Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

A great thing happened yesterday. I'm not even sure why it is so great or why it means so much to me, but I actually had to hold back tears when I heard.

Yesterday, they were setting up some big "to do" at the law school but no one knew what it was all about. About one o'clock, a crowd started to gather and Governor Napolitano, Dean White (dean of the law school), President Crow (president of ASU) and Chief Justice McGregor (of the AZ Supreme Court) were sitting at an elevated table with news cameras pointed at them.

"This should be good," I thought to myself. It was all top secret. No one seemed to have a clue what it was all about.

President Crow was the first to speak. He announced that the Arizona State University College of Law would be renamed the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU. I really almost cried. I am so excited and so proud to graduate from a school named after her.

She's been a role model to me since 3rd grade, the first year that Sandra Day O'Connor Elementary School opened in my neighborhood. While I was going to school there, I got to meet her and see her speak a few times. I think it's kind of cool to go to an Elementary School and a law school named after the same person.

ASU will have the first law school named after a woman. It's also only the second law school to be named after a living person based on merit alone. I'm so glad they're not naming it after some random person who donated a gazillion dollars to the school.

She really was a trailblazer for women in the law. Though I don't agree with every one of her decisions, I respect her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence. In 2004, Forbes named her the fourth most powerful woman in the US and the sixth most powerful in the world. For a woman born in 1930, I'd say that's pretty impressive.