O'Connor, Sandra Day
1930–2023

Sandra Day O'Connor — Reagan's first SCOTUS appointment, the swing vote of the Rehnquist Court, and the author of the Casey plurality — built her post-retirement work around defending judicial independence and civic education through iCivics. Cornyn fits the O'Connor framework substantially well: he is himself a former Texas Supreme Court Justice (1991-1997) and former Texas Attorney General (1999-2002) with decades of Senate Judiciary Committee work, his judicial-nomination process leadership has been consistently institutional, and his certification of the 2020 election represents the kind of institutional defense O'Connor's late-career speeches called for. He loses O'Connor ground on Casey-tradition reproductive-freedom protections, which Cornyn's NRLC 100% lifetime rating runs against. Talarico's anti-corruption package — SCOTUS ethics code with recusal rules, financial disclosure, gift limits, judicial independence — is functionally an O'Connor framework implementation. O'Connor would push back on Talarico's more expansive economic policies as the kind of legislative reach that creates federalism problems she spent her career navigating.