you hold on to what has never truly lost: The love both of them had for you; a love you had for them,” Biden said.

“I hope you find comfort and another profound consequence of her service: The countless families that she helped by speaking so openly about your family’s experiences,” Biden continued, referring to O’Connor’s candidness about her husband’s illness.

All nine current Supreme Court justices and several of their spouses, along with retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, filed into the cathedral shortly before the service began. They took seats directly behind the O’Connor family and across the aisle from Biden.

Several of the justices chatted amiably as organ music boomed through the massive church before the funeral got underway.

Many of O’Connor’s clerks also sat in the pews, after serving as pallbearers Monday when the late justice lay in repose for a public viewing at the high court. By tradition, a rotating series of former clerks also flanked her casket for hours as mourners filed by to pay their respects.

In addition to Biden, O’Connor was eulogized Tuesday by historian and biographer Evan Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts and one of her sons, Jay O’Connor.

“In nearly a quarter century on the court, she was a strong, influential and iconic jurist,” Roberts said. “The time when women were not on the bench seems so far away because Justice O’Connor was so good when she was on the bench. She was so successful that the barriers she broke down are almost unthinkable today.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff paid respects to O’Connor during her lying in repose at the Supreme Court on Monday. In a statement following O’Connor’s death, Harris said she would remember the justice for her “kindness, intelligence, and deep love for our country.”

During the service Tuesday, only one speaker, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, mentioned the erosion of some of the centrist jurisprudence O’Connor often championed when she was the preeminent swing vote on the Supreme Court.

O’Connor may be best known for the opinion she co-authored in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upholding the fundamental right to abortion but allowing states to impose greater restrictions on it. The Supreme Court explicitly overruled that decision by a 5-4 vote in June 2022 with its earth-shaking decision ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.

“She also lived long enough to see some of her influence wane and she had to make her peace with that too, which is not easy,” said Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. “We live and we work and we strive to make our contributions and we simply do not know which of our accomplishments, if any, will endure. Some will. Others will not.”