Ruth Bader Ginsburg Inscribes Her Speech to National Association of Women Judges on “Way Pavers”

This article from a law review reproduces Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s address to the National Association of Women Judges and is inscribed by Ginsburg to either Suzanne Nossel or Elizabeth Westfall, who authored Presumed Equal: What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms, based on surveys sent to women attorneys in 1995. Ginsburg’s address highlights the contributions of three “way pavers” for women in the judiciary: Florence Ellinwood Allen (1884-1966), Burnita Shelton Matthews (1894-1988), and Shirley Mount Hufstedler (1925-2016).

Excerpts

“When I attended law school, as other 1950s and 1960s graduates will attest, only a handful of women served as judges in the entire nation.” (281)

“Judge Allen became the first woman to serve on any state’s highest court, and for that achievement, she earned the accolade ‘Portia of the Prairies.’ She served on the Ohio Supreme Court for eleven years.” (283)

“In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt named Judge Allen to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. At age fifty, she became the first woman in the nation appointed to an Article III federal appeals court.” (283)

“After Judge Allen’s 1934 appointment, no women ascended to the federal bench for fifteen years. Then, in 1949, President Harry Truman appointed Burnita Shelton Matthews to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She was the first female Article III federal trial court judge in the nation.” (284)

“At a time when women faced much professional hostility, Judge Matthews showed her confidence in women lawyers by hiring only women as law clerks.” (285)

“Despite the stellar examples set by Judges Florence Allen, Burnita Matthews, and Shirley Hufstedler, it was not until the election and administration of Jimmy Carter that women gained appointment to the federal bench in more than token numbers. President Carter changed the face of the federal bench.... President Carter appointed some forty women to lifetime federal judgeships.” (287)

“If the first women judges were here today, they would rejoice at this achievement. They would also advise vigilance, I believe, in maintaining the trend. We should learn by their examples—their persistence and fortitude—to do our best for the sake of the law and for the sake of those for whom we pave the way.” (289)

★ RUTH BADER GINSBURG and Laura W. Brill, “Women In the Federal Judiciary: Three Way Pavers and the Exhilarating Change President Carter Wrought,” Fordham Law Review 64 (November 1995): 281-290. Inscribed by Justice Ginsburg on the front wrapper: “Cheers on the publication of Presumed Equal / Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” ca. 1997. 10 pp. #27857