Supreme Court Reagan made four successful appointments to the Supreme Court during his eight years in office. In 1981, he successfully nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to succeed Associate Justice Potter Stewart, fulfilling a campaign promise to name the first woman to the Supreme Court. Democrats, who had planned to vigorously oppose Reagan's nominations to the Supreme Court, approved of the nomination of O'Connor. However, the Christian right was astonished and dismayed with O'Connor, whom they feared would not overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, which had established the constitutional right to have an abortion without undue government interference. O'Connor served on the Supreme Court until 2006, and was generally considered to be a centrist conservative. In 1986, Reagan elevated Associate Justice William Rehnquist to the position of Chief Justice of the United States after Warren Burger chose to retire. Rehnquist, a member of the conservative wing of the Court, was the third sitting associate justice to be elevated to chief justice, after Edward Douglass White and Harlan F. Stone. Reagan successfully nominated Antonin Scalia to fill Rehnquist's position as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Scalia became a member of the Court's conservative wing. Reagan faced greater difficulties in filling the final Supreme Court vacancy, which arose due to the retirement of Lewis F. Powell Jr. Reagan nominated Robert Bork in July 1987, but the nomination was rejected by the Senate in October 1987. Later that month, Reagan announced the nomination of Douglas H. Ginsburg, but Ginsburg withdrew from consideration in November 1987. Finally, Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy, who won Senate confirmation in February 1988. Along with O'Connor, Kennedy served as the key swing vote on the Supreme Court in the decades after Reagan left office. Other courts Reagan appointed a combined total of 368 judges to the United States courts of appeals and the United States district courts, more than any other president. The vast majority of his judicial appointees were conservative white men, and many of the appointees were affiliated with the conservative Federalist Society. Partly because Congress passed a law creating new federal judicial positions in 1984, Reagan had appointed nearly half of the federal judiciary by the time he left office in 1989. Assassination attempt On March 30, 1981, only 69 days into the new administration, Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Tim