I’d never heard of Sandra Day O’Connor when the news broke that she was President Ronald Reagan’s likely nominee for the new vacancy on the Supreme Court. This was in 1981, toward the end of my term as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, and a bunch of us crowded around the one Lexis terminal in the court library — yes, one, and yes, a terminal — in hope of tracking down some of her opinions.

We didn’t find much. Certainly we found nothing to indicate that she would become one of the most honored and beloved justices in the court’s history.