Bibliography
Compiled
by J. Paul Lomio
This is a bibliography of books and
articles dealing with women's legal history. Several of the books contain
chapters on women who are also the focus of original biographies contained
within this Website; in these instances there are links to our content.
I.
Books
Abramson,
Jill and Barbara Franklin
Where they are now: the story of the women of Harvard Law 1974
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986, 323 p.
This is a study of the 71 women in the Harvard Law
School class of 1974 by two staff reporters for The American Lawyer. The book
includes a statistical profile for each woman in this class and offers a
snapshot of their lives a decade after law school. These women are not
considered pioneers but they are seen, by the authors, as being "in the
vanguard of" a revolution, a revolution spurred on by the burgeoning
women's movement as these women, just 12% of the first year class, sought to
enter a challenging profession at a "most challenging proving
ground."
Atwood, Barbara Ann
A
Courtroom of Her Own: The Life and Work of Judge Mary Anne Richey
Durham,
N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1998, 361 pages
This book tells the story of Mary Anne Richey, a
pilot in the Women Air Service Patrol, the lone female in her 1951 graduating
class at the University of Arizona law school, prosecutor, state court judge
and federal district court judge. Judge Richey was Gerald Ford's only woman
appointment; she was appointed to the bench in 1976 and held this position
until her death in 1983.
In this book the author purports to
"portray the complexity, exuberance, and sheer power of Mary Anne's
personality" and suggests "ways in which her ambitions, sympathies,
and 'hard edges' may have been influenced by the forces of her childhood and
young adulthood. As a close-up look at a woman who balanced, often uneasily,
the divergent demands of being a wife, a mother, and a pathbreaker in law, this
book is intended to advance our understanding of not only 'early' women lawyers
and judges, but also of women professionals generally."
Anderson, Paul
Janet
Reno: doing the right thing
New York:
Wiley, 1994, 328 pages
Basch, Norma
In the
eyes of the law: women, marriage and property in nineteenth century New York
Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1982, 255 p.
Baxandall, Rosalyn Fraad and Linda Gordon
with Susan Reverby
America's
working women: a documentary history, 1600 to present
New York:
W.W. Norton, 1995, 356 p.
Berkman, Ted (Edward O. Berkman)
The Lady
and the law: the remarkable life of Fanny Holtzmann
Boston:
Little, Brown, 1976, 403 pages.
Berry, Dawn Bradley
The 50
most influential women in American Law
Los
Angeles: Contemporary Books, 1996, 354 p.
This book profiles the achievements of fifty women
who had a positive, lasting effect on the legal landscape of our country – its
laws, legislative priorities, and system of justice. Their work has spanned
several hundred years – from "Gentleman" Margaret Brent, the first
female attorney in colonial America, to Marcia Clark. The fifty are:
Margaret Brent; Arabella Babb Mansfield; Elizabeth
Ware Packard; Belva
Lockwood; Myra Colby Bradwell; Clara Shortridge Foltz; Laura De Force
Gordon; Lyda Burton Conley; Esther McQuigg Morris; Lemma Barkeloo;
Charlotte E. Ray; Mary Gysin Leonard; Mary Clyens Lease; Ellen Spencer Mussey;
Lettie Burlingame; Tiera Farrow; Crystal Eastman; Florence Ellinwood
Allen; Dorothy Kenyon; Mabel Walker Willebrandt; Carol Weiss King; Margaret
Chase Smith; Eunice Hunton Carter; Fanny Holtzmann; Rachel Carson; Gladys Towles Root;
Rosa Parks; Cecelia Goetz; Soia Mentschikoff; Florynce Kennedy; Ruth Harvey
Charity; Constance Baker Motley; Shirley Chisholm; Sandra Day O'Connor; Ruth
Bader Ginsburg; Gloria Steinem; Geraldine A. Ferraro; Barbara Jordan; Rose
Elizabeth Bird; Janet Reno; Marian Wright Edelman; Arlene Violet; Patricia
Schroeder; Sarah Ragle Weddington; Harriet Rabb; Antonia Hernandez; Hillary
Rodham Clinton; Linda Fairstein; Nancy J. Mintie; Marcia Clark.
Brackman, Barbara, Feighny, Mary Droll and Camille
Nohe
Journeys
on the Road Less Travelled: Kansas Women Attorneys
Topeka,
Kansas: Women Attorneys Association of Topeka, 1998, 91 pages.
Brown, Dorothy M. (Dorothy Marie)
Mabel
Walker Willebrandt: a study of power, loyalty and law
Knoxville:
University of Kentucky Press, 1984, 328 pages
Excellent biography of the first woman to be an
Assistant Attorney General (1921-29). She was the chief enforcement officer for
prohibition, and argued before the United States Supreme Court in many cases.
Derry, A.B., LL.B., Laura Miller, Editor
Digest
of Women Lawyers and Judges: Biographical sketches and data of women
lawyers and judges of the United States and its possessions [Louisville, Ky.] :
Dunne Press, c1949.
From the preface:
"Neither time nor
effort has been spared in securing the records of women lawyers and judges. . .
. Collection of material in this book was made chiefly in 1947 and 1948, . .
. It is believed 'Digest of Women Lawyers and Judges" is
the biggest and best volume, which has been compiled on America's Portias and
Deborahs. . . . I hope this is the beginning of the collection of
historic works and humanitarian deeds of women lawyers and judges and trust
that a concerted effort will be put forth by all women in the profession to
effect a permanent record of women lawyers (including our forerunners, the
pioneers of the professon), in order that their biographical records may
fulfill a useful purpose. It is my ernest desire that the good deeds
wrought by all future women lawyers in behalf of their community and the world
will be henceforward recorded for the benefit, edification and encouragement of
posterity."
Includes alphabetical index,
index by state of practice, "Some Publications by Women Lawyers and
Judges," and "Interesting Facts Pertaining to Women Lawyers and
Judges."
Some examples of
"Interesting facts":
"Mary Sellers Connery, of Chicago, Illinois, was a member of the first
firm of women lawyers in the United States: Kelley, Sellers (Connery) and
Clark; formed in 1913.
Laura Miller Derry, of
Louisville, Kentucky, Editor of "Digest of Women Lawyers and Judges"
is the first woman attorney to represent a client before an Army Court-Martial
and only woman who has secured a verdict of Not Guilty for a person charged
with a capital offense before an Army General Court-Martial.
Leola Buck Kellogg, of Los
Angeles, California, has tried eighteen murder trials in the past four
years. In the cases of first-degree murder none received the death
penalty except one, and that case was appealed by her to the Supreme Court of
the State of California. It was reversed and a new trial had; she did not
try the case on new trial.
Attorney and song composer
Jean Nelson Penfield of New York City, headed a Department of Law for women in
the Brooklyn Law School during World War I. Mrs. Penfield was one
of the seven incorporators of the Woman's Suffrage Party, helped organize the
League of Women Voters, and is the only woman who has won the Inter-State
College Oratorical Contest; at the age of nineteen, she won against
representatives of sixty-three colleges of eleven states."
Stanford Alumnae
included in the book include:
"Curry, Altha Perry, Attorney, Asso. of firm of Skeel, McKelvy, Henke,
Evenson & Uhlmann, 914 Insurance Bldg., Seattle 4, Washington; res. 1628
22nd N., Seattle; b. Needles, Calif.; dau. John E. Perry (Dec'd) and Pauline
Brobant Perry. Adm. 1917, California; 1921, Washington. Mem. Wash.
State Bar Assn.; Phi delta Delta International Legal Fraternity; chi Omega
Fraternity; Women's Univ. Club; Daughters of American Revolution (Chief,
Seattle Chapter); Pro America, women's Republican organization Edn. Leland
Stanford Jr. Univ., A.B., 1915, and Jur.D., 1917. Republican, Golf,
swimming."
Drachman,
Virginia G.
Sisters
in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History
Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 334 pages, 1998
See Babcock,
Feminist Lawyers, 50 Stanford Law Review 1689 (1998) for a review of this
book.
This book followed the author's similar history of
women physicians. The history of women in that male dominated field is
similar to the history of women in law. In law, though, the authors's
thesis is that there are some unique historical distinctions: First, more
than any other profession women sought to enter in the 19th Century, law was
the most engendered and closed to women. Second, law was particularly
hard to enter because sexual discrimination was rooted in the legal system.
This book, with its excellent list of sources,
tells a story; "the work is at its heart a narrative." It
begins with the first efforts in the late 1860s and ends in the early 20th
Century, "when a new generation of women lawyers, though finally part of
the legal profession, recognized the limits of their progress."
The Appendix of this book is particularly rich with
tables of facts and statistics.
Drachman, Virginia G.
Women
lawyers and the origins of professional identity in America: the letters of the
Equity Club, 1887-1890
Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1993, 290 pages.
Letters from a club of early women lawyers, with
good biographical introductions to each letter writer. Subjects include Laura
Gordon, Lelia Robinson, Sarah Kilgore, and Belva Lockwood among others.
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs
Women in
law, 2d edition
Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1993, 491 pages
This is a well documented and indexed study of the
role of women in the legal profession. It is "an accounting of the new and
the old, of change and stability. The way it was for the 2 or 3 percent who
were able to overcome discrimination and become lawyers still constitutes
recent history and forms the context in which change occurred." In this
book the author "analyzes the ways in which women attorneys are treated by
their colleagues and families, the kinds of pressures and cross-pressures they
face . . ."
Esser, John and Sherry Sullivan
Women in
the law: a bibliography
Madison,
WI: Institute for Legal Studies, 1990, 50 pages.
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
Angels
and amazons: a hundred years of American Women
Garden
City, NJ, 1933, 531 pages
Ginger, Ann Fagan
Carol
Weiss King, human rights lawyer, 1895-1952
Niwot, CO:
Univeristy Press of Colorado, 1993, 599 pages
Harrington, Mona
Women
lawyers: rewriting the rules
New York:
A.A. Knopf, 1994, 265 pages
Based upon a series of interviews the author seeks
the answers to two questions: (1) What stands in the way of equal professional
authority for women lawyers; (2) How are women lawyers using the authority they
have to advance the equality of women generally.
Harris, Barbara J. (Barbara Jean)
Beyond
her sphere: women and the professions in American History
Westpost,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1978, 212 pages
Excellent account of the ideological barriers to
women in the "learned professions."
Hoff-Wilson, Joan
Law,
gender and injustice: a legal history of U.S. women
New York:
New York University Press, 1991, 525 pages
Kanowitz, Leo
Women
and the law: the unfinished revolution
Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 1969, 312 pages
Levin, Mildred W.
Magnificent
Millie
San
Francisco, Queen's Bench, 1997, 70 pages
This book is the autobiography of Mildred Levin,
who was admitted to the California state bar in 1934 and who quickly became
know as "a good, cheap criminal lawyer."
Lunardini Christine A.
From
equal suffrage to equal rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party,
1912-1928
New York:
New York University Press, 1986, 230 p
Matthews, Glenna
The rise
of public woman: woman's power and woman's place in the United States,
1630-1970
New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992, 297 pages
Matsuda, Mari J.
Called
from within: Early women lawyers of Hawai'i
Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1992
Contents: Almeda Eliza Hitchcock (Moore);
Marguerite Kamehaokalani Ashford; Carrick Hume Buck; Rose August; Jean Vaughan
Gilbert; Rhoda Lewis; Ruth Winifred Loomis; Harriet Bouslog; Sau Ung Loo Chan;
Betty Morrison Vitousek; Margaret Scott Tekeli; Alana Wai Lan Wong Lau;
Marybeth Yuen Maul; Patsy Takemoto Mink; Mary Helen McCrea Stevens Weaver
Pitts; Betty Barrett Gillette; Lily Miyamoto Okamoto; Other Women in the Law
Before Statehood.
Mehaffey, Karen Rae
Victorian
American women, 1840-1880: an annotated bibliography
New York:
Garland Pub., 1992, 180 pages
Morello, Karen Berger
The
invisible bar: the woman lawyer in America 1638 to the present
New York:
Random House, 1986, 271 pages
Chapters in this book include: The First Women
Lawyers; the First Women Law Students; Women in the Urban Law Schools; Last
Bastions: The Ivy League Law Schools; Rebels and Reformers; Double Impairment:
Black Women Lawyers; Women in the Courtroom; Women in Major Law Firms; and
Women on the Bench. Readers should check the index to see who is profiled. The
book contains a section of photographs.
National Association of Women Lawyers
75 year
history of the National Association of Women Lawyers: 1899-1974
Edited and
compiled by Mary H. Zimmerman
New York:
The Association, 1975, 472 pages
Anyone interested in biographical information on
women lawyers should closely examine this book. It contains a treasure trove of
essays and tidbits by and/or about notable women lawyers including Olive Scott
Gabriel, Georgia Bullock,
Burnita Shelton
Matthews and many others.
Nordby, Virginia Blomer and Gordon L.
Nordby
Stanford
Law School women graduates: a report to the Board of Visitors Executive
Committee, November 20, 1971.
Stanford:
Stanford Law School, 1971, 17 pages
Notable American women, 1607-1950; a
biographical dictionary
Edward T.
James, editor. Janet Wilson James, associate editor. Paul S. Boyer, assistant
editor.
Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, 3 volumes.
Includes individually authored biographical
sketches of 20 women lawyers, including Laura Gordon, Clara Foltz, Belva
Lockwood, Mrya Bradwell, Phoebe Cousins.
Particular passions: talks with women who
have shaped our times
Lynn
Gilbert and Gaylen Moore
New York:
C.N. Potter, 1981, 340 pages
This delightful book offers photographs and short
chapters on several women lawyers, including Constance Baker Motley, Eleanor
Holmes Norton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bella Abzug, Shirley Hufstedler, Justine
Wise Polier
Rupp, Leila J. and Verta Taylor
Survival
in the doldrums: the American women's rights movement, 1945 to the 1960's
New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987, 284 pages
Sachs, Albie and Joan Hoff Wilson
Sexism
and the law: a study of male beliefs and legal bias in Britain and the United
States
Oxford, M.
Robertson, 1978, 257 pages
Salokar, Rebecca Mae and Mary L. Volcansek,
editors
Women in
law: a bio-bibliographical sourcebook
Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, 376 pages
This book presents 43 biographies, each by a different
author, of the following women:
Florence Ellinwood
Allen;
Mary Arden; Anita Augsburg; Suzanne Bastid-Basdevant; Miriam Ben-Porat; Myra
Bradwell; Beverly Blair Cook; Irene R. Cortes; Takako Doi; Ruth Bader Ginsburg;
Brenda Marjorie Hale; Rosalyn Higgins; Leonilde Iotti; Barbara Charline Jordan;
Sylvie Kanigi; Carrie Burnham Kilgore; Helen Kinnear; Clair L'Heureaux-Dube;
Jutta Limbach; Burnita
Shelton Matthews; Beverley McLachlin; Soia Mentschikoff; Constance Baker
Motley; Emily Ferguson Murphy; Eleanor Holmes Norton; Sandra Day O'Connor;
Sadako Ogata; Cecilia Munoz Palma; Tamar Pelleg-Sryck; Janet Reno; Mary
Robinson; Flerida Ruth P. Romero; Simone Rozes-Ludwig; Wiltraut Rupp-von
Brunneck; Helga Seibert; Elisabeth Selbert; Margaret A. Somerville; Helene
Stocker; Helen Suzman; Leah Tsemel; Agathe Uwilingiyimana; Simone Veil-Jacob;
Bertha Wilson.
Smith, J. Clay, Jr.
Rebels
In Law Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers
Ann Arbor
University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Tuve, Jeanette E.
First
lady of the law, Florence Ellinwood
Allen
Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1984, 220 pages
Women and the law: a social historical
perspective
Edited by
D. Kelly Weisberg
Cambridge:
Schenkman, 1982, 2 volumes
Contains a "classic" entry: D. Kelly
Weisberg, "Barred from the Bar: Women and Legal Education in the United
States, 1870-1890, contained in volume II at page 231
Women, the law, and the Constitution: major
historical interpretations
Edited with
an introduction by Kermit L Hall
New York:
Garland, 1987, 527 pages
Women and the power to change Edited by Florence Howe
New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1975, 182 pages
Essays include: Rich, Adrienne, Toward a
Woman-Centered University; Hochschild, Arlie Russell, Inside the Clockwork of
Male Careers; Wallach, Aleta, A View from the Law School; Howe, Florence, Women
and the Power to Change.
A. Classic Articles
Robinson, Lelia, Women Lawyers in the United
States, 2 The Green Bag 10 (1890).
The author, the first woman at the Massachusetts
Bar, wrote to 100 other women, obtaining their names through news items and law
schools and write about their practices and experiences.
Lazarou, Fettered Protias: Obstacles Facing
Nineteen-Century Women Lawyers, 64 Women Lawyers Journal 21 (1978).
Clara Shortridge
Foltz
(1849-1934) was the first woman lawyer on the Pacific Coast. Professor
Babcock is writing her biography and has published a number of acticles
about her in the process. These articles show the relation of the early women
lawyers to the movements for suffrage and other reforms, and also a typical
struggle for professional success and recognition.
Barbara Allen Babcock, A Real
Revolution
University
of Kansas Law Review, Volume 49, No. 4, p. 719 - 731 (May 2001).
Babcock, Barbara Allen, "Women
Defenders in the West" 1 University of Nevada Law Journal 1 (2001)
Babcock, Barbara Allen,
"Contracted" Biographies and Other Obstacles to "Truth":
Commentary, 70 New York University Law Review 707 (1995)
Babcock, Barbara Allen, Clara
Shortridge Foltz: "First Woman." (First Women: The Contributions of
American Women to the Law), 28 Valparaiso University Law Review 1231 (1994)
Babcock, Barbara Allen,
Remarks on the Occasion of the Publication of Called from Within: Early Women
Lawyers of Hawaii, March 12, 1993, 16 Biography 3 (1993)
Writing biography has its distinctly
autobiographical moments – as Profesor Babcock found from being on a short list
of Attorney General nominees.
Babcock, Barbara Allen, A Place in the
Palladium: Women's Rights and Jury Service, 61 University of Cincinnati Law
Review 1139 (1993).
Babcock, Barbara Allen, Western Women
Lawyers, 45 Stanford Law Review 2179 (1993).
"The life I take as my example is that of the
first woman to be a lawyer among all the states of the Ninth Circuit – the
Portia of the Pacific – Clara Shortridge Foltz."
Babcock, Barbara, She Blazed the Trail: Clara Foltz
Opened a Major Door for Women in 1878, When She Became the First Female Member
of the State Bar, 106 The Los Angeles Daily Journal S16 (October 7, 1993).
Babcock, Barbara Allen, Clara
Shortridge Foltz: Constitution-maker, 66 Indiana Law Journal 849 (1991)
This is a book length article, with a detailed
table of contents, note on documentation and numerous, rich footnotes.
Babcock, Barbara Allen, Reconstructing the Person:
The Case of Clara Shortridge Foltz, 12 Biography 1 (1989)
C. Legal Periodicals
Buffalo Law Review, "100 Years of
Women at the University of Buffalo," [Editorial Tribute] Fall, 1999.
Volume 47, p. 1131.
The American Lawyer, "Women in the
Law: A Special Issue," March, 1999. The Women's Legal History Biography
Project is recognized in the Acknowledgements to this issue, "...a
valuable collection of articles, historical materials, and student papers have
been collected on-line by Stanford Law School professor Barbara Babcock and
students..."
Issue Contents:
HEADNOTES
"Numbers
Too Big to Ignore," by Amy Singer
"Opening
Doors," by Rachel Brash and Laura Pearlman
"Centuries
of Change," by Catherine Aman
"Voices"
THE POWER
"Sisters
in Law," by Susan Beck
"There's
Something About Mary," by Susan Beck
"Shortchanged?"
by Krysten Crawford
"Thunder
on the Right," by Alison Frankel
"Power:
By the Numbers"
THE PRACTICE
"The
Group," by Susan Orenstein
"Table
Talk"
"Family
Law," by Laura Pearlman
"Labors
of Love," by Carlyn Kolker
THE PIONEERS
"Enter
the Ladies," by Karen Berger Morello
"You've
Got Mail"
"Admission
Denied," by John Anderson
"Looking
the Part," by A.J. Noble
"Taking
it to the Street," by Douglas McCollam
Clark, Mary L., "The First Women Members of
the Supreme Court Bar, 1879-1900," 36 San Diego Law Review 87
(February/March 1999).
Clark, Mary L., "The Founding of the
Washington College of Law: The First Law School Established by Women for
Women," 47 American University Law Review 613 (1998). [A pre-print version
of this article is available at this site at http://www.stanford.edu/group/WLHP/articles/gender.pdf]
Article Contents:
Introduction
I. The Early Lives of Ellen Spencer Mussey and Emma
Gillett and the Founding of the Women's Law Class in 1896
A. Ellen Spencer Mussey
B. Emma
Gillett
C. Mussey
and Gillett as Prototypes of Early Women Lawyers
II. The History of the Woman's Law Class and the
Founding of the Washington College of Law in 1898
A. Factors Shaping Mussey and Gillett's Decision to
Found a Law School Primarily for Women
1.
The expansion of women's higher education opportunities
2.
The growth of women's voluntary associations
3.
The rise of the women's suffrage movement
4.
Mussey and Gillett's personal struggles to obtain legal instruction in
Washingotn, D.C.
B. Mussey and Gillett's Adoption of a Coeducational
Format
C. The Absence of African Americans at WCL
III. WCL's Formative Years Under Mussey: 1898-1913
IV. WCL's Subsequent Growth under Gillett
and Her Successors: 1914-1950
V. Mussey and Gillett's Lives After WCL's
Founding
Conclusion: WCL's Legacy for Women in Legal
Education Today
Dayton, Kim, "Trespassers, Beware!": Lyda
Burton Conley and the Battle for Huron Place Cemetery, 8 Yale Journal of Law
and Feminism 1 (1996).
Lyda Burton Conley, a Kansas attorney and a Wyandot
Indian, was the first to argue before the Supreme Court for the protection of
Native American burial grounds. Her mother was buried at Huron Place and Ms.
Conley went to great lengths to protect these grounds -- including standing
guard with a shot gun.
Smith, Selma Moidel, "A Century of
Achievement The Centennial of the National Association of Women Lawyers
- The First 50 Years," Experience magazine (published by the ABA Senior
Lawyers Division), Fall 1998 cover story; "...The Second 50 Years,"
Winter 1999. Both reprinted by NAWL in Summer 1999 Women Lawyers Journal.
Smith, Selma Moidel, "A New Discovery
The first Women Members of the ABA," Experience magazine, Summer 1999
(from original research by the author). Also appeared in Women Lawyers Journal,
Winter 2000.
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