In (sentencing) memoriam: noting a few major sentencing majority opinions by Justice O’Connor

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated to be the first female Supreme Court Justice by President Ronald Reagan when I was in middle school, and I had been a law professor for nearly a decade by the time she stepped down from being an active member of the Court.   As is true for nearly every Justice, sentencing rulings do not comprise a major part of the notable and consequential corpus of opinions that Justice O’Connor authored during a quarter century on the Court.  (SCOTUSblog reports in this lengthy tribute that “during her nearly quarter-century as a justice, O’Connor wrote 645 opinion.”)  But there are still more than enough notable sentencing rulings from Justice O’Connor to make a very long list if I were to detailed them all.  As a memorial, I figured I would take a few moments to provide an abridged list of just some sentencing highlights among the hundreds of controlling opinions authored by Justice O’Connor:

Tison v. Arizona (1987)

Miller v. Florida (1987)

Penry v. Lynaugh (1989)

Coleman v. Thompson (1991)

Monge v. California (1998)

Ewing v. California (2003)

By keeping this list abridged and focused on sentencing-related opinions for the Court, I have left off many of Justice O’Connor’s other major contribution in the criminal justice space.  In terms of other big court opinions in the criminal justice arena, Justice O’Connor’s work in Teague v. Lane (1989) is arguable the most consequential; with a focus on separate opinions, her major dissents in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000) and Blakely v. Washington (2004) are especially memorable.

I suspect readers may recall fondly (or perhaps not so fondly) lots of other criminal justice opinions authored by Justice O’Connor not listed above.  I welcome thoughts about her sentencing legacy and any sorts of comments about Justice O’Connor’s role in shaping our modern criminal justice jurisprudence.