When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it.

In 1975 Sandra Day O'Connor was elected to the Maricopa County Superior Court and in 1979 was elevated to the Arizona State Court of Appeals. In a 1983 opinion upholding searches by drug-sniffing dogs Sandra Day O'Connor recognized that a search is most likely to be considered constitutionally reasonable if it is very effective at discovering contraband without revealing innocent but embarrassing information. O'Connor continues to make semi-regular visits to the college.

Samuel Alito was nominated to take her seat in October 2005 and joined the Court on January 31 2006. Several publications have named O'Connor among the most powerful women in the world.