Katz on "May It Please Her Honor": The United States' First Women Juges, 1870-1930

Elizabeth D. Katz, University of Florida College of Law, has published "May It Please Her Honor": The United States' First Women Judges, 1870-1930 at 102 Washington University Law Review 1729 (2025).

Between 1870 and 1930, hundreds of women served as judges in the United States. While a small number compared to the men who served, these pathbreaking officials were particularly visible and influential in women's efforts to secure political rights and advance in the legal profession. Women's progress in obtaining judgeships developed in a regional pattern, with women in the Midwest and West able to secure earlier and broader jurisdiction positions than their counterparts in the Northeast and South. Seeking access to the judiciary, women in conservative states made gendered arguments about women's supposed superiority in overseeing cases involving women, children, and families. Some demonstrated women's skill in handling juvenile and family matters through service as the country's first probation officers, a step that supported women's selection as judges in juvenile and family courts. Regardless of location or type of court, women judges attracted significant attention because they seemed to embody the promise and perils of women's increasing political and professional power. Yet since most served in local trial courts, nearly all are forgotten today. This Article recovers the stories of these overlooked trailblazers, offering the most comprehensive account of the obstacles they faced and the strategies they deployed to join the country's judicial benches.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Australian Women Judges and Lawyers Through the Archives

Heather Roberts, Australian National University College of Law, has published Telling a History of Australian Women Judges Through Courts' Ceremonial Archives at 40 Australian Feminist Law Journal 147 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Swearing-in ceremonies are held to mark the investiture of a new judge on the bench. Transcribed and stored within courts’ public records, these proceedings form a rich ‘ceremonial archive’. This paper showcases the value of this archive for the (re)telling of Australian legal history and, particularly, a history of Australian women lawyers. Using a case study drawn from the swearing-in ceremonies of women judges of the High Court, Federal Court, and Family Courts of Australia between 1993 and 2013, the paper explores what this archive reveals about the Australian legal community’s attitudes towards women in the law. It argues that despite the regional and jurisdictional differences between these courts, recurring themes emerge. Notably, while feminising discourse dominates the earlier ceremonies, stories of the judges’ personal and judicial identity come to display a more overt feminist consciousness by the end of the Labor Governments in power in Australia between 2007 and 2013.

The full text is not available from download. 

Female Judges On TV

Greta Olson, Justus-Liebig-Univeristy Giessen, is publishing Intersections of Gender and Legal Culture in Two Women Judge Shows: Judge Judy and Richterin Barbara Salesch, in Contemporary Gender Relations and Changes in Legal Cultures (Hanne Petersen, Jose Maria Lorenzo Villaverde, and Ingrid Lund-Andersen, eds., Copenhagen: DJOF, forthcoming).

This essay departs from the thesis that the connections between legal culture and gender have not yet been adequately addressed or theorized. Whereas a lively debate has ensued about the meaning and applications of Lawrence M. Friedman’s introduction of the concept of legal culture as a prism for scrutinizing a given socio-legal cohort, relatively little attention has been given to the question of how legal cultures are affected by categories of difference, including those of gender, ethnicity, class, disability, and age. By attending to the gender work performed by two ‘reality’ women judge shows, one US American and one German, this essay aims to further the conversation about how gender interacts with other categories of identity in legal settings.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

Women and Their Work In Early Twentieth Century U.S. Criminal Courts

Mae C. Quinn, Washington University, St. Louis, School of Law, has published 'Feminizing' Courts: Lay Volunteers and the Integration of Social Work in Progressive Reform, in Feminist Legal History: Essays on Women and Law, (Tracy A. Thomas & T. J. Boisseau eds.; NYU Press, 2011). Here is the abstract.

This essay, appearing as a chapter in FEMINIST LEGAL HISTORY: ESSAYS ON WOMEN (N.Y.U. PRESS 2011), uncovers groundbreaking court innovations employed by Judge Anna Moscowitz Kross. To date, Kross's work has gone largely unexamined by legal historians and court reformers. This essay describes how Kross, one of the nation's first women judges, sought to rethink the role and goals of criminal courts in order to meet and address social realities. Beginning in the 1930's she expanded the boundaries of criminal courts to permit female volunteer caseworkers and lay probation officers, as representatives of the larger community, to play a role in court operations. Her lay volunteer armies, which were seen as controversial and at times came under official scrutiny, continued their efforts over the course of several decades. What is more, many courts across the country replicated Kross's experiment without crediting her for her ideas. While this essay celebrates this largely forgotten historical figure and her work as an early judicial innovator, it also warns that social engineering efforts in criminal courts at the hands of lay counselors, both then and now, raise important questions that are worthy of further exploration. This essay, therefore, concludes by suggesting that today's criminal justice reformers might learn important lessons from Kross's attempts at judicial creativity that relied on private funding and private citizen participation in criminal court proceedings.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

New DVDs

Out on July 12: The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Marisa Tomei and Matthew McConaughey, based on the
Michael Connelly novel. Also available now: the re-release of Tell It To the Judge, a 1949 comedy about a judicial nominee Marsha Meredith (Rosalind Russell) who may not be confirmed because she's (horrors) divorced. Worry not: ex-hubby Pete (Robert Cummings), also an attorney, still loves her and wasn't really involved with Another Woman (Marie McDonald).

British Women On the Bench

Michael Blackwell, London School of Economics & Political Science, has published Old Boys' Networks, Family Connections and the English Legal Profession. Here is the abstract.

A decade and a half on from Lord Taylor’s promise that “there will be more [female judges]… and they will not all be the sisters of the Lord Chancellor!”, this paper assesses the changes to the composition of the higher judiciary over this period, in terms of gender and educational, professional and socio-economic background. Descriptive statistics are presented on how these characteristics have changed over the period, for members of the High Court, Court of Appeal and House of Lords. These show only slight improvement in the representation of women and little change to the proportion educated other than at Oxbridge and public schools. Obituaries and other sources are used to illustrate the high socio-economic class, often with legal connections, into which many judges were born.



To show that this is not solely, at least in respect of educational background, a result of the pool from which such judges are recruited, this paper contrasts these statistics with those of QCs appointed since 1965. It also uses event history analysis to see how these diversity characteristics have affected propensity to be appointed to the High Court and subsequently promoted during this period.



Finally, to assess the potential for future increases in judicial diversity, this paper contrasts the gender and educational background of the solicitors and barristers profession and the speed of change thereto in recent years – showing both a greater diversity and rate of change with solicitors. The significantly lower rate of solicitor applicants appointed in selection exercises to the High Court is noted. The paper concludes by suggesting a reappraisal of the appointment criteria to increase the representation of solicitors and so facilitate improved judicial diversity.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.