The keys to O’Connor’s power? Civility and self-restraint.

When Sandra Day O’Connor first arrived at the Supreme Court in the fall of 1981, she found it to be a cold place. The other justices were not entirely welcoming to the first woman in their midst. At her first lunch with the justices, half of them did not show up. At her investiture, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger paraded the newly robed O’Connor down the court’s front steps, exclaiming to reporters, “You’ve never seen me with a better-looking justice.” She smiled gamely; she was used to this sort of thing.

Over the course of her long ascent from ranch girl to the first female justice on the Supreme Court, she had come to understand that self-restraint and civility would make her more, not less, powerful.