Women’s History Month: Women in the Law
The national celebration of women’s history kicked off in 1981, when Congress designated the second week of March, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” This week of recognition continued until Congress passed a resolution in 1987, officially proclaiming the entire month of March as Women’s History Month. For women in the legal profession however, history had already been in the making for a long time.
In 1899, the National Association of Women Lawyers was established to “provide leadership, a collective voice, and essential resources to advance women in the legal profession and advocate for the equality of women under the law.” However, by that time, women had been practicing law for 30 years. Arabella Mansfield is considered to be the first female lawyer in the United States. She passed the Iowa state bar exam in 1869, without ever having a formal legal education. She went on to become a teacher and a leader in the Iowa suffragette movement. Washington State’s first female lawyer was Mary Leonard. She studied the law after being acquitted of the murder of her husband and was admitted to the bar of the Washington Territory in 1885. Washington’s own advocacy organization, Washington Women Lawyers, was founded in the early 1970’s.
While women had been a part of the legal profession since before the turn of the century, equality would not be seen for many years. When the “notorious” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a student in Harvard Law School in 1956, she was not allowed to use the Lamont Law Library, as it was closed to women. Justice Ginsburg finished her law degree at Columbia in 1959 and became the school’s first tenured professor, but it was her experience at Harvard that was the catalyst for her work as a warrior for equal rights for women under the law. In 1981, the legal community experienced another major first for women — the selection of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to serve as the first female Justice on the US Supreme Court.
Women have played a significant role in the history of the Washington state judiciary since they began serving on juries in 1883. Carolyn Dimmick, the first female Justice was appointed in 1981. Following her appointment to the Seattle Municipal Court in 1983, Judge Norma S. Huggins became the first African American female judge in the state. Washington State’s first female Chief Justice, Barbara Durham, was chosen in 1995. In 2013, women achieved milestones outside of the courtroom when the first female Commissioner was welcomed and three years later, the first female Court Clerk. In 1883, a woman’s presence in the courtroom was considered by some as “…a misguided experiment that violated the laws of nature and would lead to dire consequences for family and society.” Today, women make up a supermajority of the state Supreme Court Bench.
For a look at some more of the “firsts” for women in the Washington State judiciary, visit the recently installed history display in the Supreme Court Clerk’s office in the Temple of Justice. (LE)
