Abstract
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.
Introduction
In 1907, lawyer and suffragist Catherine Waugh McCulloch trounced her male competitor to be elected as a justice of the peace in Evanston, Illinois. She received twice the number of votes that he did, yet her service was not assured due to eligibility questions. Back in 1870, Amelia Hobbs had been the first woman in the country to win an election for a judicial position, when the all-male electorate in Jersey Landing, Illinois, selected her. But Hobbs had not been permitted to hold the post. The Illinois attorney general determined that women could not be judges because they could not vote. And still, in 1907, women in Illinois could not vote. Had anything changed? Maybe. A few years after Hobbs’s disappointment, the Illinois legislature passed statutes to permit women to hold at least some offices. The broadest of those statutes proclaimed “[t]hat no person shall be precluded or debarred from any occupation, profession or employment (except military) on account of sex.” But, the statute continued, “this act shall not be construed to affect the eligibility of any person to an elective office.” It seemed, then, that McCulloch faced a tough legal predicament.
McCulloch was prepared to fight for the position. In her first statement after the election, she declared that she would hold the office, even if it required a test case before the state’s supreme court to prove her eligibility. In an article published in the Chicago Legal News, she practiced her arguments, observing that no language in the state’s constitution limited judicial offices to men—in contrast to the provisions governing the franchise. Moreover, women had occasionally served in the position “[i]n the courts of our ancestors” in England. She retained hope that litigation would be unnecessary, telling the press she was not worried. The governor who needed to authorize the commission had already congratulated her on her victory and had been a classmate in law school.
Not everyone was convinced. The county clerk sought an opinion from the county attorney general before moving forward with the paperwork to finalize McCulloch’s position. Then the defeated candidate persuaded the governor to delay signing the commission until the legal issues could be more thoroughly vetted. According to the man’s attorney, women were ineligible to hold all constitutional offices in the state because they were not voters. The lawyer claimed it would be “revolutionary and in defiance of established law” to let McCulloch hold the post, so the votes cast for her were “simply superfluous and irrelevant scribbling.” McCulloch countered that if the governor denied her commission, she would seek a special enactment from the legislature to authorize her service. Perhaps hoping for a clean escape from the controversy, the state attorney general advised the governor to grant the commission and leave the constitutional objection to the courts if the defeated candidate chose to pursue the matter.
A few weeks after the election, McCulloch finally received her commission. The Chicago Daily Tribune described her first day as “uneventful,” as she handled a few basic tasks. Illinois justices of the peace were low-level judicial officers who performed routine legal work, such as McCulloch’s first official act—taking acknowledgement of a mortgage on a piano. Justices oversaw civil litigation involving small sums and criminal cases for minor offenses, and they earned money by charging litigants small fees. When McCulloch held her first session on the bench a couple of weeks later, newspaper coverage painted her as prepared and competent and noted that many women, including suffrage leaders who campaigned for her, had come to watch. Her male competitor grumbled to the press for years that he would challenge her eligibility in court, but he never did. He instead tried to best her in the next election, losing yet again.
McCulloch was not particularly keen on the justice of the peace position. She repeatedly referred to it as lowly and humble, and she reported that it was not lucrative. Yet she sought the post and reelection because she recognized how the title supported her larger goals. She explained that her service affirmed women’s eligibility for other positions, provided a basis for pursuing higher judicial offices, encouraged women to enter the legal field, and did “more than anything that has happened in a long time for the cause of woman’s suffrage.” These arguments were not new; women had drawn these connections since entering judicial service in the 1870s. Subsequent developments supported McCulloch’s predictions. By the time she announced she would not seek a third term in January 1913, two other women were serving as justices of the peace in Illinois.
Later that year, Illinois enacted a partial women’s suffrage law that reflected nearly two decades of strategizing and campaigning by McCulloch and her allies. The statute, drafted by McCulloch, extended suffrage as far as possible absent a constitutional amendment. Illinois women could vote for president and nearly all city, county, and town offices. Ironically, the constitutional offices for which they still could not vote included justice of the peace.
This Article recovers the first decades of women’s remarkable service in the judiciary, contributing and exploring the most extensive list ever compiled of the United States’ early women judges. Women judges served in a special position of prominence in the development of women’s political and professional rights. Judicial posts were among the first public offices women secured, provoked the earliest legal holdings on women’s eligibility for public offices, and remained among the highest profile positions that women sought. Before ratification of the federal suffrage amendment in 1920, more than ninety women already had served as judges. Many more aspired to the role and ran viable campaigns. The number increased significantly thereafter. By 1930, the number of women who had served as judges had at least doubled. While a modest number relative to the number of men who served, these trailblazing officials were particularly visible and influential in women’s efforts to progress in the legal profession. Notably, these advancements occurred during decades when few states permitted women jurors.
Today nearly all the early women judges are forgotten. In historical accounts of women’s battles for legal, political, and professional equality, women judges rarely appear, especially in studies focused before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Scholarship claims or implies that few women served as judges prior to the federal suffrage amendment and emphasizes women’s underrepresentation into the 1970s and beyond. The conventional account aligns with a broader misconception that women rarely held public offices prior to the Nineteenth Amendment. This version of events reflects a common focus on federal laws and courts that overlooks the importance of state laws and state courts. In fact, women served in numerous posts—judicial and otherwise—prior to federal suffrage, including in full suffrage and non-suffrage states. Scholars’ severe undercounting of women judges and emphasis on their rarity misses women judges’ accomplishments and importance.
Women’s ability to secure judgeships varied by region, as was generally true for women’s officeholding. Women made the earliest progress in places where they won state-level suffrage, a development that spread from west to east. In a few states in the middle of the country, women were able to serve as judges before suffrage and even held elective judicial posts for which they could not vote. But in the Northeast and South, conservative gender politics and the perception that the legal profession was a masculine domain restricted women’s opportunities.
Blocked in their judicial ambitions, women in conservative regions advocated for new opportunities by arguing that women were superior to men in handling cases involving children, women, and families. One of the major developments that helped open the judiciary to women in these states was the creation of a new court official: the probation officer. In the early 1900s, courts hired increasing numbers of probation officers, especially in family courts and juvenile courts. Gender stereotypes helped women lawyers and social workers secure these posts, and judges and other stakeholders soon viewed them as indispensable. In some places, male judges assigned quasi-judicial powers to women probation officers, and newspapers described these officials as “judges.” Leading women lawyers and other proponents of women in the judiciary publicized the seemingly short and warranted step of elevating women serving as pseudo-judges to be official judges. This discourse overlapped with women’s increasing state-level enfranchisement, culminating in the placement of women on specialized court benches starting in the late 1910s. This proved to be an effective short-term strategy, but it constrained women’s opportunities in the longer term. Over the following decades, women served disproportionately on specialized court benches, especially in the states that were slowest to accept women judges.
Once women won full suffrage across the nation in 1920, women obtained judgeships in new places and in greater numbers. While these were important advancements, the percentage of the judiciary comprised of women remained low, and few women secured positions above the local trial court level into the 1930s. Thus, while the story of the first women judges is richer and more significant for women’s political and legal history than previously recognized, the early decades provided only a tentative start toward women’s meaningful and equal service.
I. Early Advocacy for Women in the Judiciary (1840–1880)
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, women’s movement leaders and their allies regularly described judicial posts as one of women’s aspirations. Judgeships were a particularly useful goal because the position combined professional and political elements, brought a prestigious title, and impliedly supported arguments for women’s suffrage. In many places, however, women’s legal eligibility to serve as judges was at best debatable.
Following the Civil War, a few trailblazing women tested the waters by securing appointments as justices of the peace. Although justice of the peace was a low-level judicial office, obtaining these posts was nevertheless a crucial step. Women’s service as justices drew attention to their capabilities and tested their eligibility in a manner that was relevant to other positions. The experiment was a partial success. By 1880, people across the nation were aware that women had served as capable judicial officers in some locations, especially in the West. But this same development prompted influential state supreme courts in the Northeast to rule women ineligible to serve throughout the judiciary.
A. Women’s Movement Leaders and Judicial Ambitions
When the women’s movement launched in the 1840s, women’s ability to serve in the judiciary was socially, politically, and legally dubious. Many state constitutions expressly limited all public officeholding to white men or accomplished that result by restricting offices to eligible voters. Moreover, judges were elected or appointed, depending on the location and category, and women lacked the political capital to secure positions.
Nevertheless, the promise of judgeships was not beyond the ambitions of the earliest women’s movement leaders. For example, in 1854, women’s rights advocate Elizabeth Oakes Smith delivered a lecture on “The Dignity of Labor” in her home state of Maine, asking: “But what is the sphere of woman? Shall she take her seat on the judicial bench, in the pulpit or at the bar?” After listing several other professional pursuits, she concluded, “Whatever she has the ability and capacity to do, it is right she should do.”
As the women’s movement gained traction after the Civil War, women’s interest in becoming judges served as a common example of women’s pursuit of political and professional rights. The Revolution, a newspaper published by leading suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, regularly featured commentary on women’s officeholding rights, including in the judiciary. For instance, in one 1868 column explaining the financial benefits of enfranchisement, Stanton opined: “Now, if woman had the ballot she would hold office, be President, Chief-Justice, judge, chaplain, lawyer, doctor of medicine and divinity, professor, soldier, sailor, be anything, go everywhere,” rather than being limited to a few types of lower paid labor. A few months later, the Revolution printed a letter to the editor that suggested women should strategically forgo demanding offices in order to make it easier to secure suffrage. The editors were unpersuaded and responded: “The fact that the ‘white male’ is beginning to concede the vote, while he turns up the whites of his eyes at the idea of women holding office shows us that it is good policy to demand everything, and then we shall be sure and get something.” They continued that “those of us who have brains do not propose to chop wood or dig ditches, but to be lawyers, judges, physicians, ministers, postmistresses, senators or president.” In sum, “[b]read and the ballot go together.”
In late 1869, the Revolution printed a condensed version of a speech that influential social reformer Henry Ward Beecher delivered at a women’s suffrage convention, in which he cast the possibility of women judges as an opening wedge for women officeholders. Listing and rejecting the antisuffragist arguments, Beecher observed that some people objected to women’s suffrage on the basis that women’s officeholding would follow. “Very well, what of it?” he posed. Only a capable woman would be selected, he maintained. His immediate example was the possibility of a woman judge. For example, “[h]er neighbors and her own grown up sons might put some great-browed, great-hearted [abolitionist and suffragist] Lucretia Mott in as justice of the peace, and she would settle two-thirds of the cases without opening a law book,” he proposed, before noting several other positions that women could hold as capably as men.
To early proponents of women’s rights, advocating for women in the judiciary was a logical fit with other political and professional goals. Women’s movement leaders recognized that judicial posts were attractive positions for individual women and held even higher value for the movement because of the respected place of judges in American society.
B. Women Justices of the Peace on Trial
Eighteen-seventy proved to be a watershed year for women’s officeholding prospects, with the position of justice of the peace drawing the most attention. Many observers celebrated the first woman to become a justice of the peace and anticipated that her service would open opportunities for other women. But her victory was short-lived, and eligibility challenges quickly quashed promising starts elsewhere in the nation. By the end of the decade, women’s future in the judiciary remained deeply unsettled.
In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, justices of the peace were township, county, or city level judicial officers who typically heard low-level civil suits and criminal cases, as well as officiating at weddings and performing other legal tasks. They did not need legal training or bar admission. States varied in whether justice of the peace was an elected or appointed post, but in either instance the position brought a level of distinction in the local community and an income dependent on the volume of cases. In some places selection as a justice of the peace came through a hotly contested election, while in other locations the post attracted minimal competition.
Women’s initial opportunity to serve as justices of the peace came shortly after Wyoming Territory became the first jurisdiction to grant women far-reaching political rights. On December 10, 1869, Wyoming Territory enacted an “ACT to grant to the women of Wyoming Territory the right of Suffrage and to hold office.” Though it does not seem women’s activism was a major contributor to the passage of this law, women’s suffrage proponents celebrated it as a crucial milestone. The following month, at the national suffrage meeting in Washington, D.C., Susan B. Anthony facetiously encouraged “all the women to emigrate to Wyoming, and make a model State of it by sending a woman Senator to the National Capital.”
Not everyone was impressed. About a week after the governor signed the law granting women political rights, a man serving as a justice of the peace in South Pass City, Wyoming, resigned from his position to protest the idea that a woman could serve in such a role. A few days later, a district court judge (a position above justice of the peace) proposed the appointment of Esther Morris to fill the vacant position. He persuaded Morris to complete the necessary paperwork, and on February 14, 1870, the local county commissioners voted two to one to forward her application to the governor.
Wyoming Territory’s acting governor promptly approved Morris’s appointment and sent her a letter congratulating her on being the first woman “ever” to hold judicial office. That same day, he issued a justice of the peace commission to Caroline Neil, followed by one to Francis Gallagher eleven days later. Coverage suggested that the appointment of “several ladies” to the position of justice of the peace demonstrated “that women suffrage reigns in all its glory” in the Territory. Legal challenges to the women’s eligibility for the office failed. However, for unknown reasons, it does not appear that Gallagher was sworn into office, and there are no records of Neil’s service. Thus, while the appointment of multiple women increased publicity, it was Morris’s tenure that received the most attention.
Morris’s performance as a justice of the peace was successful on many measures. According to Professor Marcy Karin’s careful research, Morris was supported in her judicial post by her sons, was respected in the community as a fair and efficient jurist, and received a greater share of the eligible legal work than the other (male) justice of the peace serving in the area. Though she had no legal training and minimal formal education, only two of the approximately seventy cases she decided were appealed. Both rulings were affirmed. A possible key to her success was that she was one of the oldest people living in South Pass, in her late fifties, which may have afforded authority and enhanced the effectiveness of her sometimes “motherly statements” to litigants.
Despite Morris’s largely positive reception, she was unable to secure the nomination of any political party to seek election to a new term. Moreover, her tenure was unusually short, just shy of nine months, because she had been appointed to complete the term of the judge who had resigned. Poignantly, she was replaced by that man. The local newspaper reported that the former acting governor regretted that people in Morris’s county “had not the good sense and judgment to nominate and elect her for the ensuing term.” The fact that men greatly outnumbered women in Wyoming may have reduced the viability of her candidacy.
After her term concluded, Morris made occasional appearances at women’s suffrage events to support the cause, with her success as a jurist supporting women’s arguments for greater political rights. In a letter Morris penned that was read at a women’s suffrage convention in the nation’s capital, she observed that “[c]ircumstances ha[d] transpired to make [her] position as Justice of the Peace a test of woman’s ability to hold public office.” She provided a largely positive account of her service, before commenting on the “advance” women made in securing the vote.
At least some naysayers viewed Morris’s short experiment as dangerous. According to a column printed in multiple newspapers, Morris’s selection reflected a troubling effort by some women, “not content to be either male or female,” to take on roles properly reserved for men and to thereby become a “third sex.” The writer suggested that this unsettling of gender expectations “might be laughed out of Court, literally, if it did not seriously interfere with the administration of justice.” Views like these help explain why several women who sought election as justices of the peace in Wyoming in the remainder of the 1870s failed to secure sufficient votes, though voters elected at least one woman to the post.
Elsewhere in the country, women received support from politicians, journalists, women’s movement leaders, and voters to serve as justices of the peace, but results differed due to eligibility questions. About a week before Morris was commissioned, newspapers across the country reported that Amelia Hobbs had won an election against two men to serve as justice of the peace in Jersey Landing, Illinois, making her the first woman elected to office in that state. Notably, she was elected before women could vote. In the words of a Pennsylvania publication, “Justice is always represented as a woman, and now is represented by one.” Her neighbors may have trusted her for the role because, like Morris, she was among the oldest in her community at age seventy.
But male voters’ confidence was insufficient to guarantee her the spot; legal eligibility was a prerequisite. The Chicago Legal News, recently founded by Myra Bradwell, reported that Hobbs had won “a fair contest,” and that her “opponent is too gallant to contest her election on the ground she is a woman.” The writer, likely Bradwell herself, was not optimistic that this gallantry would be sufficient. “It therefore remains to be seen,” the writer continued, “who will volunteer to stifle the voice of the people.” The answer soon came: the state’s attorney general, who determined women were ineligible for the office.
A few months later, Indiana’s Noblesville Ledger reported a rumor that a woman in an Indiana county planned to run for the justice post. “The lady referred to,” the brief entry informed readers, “is a woman of more than ordinary judgement and talent, and would personally command a respect not usually accorded to the man she will probably succeed.” The writer further observed that this possibility would hold broader significance, as it would “open up the entire question of woman’s right to hold office.” Subsequent newspaper silence indicates the woman was not selected, yet her potential service helped awaken readers to this possibility.
Women’s progress in the Northeast initially seemed more promising but soon prompted court opinions that imposed long-lasting legal roadblocks. In the final months of 1870, the governor of Maine appointed three women to serve as justices of the peace, and they began their service. Notably, justices of the peace in Maine had limited authority compared to those in many other states. They administered oaths, took depositions, acknowledged deeds, and officiated marriages, but they did not hold trials. Media coverage of these appointments leaned favorable, though some commenters expressed concern about women moving into men’s positions.
The following May, the governor of Massachusetts nominated prominent suffragist Julia Ward Howe and successful conveyancer Mary E. Stevens to serve as justices of the peace. Press suggested that Howe’s interest in the role was “for the sake of establishing a principle,” while for Stevens the position would be professionally advantageous. For the governor, the appointments were just one of many efforts in furtherance of women’s legal rights and political opportunities.
The appointments received a mixed reception in the press. According to one skeptical commenter, it should not be a problem for a woman to take on such a role because justices of the peace in Massachusetts (similar to Maine) did not have jurisdiction over criminal cases; the position typically consisted of “taking affidavits and acknowledgment of deeds,” as well as solemnizing marriages. These were “simple acts, requiring neither learning nor experience beyond the range of any very moderately intelligent woman.” For the same reason, the writer considered the office of “very little importance.” Another intoned that if the governor found it “necessary or expedient to appoint some woman to some office, to show sympathy with ‘the cause,’ why not have taken one more congenial to a woman’s tastes (as we should suppose), a position on some State Board, for instance?”
Other commenters saw more promise and significance in the governor’s appointments. For instance, one writer acknowledged that justice of the peace was a “very honorable, but, nevertheless, not very distinguished office,” yet recognized that it might be “only a stepping stone to something higher.” That writer predicted eligibility objections, arguing that the state’s constitution did not allow women to be justices of the peace and that affirming eligibility would mean women could even serve as the chief justice of the state’s supreme court—a possibility the writer found implausible. Outside the Northeast, the appointments inspired optimistic commentary. For example, a newspaper in Arkansas reported that the Massachusetts “precedent” prompted the Tennessee governor to appoint a woman as the state librarian.
The governor’s nominations required the approval of the Executive Council, whose members formally raised the question of women’s eligibility. The governor and council then solicited advice from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The court responded in June 1871, with a single-paragraph opinion proclaiming that women could not hold any judicial office included in the state’s constitution. The court maintained that excluding women from the post was supported by “[t]he law of Massachusetts at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the whole frame and purport of the instrument itself, and the universal understanding and unbroken practical construction for the greater part of a century afterwards.”
At a Fourth of July meeting a few days after the opinion was released, suffragists including Lucy Stone forcefully condemned it. Stone proclaimed that “she was saddened by and indignant at the recent disgraceful decision,” and she “wanted to make these Judges odious in society.” The group adopted several resolutions that proclaimed that the governor and his council had the sole authority to select justices of the peace, the court’s opinion was not rooted in the state’s constitution or statutes, and the governor should still appoint Howe and Stevens “and leave with the Supreme Court the responsibility of invalidating it after having heard the case duly argued by the parties interested.” Another speaker claimed that the court’s “foolish decision” reflected their “personal interest in this matter.” He speculated that “[t]he Justices probably thought that if women became Justices of the Peace, they would next demand to sit on the Supreme Bench, and then they would be displaced.”
Condemnation of the Massachusetts result spread across newspapers and magazines. The National Aegis, published in Massachusetts, quoted an influential women’s rights supporter who proposed that men teach the court “a salutary lesson by electing a worthy female to the highest office in the Commonwealth,” adding that Howe “would make as good a governor as any candidate yet named.” Coverage in the Chicago Tribune observed that the rejection of Stevens for the justice role was anomalous because she was permitted to perform the more complex tasks of researching centuries-old real estate titles and drafting legal papers.
A writer at the Woman’s Journal employed sarcasm to drive home a critique of the opinion. Responding to the supposed argument that a major obstacle to women judges would be men’s aversion to being sentenced by women, the writer retorted:
Now as judges are always appointed with special reference to the taste and preferences of the criminals to be sentenced, it is, evidently, utterly hopeless, in such a state of things, for woman to ever aspire to judicial honor. Besides that, it is a perfectly patent fact that citizens do so very much “want to be sentenced” by a man! Else why are our police courts and records so crowded?
The article appeared immediately above one that reported on a speech delivered by the Wyoming acting governor who had commissioned Esther Morris as a justice the previous year. Pointing to Morris’s service and other developments, the man stated that “Wyoming claimed the credit of putting in practice the great principle of the political equality of women, while other communities had only discussed it, and she was pleased with the result.”
The following year, women’s rights supporters petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for an act declaring women eligible to hold public offices. Proponents preferred this route over seeking a suffrage constitutional amendment, which they believed would implicitly carry the right to hold office, because they expected that securing an amendment would “occupy two or three years, and perhaps longer.” In support of their proposal, Henry B. Blackwell (a suffragist married to Lucy Stone) read statements describing Esther Morris’s effective service to emphasize how progress in Western states demonstrated women’s capacity. Opponents responded by claiming it would harm families for women to hold office, and they also maintained that the rule should be changed only by constitutional amendment. The legislature did not act on the proposal at that time.
A few years later, Maine backtracked on its earlier allowance of women justices, after its governor asked the Supreme Court of Maine to determine a woman’s eligibility. Though the previous governor’s appointments of women to the post had not provoked controversy, commenters questioned the validity of the new nomination, probably because of the Massachusetts holding. Commentary indicated that the question was highly symbolic and stood in for the issue of women’s rights more broadly.
Over the protests of three dissenting justices, the Maine Supreme Court followed Massachusetts in prohibiting women justices of the peace. The majority ruled that women were ineligible for all offices listed in the constitution because the document (partially adopted from Massachusetts) had been “the work of its male citizens,” and “it was never in the contemplation or intention of those forming” the document that there could be women officers. The legislature could, however, create new offices open to women. The dissenters faulted the majority for imposing restrictions without textual support and for halting the steady progress of women’s rights. Since women were admitted to the state’s bar the previous year and permitted to hold positions including school superintendent and register of deeds, the dissenters maintained that it was inconsistent to exclude women from the judiciary.
Maine’s legislature agreed with the dissenting justices’ view that women could serve capably in the justice of the peace role. In line with the majority’s observation that the legislature was empowered to create new offices not bound by the same eligibility constraints, the legislature authorized the governor to appoint women to solemnize marriages and acknowledge deeds but without the “justice” title. The governor promptly nominated a handful of women to this post. As women in Maine continued to obtain this position over the following decades, commenters, legislators, and the women themselves recognized that women in this role were justices of the peace in all but name. Massachusetts took a similar approach. The legislature passed statutes in 1883 and 1896 that extended most justice of the peace powers to women appointed as “special commissioners,” colloquially referred to as “justices of the peace.”
The initial specter of women judicial officers also led to preemptive moves to exclude women in some states. During Michigan’s constitutional commission in 1873, participants debated whether to permit women to hold offices in the state’s revised constitution. Even some men who were open to allowing women to hold positions they viewed as gender appropriate, such as school and library offices, thought judicial offices would be a step too far. One representative proposed language that would open to women all offices except judicial. The final version permitted women citizens to serve as registers of deeds, notaries public, in school and library offices, and in “such other offices as may be designated by law.” Michigan voters rejected the whole constitution.
In sum, the initial excitement surrounding women justices of the peace selected in 1870 was cut short, as voters rejected eligible candidates in some locations and male officials and politicians swiftly used law to shut down the possibility in others. Though the 1870s proved to be an important decade for women in some states to secure legal eligibility for offices including lawyer, notary public, state librarian, and school official, even the lowest judicial posts proved to be almost completely unobtainable.
II. Suffrage and the Regional Divide in Women’s Judicial Service (1881–1919)
Beginning in the 1880s, a regional divide developed in women’s access to judicial posts. In the Midwest and West, where women could vote in an increasing number of states, women secured judicial positions including justice of the peace, probate judge, and county judge. Most women judges earned their positions through elections, though frequent vacancies allowed governors and appointing bodies to select women as well. Many women candidates wished only to earn a living, while some (especially lawyers) recognized how their positions furthered women’s broader political agenda. By the 1910s, women in these regions aspired to states’ higher courts and ran respectable though unsuccessful campaigns.
Meanwhile in the Northeast and South, conservative gender norms and stricter eligibility rules kept judicial positions beyond women’s grasp. Seeking entry points into the legal profession, some women became court officials through a nontraditional path: they served as the country’s first probation officers. Women probation officers were especially welcome in specialized courts focused on women, children, and families. Recognizing the crucial and sometimes even quasi-judicial role that women probation officers played in specialized courts, women lawyers pressed for their states to authorize women judges. Finally, in the late 1910s, proponents scored a telling victory, when a small number of women were appointed as judges for specialized court benches.
A. Successes in the Midwest and West: Votes for Women Judges
After a lull in women’s progress in entering the judiciary, women in the Midwest and West obtained judgeships in bursts from the mid-1880s into the 1890s and starting again around 1910. The most crucial factor was the spread of state-level suffrage, which proceeded from west to east. Suffrage brought or clarified eligibility and empowered women candidates. Some women secured judicial offices even before enfranchisement, reflecting the fact that gender norms were less rigid than in the East. Nearly all the positions that women obtained were at the bottom of the judicial hierarchy. These offices did not require a law degree, and only a small portion of title holders brought such credentials. Instead, one path women followed to become judges was to first serve as judicial assistants, clerks, or stenographers. Sometimes they held these positions to assist judges who were their husbands and then assumed the judgeships after their husbands died. Positive publicity covering women’s experiences inspired new waves of women to pursue judgeships. Experiences varied. Many women held judicial posts on similar footing to men, but a minority faced disrespect and even insubordination. By the 1910s, women in these regions aspired to higher judicial offices, including states’ highest courts and federal courts.
The gradual spread of women’s suffrage was a major factor in sparking tentative new judicial opportunities. Washington Territory’s extension of full suffrage to women in 1883 brought the election of two women as justices of the peace in November 1884. News traveled far. For instance, a letter to the editor published in a newspaper in England reported the elections and observed: “Few thoughtful people will deny that this is a step in the right direction.” Colorado’s full enfranchisement of women in 1893 led women to run for judicial offices there, beginning with justice of the peace in 1894. Idaho’s full enfranchisement of women in 1896 helped a woman secure election as a justice of the peace in 1902. Newspapers soon carried positive accounts of her performance presiding over an assault and battery trial. According to one journalist, “Her conduct of the case was dignified and her rulings and decisions marked by a degree of fairness that called for and met the approval of the learned attorneys on both sides.” The writer observed that this episode established “the judicial ability of woman.” Meanwhile, back in Wyoming, several additional women ran for justice of the peace, and some were elected. Though few women served as judges in this period, the coverage they received helped spread the idea that women could serve competently in new political and professional roles.
The relationship between suffrage and officeholding was more complex in Kansas. Women successfully held school offices in the 1870s, overcoming challengers who alleged women were ineligible on the basis that women could not vote. In one of those cases, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Brewer wrote for the Kansas Supreme Court that women were eligible to hold any public office that the state’s constitution did not explicitly limit to voters. For support, Brewer cited the opinion of the Maine justices who dissented from their court’s ruling that women were ineligible to be justices of the peace.
In 1886, the Kansas governor asked the state’s attorney general whether women could be justices of the peace. The attorney general responded affirmatively. Women were citizens, and officeholding provisions in the constitution lacked the sex qualifications specified for suffrage. Commenters found this conclusion logical. One writer observed that permitting women justices “is only the extended application of a settled rule.”
Newspaper articles indicate that the spark for the justice of the peace eligibility question was the Kansas governor’s desire to appoint Maria DeGeer, a successful lawyer, newspaper editor, and businesswoman. According to one account, DeGeer was interested in the position for two reasons: to regulate the whisky business in her town, “and second, she is an advocate of ‘woman’s rights’ and loses no opportunity to push that doctrine to the front and to put in practice what she preaches.” Though news coverage is somewhat inconsistent, it seems that the governor appointed DeGeer’s brother before learning of her likely eligibility. Later that year, DeGeer claimed significant speaking time at the annual meeting of the American Equal Suffrage Association, which met in Topeka and also featured Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.
Kansan suffragists finally won a partial victory in February 1887, with the enactment of “An Act conferring upon women the right to vote at city elections, and to hold certain offices.” Effective immediately, women could vote for city and school officers, and they were eligible for those same offices. Impliedly this meant they could not vote for town, county, or state officers, yet the law arguably left untouched the precedent that women could hold offices for which they could not vote. The statute soon translated into more women city officers, including the first woman police judge (with jurisdiction over violations of city ordinances) in 1889. The following year, a newspaper article that gathered reporting from around the world concluded that Kansas was “the Paradise of Women” because of women’s political and professional achievements, including the election of a woman police judge. By 1896, around a half-dozen women had been elected to serve as police judges in Kansas, including some elected on all-women tickets.
Perhaps inspired by the growing number of women judges in neighboring jurisdictions, women in non-suffrage states in the Midwest and West also sought judicial office. For instance, in Nebraska, Zara Wilson—a lawyer and supporter of women’s rights—took the bold steps of running first for county attorney in 1892 and then for county judge in 1894. In 1897, the Liberty Party, which included equal suffrage as one of its major planks, selected Wilson as their nominee for the state’s highest court. Citing Wilson’s advocacy for women’s suffrage and property rights, one newspaper writer deemed her “in an especial sense most fully qualified for the high office for which she is named.” Though she did not win any of the positions she sought, her campaigns raised awareness of women’s ambitions and capabilities.
In other non-suffrage states in the Midwest, women sometimes succeeded in winning the justice of the peace position. Long-time suffragist Catherine McCulloch paved the way when she was elected as a justice of the peace in Illinois in 1907. Once she set this precedent, other women in Illinois were able to obtain the position without eligibility queries.
McCulloch’s victory also may have reassured county commissioners in non-suffrage Indiana about their decision to appoint Clara Hess as a justice of the peace later that same year. A newspaper article reported that fifty voters petitioned the county commissioners to appoint Hess. After securing the county attorney’s opinion that there was no legal impediment, the commissioners went ahead. A state-level official responsible for issuing her commission also questioned her eligibility, prompting the governor to weigh in that he saw “no reason why a woman should not serve as a justice of the peace.” That perspective opened the opportunity for another woman to run for circuit court judge in Indiana the following year. She made a respectable showing but lost.
In states where women had not yet held judicial office, they sometimes found opportunities to prove their competency by serving in temporary positions. A representative example is the service of Mayme Graham in 1905. Graham worked capably as a clerk to a Nebraska county judge for six years, so the county board appointed her to serve as a substitute judge during his monthlong absence for travel. Newspaper coverage deemed her “well qualified,” and reported that her friends anxiously awaited the day they could greet her as “the first lady Judge of Nebraska.” Similarly, court reporter Olga Melinda Victoria Miller was celebrated as the first woman judge in New Mexico Territory in 1910, after she served as judge pro tem during the regular judge’s absence. Newspaper coverage suggested she “demonstrated a good knowledge of law” and had been praised by the mayor.
Women’s service as judges was not always seen as a success. In some locations, women’s elections were reported as a “joke” or the result of an unusual plot, and some quit after short periods. One episode that captures these negative themes was reported in a lengthy article in the Indianapolis News, covering the unsuccessful service of Kansas police judge Jesse Greer and the other women elected to posts on the same ticket in 1890. The article began: “After a stormy and wholly unsatisfactory career of less than two months the female officials of this town have thrown off the yoke of office and gone home to attend to their knitting.” The backstory, according to the reporter, was that a former mayor who lost office due to women’s organizing submitted the all-women ticket in an act he expected to play out as revenge. Then, surprisingly, the women embraced their nominations and were elected. Though the accuracy of the account is unclear, it may have influenced readers’ views on the desirability of women officeholders.
On the other hand, candidacies that allegedly began as a prank had the potential to encourage serious consideration of women as judges, even outside the relatively favorable regions of the Midwest and West. For instance, the initial coverage of Ada Reed’s election as justice of the peace in Pennsylvania in 1884 characterized her win as “a joke.” Yet reportedly, Reed accepted the position “with good grace” and completed the necessary paperwork. Subsequent reporting described her as a “very respectable and intelligent lady, who will make a capable Justice.” And more significantly, this episode provided an opportunity for a newspaper writer to opine that “every office in the land ought to be open to women like Mrs. Reed” because “[a]bility not sex should be the necessary passport to office.” But more was needed than favorable public opinion. About a month after news of her election, a newspaper quoted Reed as acknowledging that she had not performed any work as a justice yet because “[t]he legality of my holding the office is likely to be tested.” Subsequent silence in available newspapers, as well as Pennsylvania’s broader officeholding history, suggests she was unable to hold the position.
The joke theme was just one indication that the specter of women justices of the peace was on the minds of antisuffragist men. Even Congressmen were concerned. In 1887, one of the most vocal opponents of women’s suffrage in Congress detailed his “aversion” to women’s officeholding (implicitly linked to suffrage) by comparing the “gentle words and caressing hand” of a deceased mother to “the idea of a female justice of the peace or [a] township constable.”
After decades in which the only attainable judicial posts for women were justice of the peace and police judge, women began to secure more competitive and distinguished posts by completing the terms of their late husbands. This trend began in Kansas in 1908. After a probate judge died, the governor faced a dilemma in choosing between two men who stepped forward as candidates. The governor circumvented this problem by appointing the judge’s wife, Mary Cooper. According to newspaper coverage, Cooper had served as “deputy probate judge” to assist her husband and therefore “thoroughly [understood] the work of the office.” The governor explained that he “decided that if Mrs. Cooper was so valuable in the office there was no reason why she should not be appointed herself.”After seeking legal guidance, he was satisfied that she was eligible, despite the fact that the municipal suffrage women had secured did not include voting for this position. Press coverage was positive, with one representative article observing that “[t]his appointment will meet with the approval of every one.”
Several months later, coverage indicated Cooper’s performance had been “thoroughly competent,” prompting the Republican party to select her in their primary. In the general election, she won the office by a large margin. As Cooper continued her service, newspapers published beyond the state reassured readers that Cooper had “lost none of her feminine traits.”
Cooper’s positive reception helped pave the way for the next Kansas governor to appoint Helen McClung as a probate judge to complete the term of her late husband. Cooper sent a congratulatory letter to her new colleague, and the “sister” probate judges continued corresponding in the following years. McClung was also elected to a new term, though she resigned for unknown reasons in 1911. Pointing to Cooper’s and McClung’s successful service, as evidenced in part by their elections, subsequent Kansas governors continued to appoint women to complete their late husbands’ terms. Moreover, once women’s capacity to serve as probate judges was established in Kansas, women achieved election without relying on their husbands’ legacies.
The opportunity to succeed a late husband smoothed the way for a woman judge in neighboring Colorado, too. In February 1911, Lydia Tague became the country’s first female county judge, after county commissioners selected her to complete her late husband’s term. Newspaper coverage detailed how Tague’s assistance of her husband prepared her for the role, with one early account suggesting she had “done most of the work” for the prior five years. The daughter of a judge, Tague had no formal legal training but told a reporter she was “reading law” (a common alternative to law school in these years) and thought she might take the bar exam in the future. She supported women’s involvement in politics, noting she had voted in every election since women’s enfranchisement in Colorado eighteen years earlier. Her docket included a variety of matters, including probate, divorce, and occasionally criminal cases.
In the case that garnered the most publicity, Tague presided over a bootlegging trial, which was heard by a jury that included women. Coverage of her role was largely complimentary. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Tague had “a great capacity for work” and was “careful, conscientious and quick to grasp difficult points of law and technicalities, according to lawyers who have appeared before her.” Those lawyers deemed her “fair and impartial,” though the reporter believed she leaned toward the prosecution in some of her rulings and jury instructions. That Coloradans were satisfied with her service is reflected by their decision to reelect her three times.
Appointment to late male relatives’ posts proved to be a useful opening wedge in non-suffrage states, too, yet these advances proved more fleeting. The first two women judges in Missouri served to complete the terms of a deceased husband or father. Their stories began similarly to those in Kansas and Colorado. Newspaper coverage emphasized their preparedness for the roles based on their prior service. For instance, a journalist explained that Isabelle Earll had served as her husband’s clerk and stenographer for six years before she assumed his position as justice of the peace.
Positive news coverage quoted Earll as saying she was initially “nervous” when she took the office, “but [she] soon grew accustomed to it.” Among other matters, she heard over one hundred criminal cases, though she reported that police avoided bringing “the worst cases” to her court. Sometimes unexpectedly indelicate testimony came out, but she professed to not really notice. “I guess I forget that I’m a woman and they are men,” she explained. “You see I’m so busy thinking of it as a justice.” Though she lost her bid for election at the end of the term, local officials kept her involved with the court by appointing her as a deputy constable, a secretarial role.
It was not a given that women would be permitted to finish their relatives’ terms, and eligibility questions contributed to derailing some women’s candidacies. For instance, in 1912, the widow of a Missouri probate judge received significant support for completing his term, with “prominent men” withdrawing from consideration when they learned she had applied to the governor. However, one former judge interested in the position reached out to the governor “in case it was deemed unwise” to appoint the woman. When that man was selected, newspaper coverage suggested that the woman’s application was not accepted because some feared that a woman presiding as probate judge would cast “a cloud” on land titles.
A burst of suffrage wins in the 1910s added momentum to women’s increasing judicial service. After more than a decade with no new full-suffrage states, women secured full suffrage in Washington (1910), California (1911), Arizona (1912), Kansas (1912), Oregon (1912), Montana (1914), and Nevada (1914). Several states’ constitutional amendments explicitly included the right to hold office, while in others that result was reached by implication. The officeholding consequences were quick in some states, with women selected as judges in several for the first time. Women became justices of the peace in California in 1912, Washington in 1912, Montana in 1915, and Arizona in 1918.
Kansas’s 1912 constitutional amendment upgraded women from municipal to full suffrage and expressly included equal officeholding rights. The combined effect was to increase the number of women in judicial posts, even before women had the chance to exercise the suffrage component. Between the time the amendment passed in 1912, and when women could vote for all officials in November 1914, the governor appointed the state’s first woman justice of the peace. Because justice of the peace was a township-level position, women could not vote for it during the prior period of municipal-only suffrage. When a vacancy opened in Spring 1914, Lura Middaugh, a stenographer with legal training, sought the position. “With equal suffrage in Kansas,” an early report explained, “the woman urged that she was qualified for the office.” The governor agreed and selected her.
When Kansan women first exercised full suffrage at the polls a few months later, nineteen women were elected as justices of the peace and four as probate judges. Many more obtained other types of offices. This trend continued the following election cycle. In 1916, Kansan women secured so many offices that a headline suggested: Kansas Women Office-Seekers Worry the Men.
In campaigning for the probate bench, some Kansan women emphasized the probate judge’s secondary role as juvenile court judge and made gendered arguments about their own qualifications with varying degrees of explicitness. For instance, in 1914, Mary Hale placed a newspaper ad informing readers that the “important office of Probate Judge should be filled by one who is especially fitted by training and character to handle the work of the Juvenile Court.” The text continued: “Miss Hale is not only interested in the development of the work of Juvenile Court, but in all the other and better known duties of the office.” She was “honest, clean, and honorable in every way, always lending a hand to the unfortunate.” She won. A more deeply gendered argument by another woman candidate that same election cycle did not persuade voters. Blanche Love suggested that the probate judge’s responsibility for orphan children meant that motherhood helped prepare a person to hold the office. The tagline of her ads read: “An office a lady can fill.” Apparently, voters believed it was also an office a man could fill, given that they elected her male opponent.
Other than Kansas, the state with the greatest number of women judges in the 1910s was California. Perhaps for that reason, newspaper coverage of California women judges reveals particularly varied experiences. Some held office without apparent issue, later seeking and winning reelection. Others encountered numerous problems.
The experiences of the first woman selected to serve as a California judge in her own right provides an early discouraging example. In April 1912, Dale City trustees selected stenographer Clara Jess to serve as recorder, a role similar to police judge that included concurrent jurisdiction as justice of the peace. Jess told reporters that she appreciated the “honor” of being the first woman to sit as a judge in the state, and she would try all cases “in accordance with law and justice.” Six months into her service, she found the role more challenging than anticipated. Although she was popular with women litigants who appreciated her sympathetic stance, she found that some men had “a thousand petty little ways of making it hard.” They acted disrespectfully in her courtroom and called her “madam” instead of “judge.” But the most problematic interaction was with her court marshal, who reportedly disliked seeing a woman in a position of authority. When he refused to serve a warrant she ordered, she jailed him for contempt of court. Still, she maintained an optimistic view of women’s potential, suggesting that she set her sights on a higher judicial position. Ultimately, however, the difficulties proved too much. She resigned after the first year.
Although no woman obtained a judicial position above the justice of the peace level in California in this period, Lucy Goode White, a great-niece of Chief Justice John Marshall, became the first woman nominated to the California Superior Court in 1912. In the primaries, over 7,000 people voted for White, which secured her the eighth and final position on the ballot. After this initial victory, a newspaper interview recorded her efforts to navigate being a high-profile woman candidate. Goode’s comments alternated between emphasizing the importance of women’s representation and tentatively suggesting that women might judge in a meaningfully distinctive way. For instance, she offered that “women have a greater sense of responsibility than men” and could better understand the suffering of litigants because of suffering that women endured. She also offered that she wished to be a judge in part because of the stories Justice Marshall told her as a child, including “his condemnation of the domination of our courts by the ‘dead hand of precedent.’” She concluded that if San Francisco voters elected her, “it will be because they too feel with old John Marshall that the dead hand of precedent has gotten hold of our courts and that perhaps a woman pioneer may be able to set them free.”
Unfortunately for Goode, her chances diminished greatly when she was refused admission to the California bar following an oral examination. Newspapers reported that this development came as a “surprise,” given Goode’s prior admission to the bar in Illinois, her extensive experience as a law clerk and stenographer, and the support she received from several “prominent and careful attorneys” of the local bar. However, the articles do not hint at foul play. Whatever the reason the examining judges denied her admittance, it tanked her prospects for election because she was no longer eligible to hold the position.
Women in the Midwest and West also set their ambitions to states’ highest courts, sometimes to make a statement and other times based on a real expectation that they could be elected. The first was likely Kate Kane, a lawyer who made a symbolic run for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1883, only four years after women were allowed to practice before that bench. Next came Ada Bittenbender, who was the Prohibitionist candidate for Nebraska’s Supreme Court in 1887 and 1893. Bittenbender was the state’s only woman lawyer and served as president of the state’s women’s suffrage association. Although it does not seem anyone expected her to be elected, her campaign prompted discussion of women’s competence and eligibility.
The campaign for a state supreme court position that received the most traction in this period was Lizzie Sheldon’s run for the Kansas Supreme Court in 1914. Sheldon was a prominent lawyer with over a decade of practice experience. She was also credited with writing Kansas’s full suffrage constitutional amendment, which explicitly included officeholding rights. During her campaign for the state’s high court, she explained to reporters: “To many people the idea of a woman justice is incomprehensible, but it is really but the logical outgrowth” of coeducation and women’s acceptance in law practice. Her talking points included that she wanted to “shakeup” the court and, more specifically, she supported temperance and advocated for broader application of the constitutional provision for equal protection. In the first Kansas primaries in which women could participate in selecting nominees for the state’s high court, Sheldon won a spot on the ballot alongside five men. At the election that November, the top three candidates secured positions. Sheldon was not among them. She made a respectable showing but received the fewest votes of the six candidates. Press suggested that it was generally believed that she would try again, but she never did.
More rarely, women set their sights on federal benches. For instance, in Washington, where women served as judges beginning in the 1880s, suffrage leaders advocated for the appointment of a woman to a vacancy in the Western District of Washington in 1912. Their demand was plausible, albeit unsuccessful, in contrast to the federal ambitions of women in the East. That same year, women lawyers in the nation’s capital advocated for a woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Women in the Midwest and West made meaningful advancements as judges in the years before the federal suffrage amendment and sometimes even before full suffrage in their own states. Most obtained judicial positions with general albeit low-level jurisdiction and held court on terms similar to men. Men vested with the powers to appoint or elect judicial candidates recognized that women were capable and ready to serve in these important roles.
B. Slow Progress in the Northeast and South: Women Judges on Probation
In the Northeast and South, women’s progress toward securing judgeships stalled. Unable to win suffrage and faced with state supreme court cases ruling women ineligible to hold public offices, women had little power or standing to demand access to judicial posts. Still, they tried. Beginning in the 1910s, women lawyers led an increasingly organized and sustained campaign, recognizing that exclusion from the judiciary was a political and professional affront. Efforts concentrated in New York, where a significant number of women lawyers lived. Many advocates leaned heavily on gendered arguments about women’s supposedly superior ability to serve in new specialized courts focused on families, women, and children. Pointing to the service of probation officers, some of whom were lawyers, proponents gradually built the case for placing women on judicial benches. Over time, the deeply gendered service of probation officers in specialized courts provided a path—rhetorically and literally—for women to become judges. This nationwide trend proved particularly useful in the most conservative regions.
In the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, women thwarted by law and gender norms from pursuing traditional careers in the “masculine” legal field found a new court-related opportunity by serving as probation officers. States across the country passed probation statutes to authorize investigation and oversight of criminal defendants beginning in the 1890s. From the earliest experiments with this penal surveillance method, judges tasked women with serving as probation officers in cases involving children and women because of stereotypes about women’s maternal nature and expected ability to serve as role models. Indeed, some women interested in legal careers chose probation because they (or their families) perceived working as a lawyer as too masculine. Women’s successes in rehabilitating young and female probationers received widespread publicity, which led court officials, politicians, and women’s groups in other locations to propose trying this approach. Judges and other stakeholders soon viewed women probation officers as indispensable.
Crucially, women’s eligibility to serve as probation officers rarely faced legal challenges for a few reasons. First, the position of probation officer was not rooted in state constitutions or historical practices. It was a recent creation, free from the eligibility constraints of traditional offices. Second, in some locations, women eased into the role. They began as volunteers and gradually transitioned to government salaries after proving their value. And finally, men typically did not have a personal stake in rendering women ineligible, given that probation work was largely sex-specific.
The embrace of women as probation officers coincided with and influenced the adoption of specialized courts to hear matters focused on children, women, and families. In 1899, Chicago opened the country’s first juvenile court to focus on juvenile delinquency and dependency cases. From its earliest days, the Chicago court relied on the service of women probation officers, a development that one commenter described as “a new era in criminal procedure as well as in the advance of women.” By 1910, the court’s probation staff included thirty-three women and only two men. As the juvenile court model spread rapidly across the country, so too did support for women probation officers.
Judicial enthusiasm for women serving as juvenile probation officers was on full display in the only two appellate cases that considered women’s eligibility to serve in the position. Both times the litigation began when a government official refused to pay the salary of a woman who had already been serving as a probation officer. In 1912, a county auditor in California refused to compensate a woman serving in a juvenile court since 1911, on the basis that the probation statute limited the office to voters. A California court agreed “[w]ith great reluctance” that due “solely to an oversight,” the legislature failed “to remove the disability of women [as non-voters] to fill this important office, in the performance of the duties of which she is peculiarly fitted.” The court further observed: “It is impossible to accomplish [the goals of the juvenile court] without the aid and assistance of women ready and willing to sacrifice their personal comfort and ease for the good and welfare, not only of such dependent children, but for the good of society in general.” The court then expressed relief that this was a temporary blip: “Fortunately the disability due to the omission on the part of the Legislature has been removed by the [recent state] constitutional amendment extending the franchise.”
In 1918, the West Virginia Supreme Court struggled valiantly to justify paying a woman for her work as a juvenile probation officer. Women in that state were ineligible to hold any county office. However, the court reasoned that while probation officers technically were authorized to perform tasks reserved to county officers, it would not be necessary for them to do so, and thus they did not fall under the “county officer” rules. The court offered: “Grammatical use of words need not be adhered to in construing a deed where a contrary intent is apparent from the whole instrument,” and “and” could be construed as “or” to further legislative intent. In a more persuasive part of the opinion, the court analogized probation officers to lawyers, masters in chancery, and similar offices that other states had allowed women to hold.
As women probation officers secured a foothold in the nation’s juvenile courts, women’s rights advocates and newspaper writers blurred the line between probation officers and judges and pointed to probation officers’ service to advocate for official women judges. In New York City, the service of probation officers was a major talking point when lawyers, social workers, and judges debated the desirability of appointing a woman judge to hear girls’ cases in the “children’s court,” the juvenile court division of the criminal court system. According to one proponent, it was a common practice for a woman probation officer to serve as a “go-between” for a male judge, a delinquent girl, and the girl’s mother, in order to avoid embarrassing conversations. It made sense to streamline the process by installing a woman judge instead. Men serving as children’s court judges acknowledged their reliance on women probation officers but argued that there was no need for women judges.
One children’s court judge instead proposed the appointment of women as “referees,” an idea implemented in other places. A “referee” was similar to a master in chancery. Typically, the position involved hearing testimony, developing findings, and providing recommendations to a judge.
To support the women judges proposal, some New York commenters highlighted the service of Chicago “judge” Mary Bartelme. Bartelme was a lawyer who had advocated for the creation of the Chicago juvenile court. After years of involvement with that court, Bartelme became an unofficial “assistant judge” for girls’ cases in 1912.
The press often obscured the fact that Bartelme’s position was not a real judgeship under state law. For example, in the days leading up to her selection, newspapers reported that a woman attorney (probably Bartelme) would be selected as “an assistant” to the juvenile court judge, would act as “a sort of master in chancery,” and would technically be appointed as a probation officer, with her salary supplemented by private sources. After Bartelme’s appointment, writers dropped that level of nuance and instead described her as “the first woman judge Chicago has ever had.” Bartelme contributed to this blurring, adopting the title of “judge” without qualifiers. She also used her position to advocate for women judges on specialized court benches, writing: “Personally, I believe a woman of good judgement and legal training should be able to handle more efficiently and justly than a man the cases that arise in a juvenile court, morals court or a court of domestic relations.”
Chicago’s model of appointing a woman as a pseudo-judge in the juvenile court spread to other cities, including St. Louis. In 1914, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a lengthy Sunday story, above the fold and with pictures, on How Our New Women Juvenile Judges Run Court. The article explained that the court’s male judge decided “to waive ceremony and legislative procedure and appoint, cloak with authority and install two women Judges.” What this meant as a technical matter was that the judge appointed the two senior women probation officers as “referees” to hear cases involving girls. He deferred to the women officers when they agreed on the outcome of a case; if there was disagreement, he made the final decision. A journalist predicted that social workers across the country would be interested to know the result of this “radical” innovation. As news spread, some readers probably missed the nuance of the arrangement and took at face value headlines such as St. Louis Has Women Judges.
A few years later, the Missouri Woman’s Bar Association (formed because women remained excluded from the regular state bar association) pointed to women’s service as juvenile referees to press for the next step: women judges. According to the group’s vice president, the judge who appointed the “refereettes” was acting in “excess of his authority.” The vice president explained that the association’s legislative department was therefore interested in reforms to permit the service of true women judges. Newspaper coverage of her remarks continued: “‘Of course, we wouldn’t mind,’ she added, gayly, ‘seeing women presiding over any or all the courts.’”
But back in the more conservative states of the Northeast, even quasi-judicial positions met legal roadblocks. Most notably, in New York, there was an understanding that children’s court judges lacked the authority to select women as unofficial judges. In 1914, the chairwoman of the Brooklyn Committee on Women Judges in the Children’s Court explained in a letter to the editor that her organization supported a pending bill to authorize women judges as “assistants.” Citing Bartelme’s successful service in Chicago, as well as support from some New York judges, she explained that local judges could not follow suit “without authorization from the Legislature.” The bill did not pass.
In these years, people also pressed for women judges in newly created “women’s courts,” which heard criminal cases (especially prostitution) against adult women. For reasons similar to those in the juvenile court context, women lawyers and other advocates envisioned women judges presiding. For instance, when women’s organizations in New York City advocated for a special women’s court division of the criminal magistrates’ court system, they insisted from the outset that it be overseen by a woman magistrate. Advocates only partly succeeded. The special division was created, but it was under the control of a male judge.
The most sustained and organized voice for women judges by this time was the Women Lawyers’ Association (WLA). Founded as the Women Lawyers’ Club in 1899, at a time when women were excluded from most bar associations, the WLA first served as a professional organization for New York City’s women lawyers. In 1911, the group founded the Women Lawyers’ Journal, which extended the organization’s reach through disseminating news and attracting membership from prominent women lawyers in other places. One of the journal’s most frequent topics and points of advocacy was the selection of women judges, especially in specialized courts.
In 1914, the Women Lawyers’ Journal congratulated “the women of the far West” for making their vision of a woman judge presiding over a women’s court a reality, or at least nearly doing so. A Los Angeles judge had appointed lawyer Georgia Bullock as the “judge” of a new women’s court, technically a division of his own court. New York women lawyers remembered they had “for some years been preaching the doctrine that women should be judged—and obstreperous juveniles mothered” by women judges, and it was “encouraging to realize that the reasonableness, the logical necessity for such a judicial reform, should appeal at length to the men of the community.”
When the New York City women’s court finally adopted a similar approach, the Women Lawyers’ Journal found the quasi-judicial arrangement insufficient. A 1915 column condemned how the court installed a woman probation officer to act as judge without giving her formal recognition as holding that position. Men were ill-equipped to oversee these sorts of cases, the writer charged, and “[s]eemingly some vague notion of this fact penetrated into some one’s brain when women probation officers became a part of this Court.” Thus, every night a woman probation officer was in attendance to question the offender, and “as any one in the court room knows, pass[] sentence on the culprit.” While this was the right idea, it was the wrong “procedure since she has become not a probation officer at all, but the alter ego of the magistrate. That woman should occupy such a position, yes; most emphatically yes.” A qualified woman should be appointed as an official judge. “Let us give her the same dignity we have given the magistrate.”
A similar line of advocacy developed regarding a third category of specialized courts: courts of domestic relations, which eventually grew into family courts. In 1910, New York City opened the first court of domestic relations, focused on quasi-criminal non-support cases against men who failed to financially support their families. Women probation officers were involved with intake and in attempting to avoid formal legal proceedings by providing services similar to marital counseling. In New York and other places where the domestic relations court idea spread, women lawyers and their allies again pressed for women judges, sometimes picturing a joint bench shared with a man.
A major obstacle to the selection of women as real judges was uncertainty regarding legal eligibility in many states. In the mid-1910s, women lawyers in conservative non-suffrage states sought to clarify or secure women’s eligibility. For instance, in 1914, the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers unsuccessfully petitioned the legislature to enact a law authorizing women judges in courts created by statute, as they understood a constitutional amendment would be required to undo the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that they were ineligible for constitutional judicial offices. While proponents pointed to women’s positive judicial service in Illinois, opponents suggested that Massachusetts voters’ recent rejection of a law to authorize women notaries public indicated that voters would not support women judges either.
In New York City, the eligibility issue came to a head in 1915, when the mayor considered the possibility of appointing lawyer Clarice Baright to a judicial vacancy in the children’s court division. Suffragists strongly supported the possibility, with some arguing that “[w]omen’s training for centuries . . . fitted them to care for children.” Prominent suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt weighed in that, although she did not know Baright, “I think it very appropriate that a woman should hold such a position if she is qualified.” Baright’s background was in fact particularly suited to the role, as she paired legal training with more than a decade of social service work with delinquent children.
Press initially leaned favorable. An editorial in the Brooklyn Daily Times supported the proposal, offering that “a woman trained in this sort of work, especially a mother,” was better qualified than “the best and ablest of men” to handle delinquent girls. The writer also recognized that “this agitation [is] another entering wedge on behalf of so-called equal rights.” Responding to opponents, the editorial offered that if a woman served as a judge, “the heavens will neither fall in nor will fire from the bowels of the earth envelop our fair city.”
Unsure of women’s eligibility, the mayor requested advice from the city’s legal office. While the mayor’s legal advisor “struggled” to reach a conclusion, the city’s bar association stepped in with the argument that such an appointment would be unconstitutional—pointing to common law understandings dating from 1777, as well as the Massachusetts case holding that women could not be justices of the peace. Impliedly persuaded by that argument, the mayor selected five men for children’s court vacancies. Baright received a consolation prize; a judge appointed her and three other women as court “referees.”
In 1917, suffragists secured a major victory when New York enfranchised women. Commenters immediately recognized the potential implications for women judges, and some women lawyers promptly sought appointments. In one representative newspaper article, the writer noted that “[a]t present there are no women jurors or judges, although with the enfranchisement of women both are sure to come.” That women judges would be helpful seemed obviously proven by the work of women probation officers. The writer claimed that Brooklyn’s women probation officers “are the chief factors in the work with women in the courts and have proved their worth,” and “[i]n the Children’s Court practically all the work is done by women.” The article featured interviews with supportive women and men, concluding with the perspective of a woman deputy assistant district attorney. That official advocated for a court in which all the officials were women. “Women have proved a great asset in the courts and are demanding more and more representation every day,” she observed. Initial uncertainty about what the suffrage amendment meant for officeholding rights prompted the state’s attorney general to issue an opinion that women were now eligible. Still, no women secured judicial positions at that time.
Stymied in their state-level efforts, East Coast women secured their first judicial victory when President Woodrow Wilson nominated, and the U.S. Senate confirmed, Kathryn Sellers to serve as a juvenile court judge for the District of Columbia in 1918. Declared to be the first woman appointed to the “federal judiciary” because of federal control over District government, Sellers was understood as a high profile stand-in for women’s political and professional advancement. Revealingly, Sellers was a suffragist with expertise in international law and had no special experience relating to children’s issues. It seems the President wished to select a smart and well-connected woman lawyer as a savvy appeal to the growing number of women voters. According to a D.C. Supreme Court judge who claimed to have spoken directly to the President about Sellers’s appointment, “The President frankly said that he was making an experiment of the woman judge—not only for the juvenile court, but for all courts.” That judge believed the future was “unlimited” for women jurists, “especially where women and children come often.”
Back in New York, with women’s judicial eligibility confirmed and women preparing to vote for the first time, the experiences of two candidates capture important dynamics about the use of gendered arguments to secure posts. Bertha Rembaugh, a well-known lawyer and suffragist, campaigned for a seat on the municipal court, which heard a variety of civil matters with no particular connection to women or family issues. During her campaign, Rembaugh tried to walk a fine line, discounting claims to women’s special expertise, while maintaining the importance of women’s representation. She told a reporter, “I do not believe there is as much difference between the viewpoint of the man and the woman as most people think, but, just the same, the people most concerned should be represented by one of their own sex.” Newspaper coverage was supportive, with a column running under the headline May It Please Her Honor dismissing the idea that women lacked judicial temperament. Despite the support Rembaugh received from women on both sides of the political aisle, she lost.
Instead, the honor of becoming the first woman judge in New York went to Jean Norris, a leading suffragist, the president of the WLA, and a longtime supporter of specialized courts and women’s crucial role in them. In October 1919, the New York City mayor appointed Norris to fill a temporary vacancy on the magistrates’ court, the low-level criminal court with jurisdiction over the women’s court. He asked the chief judge with assignment powers to place her in that division. After that preliminary term ended, the mayor appointed Norris to a vacancy that had seven years remaining in the term, again to serve in the women’s court division.
Through the 1910s, women in conservative regions failed to secure the judicial opportunities of their counterparts in the Midwest and West. Seeking entry points to court work, women served as probation officers, referees, and quasi-judges in gendered specialized courts, while they strategized next steps and pursued enfranchisement.
III. Judging Women’s Eligibility and Qualifications after Nationwide Enfranchisement (1920–1930)
After a flurry of additional state suffrage constitutional amendments in the late 1910s, all women citizens were enfranchised through the federal suffrage amendment in 1920. Enfranchisement sparked new efforts to join the judiciary, yet women’s legal right to hold judicial offices remained uncertain in many places. After establishing eligibility and embracing their new political rights, women secured meaningfully more judicial posts than in prior years. Still, they rarely obtained judicial offices higher than local trial courts. To at least some extent, these low numbers tracked the fact that few women held the law degrees necessary for more distinguished judicial positions. Additionally, in the conservative regions where women had emphasized their unique capabilities to serve in specialized courts, women found their opportunities somewhat limited to those positions.
As women’s suffrage expanded through a few final state constitutional amendments and then the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the justice of the peace position returned to its former prominence in litigation probing women’s officeholding eligibility. The first of these cases arose in Michigan, where women were enfranchised in 1918. The following year, Phoebe Patterson became the state’s first woman judge when she was elected as a justice. In 1920, a litigant challenged her authority, prompting a court to confirm her eligibility. An editorial in the Detroit Free Press opined that the result was “in accordance with common sense and the state constitution.” The Supreme Court of Michigan concurred in 1921, building on its precedent that held women eligible to serve as jurors.
The Supreme Court of Maine, one of the original promulgators of conservative restraints on women’s officeholding back in 1874, now returned to the justice of the peace issue with a new perspective. Just a few weeks after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the state legislature passed a law to eliminate sex discrimination for all civil offices. The following February, the governor asked the court to determine whether this meant he could appoint a woman as a justice of the peace. The justices adopted the view of the dissenters from decades prior. The court now held that the legislature was empowered to permit women officeholders and, even if that were not the case, the Nineteenth Amendment had effectively struck “male” from the state’s franchise law—which implicitly extended to officeholding. Other states took far longer to reach that result.
Just as women were being declared eligible as justices of the peace and securing that post in new places, the position began to fall into disfavor. While there had long been variation in the prestige and power of justices of the peace, a growing chorus of commenters condemned the office. They criticized how the fee system used in many locations threatened judicial neutrality, how selecting justices through elections undermined the integrity of the position, and how the minimal rules for eligibility allowed the selection of unqualified candidates, including those without legal training.
The justice of the peace position was so undistinguished and unlucrative in some locations by the 1920s that at least a few of the first women to be elected to the position after enfranchisement chose not to assume their posts. Martha Kemble and Lillian Dorsey became the first women elected as justices in New Jersey in November 1920, and news coverage emphasized the novelty of women holding office in the state. Both were set to begin their positions on May 1, 1921, yet they declined to serve. Kemble had doubts about the office from the beginning. On the day of her election, a newspaper reported that her “friends declare it is exceedingly doubtful that she will open an office in which to dispense justice, particularly as there is no salary attached to her new post and she has no idea of giving up her position at the bank.” After the deadline to submit qualifying paperwork passed, Dorsey shared a similar rationale, telling a newspaper that the position was “[a]n insignificant job with little pay.” Though she had campaigned for the position, she learned that the state legislature had recently reduced the role. She was particularly disappointed that justices could no longer preside at weddings. Still, she did not believe her election had been insignificant. As she spoke to a reporter, her husband “stood nearby smiling as she declared in an emphatic manner that it was time that the women were recognized and given public office.”
In surrounding states, the justice of the peace position retained more appeal. In New York, the first women elected to judgeships secured the justice position. In nearby Connecticut, in just the first two elections in which women could vote, close to fifty became justices. Nevertheless, the position had drawbacks in that state, too. According to one skeptical account that predicted the election of dozens of women for the role, justices’ jurisdiction was lowly and often rewarded by unpaid fees. But for women who had been excluded from public offices for generations, there was more to gain than income. As the Connecticut League of Women Voters tracked and tallied the consequences of enfranchisement, they heralded women’s new opportunities and included “judge” at the top of the list. Tellingly, three presidents of local League chapters were among the first women to become justices. One pledged to donate the fees she earned by officiating at marriages to the League. Connecticut voters also elected three women as probate judges in the same years.
Holding the position of justice of the peace seemed strategic for bolder goals, perhaps especially for women in the Western states that had long afforded greater opportunities. For instance, Arizona’s first woman judge, Nellie T. Bush, entered politics in a successful run for justice of the peace in 1918. Just two years later, she was elected to the state legislature and had her eyes set on the U.S. Congress. In 1922, when Blanche Funk Miller won a primary to become a candidate for justice of the peace in Tacoma, Washington, she told reporters: “The nomination of a woman to one of the important county offices emphasizes the prophecy that a new political era is dawning, in which women will be a prominent factor.” In her campaigning, she emphasized the importance of women’s representation, posting an ad that claimed that “[o]ne Justice should be a woman, as approximately 75 per cent of cases in Minor Courts involve women, directly or indirectly.” She won and served for over two decades.
As the 1920s continued, some women secured judicial positions through a common path developed in the prior period: they first served as assistants to judges, often including their late husbands. For example, Fannie Scott was celebrated as the first woman elected to office in South Carolina, as well as the first woman judge there, when she won an unopposed election for probate judge to complete the term of her late husband. Scott had served as her husband’s deputy and clerk during his six years in office and, according to news coverage, she had “frequently executed with great ability the duties of the judge.” Almost a year into her judicial service, newspaper coverage described her as “one of the most efficient and popular judges ever known to the probate court in the Palmetto State.” In addition to the experience she had gleaned when assisting her husband and in informally studying law, she brought “tact and sound common sense—not to mention her women’s intuition— . . . to render decisions which have satisfied both sides in some warmly contested cases.” Though she faced challengers for reelection, she won.
In states where women had long been excluded from judicial office, a developing trend was for their initial opportunities to come in specialized courts focused on women and children. Especially in the South, women’s first foray into the judiciary was often in a juvenile or family court. The first was Camille Kelley. The mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, named her for the juvenile court bench in January 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was still moving through the state ratification process. However, he did not formally nominate her at that time, in part because he realized that there might be questions about her eligibility. The mayor promised that “[i]f there is any possible way to remove any legal obstacles it will be done.” He further explained, “The appointment of a woman may be a radical departure, but the juvenile court has to do largely with domestic problems, and I consider her eminently qualified” to perform the duties of the bench. While Kelley awaited the official appointment, she traveled across the country to learn the methods of other juvenile courts. Finally, in April 1920, the mayor sent her name to the city commission for approval, and she took the bench on May 1. A few months later, Tennessee provided the final state ratification necessary for the Nineteenth Amendment’s adoption. Kelley remained on the bench for three decades.
Women in other Southern states similarly found their earliest judicial openings in juvenile or family courts. Gendered arguments facilitated these opportunities. For instance, when Virginia Mayfield became a domestic relations judge in Alabama in 1923, making her the first woman judge in the state, newspaper coverage went beyond her qualifications as a lawyer from a family committed to public service to observe: “It is generally conceded, at least by the thinking women of the country, that a woman is more capable of dealing with [domestic relations] cases than a man.” In Florida, the first woman elected as a judge employed gendered arguments in her campaign for the juvenile court. Her tagline read: “VOTE FOR A WOMAN FOR A WOMAN’S JOB.” One of her more detailed advertisements claimed that “[a] woman’s sympathy and intuition, combined with legal training fits me to serve.” Into the 1930s and beyond, Southern women found specialized courts to be the most attainable opportunities for judgeships.
Women in the Northeast secured a broader mix of judicial positions than their counterparts in the South, but they nevertheless remained restricted in the number and type of posts. In New York, aside from women elected as justices of the peace in small towns, women were expected to oversee gendered dockets. One illuminating moment came after the New York City mayor appointed Jeannette Goodman Brill as the city’s second woman magistrate, in 1929. During her induction ceremony, the chief magistrate shared his appreciation for that fact that Brill’s service would make it possible for a woman judge to hear cases against women defendants in Brooklyn, just as was done in the Manhattan women’s court. He took the opportunity to call on listeners to open a similar court in Brooklyn. If that effort succeeded, he continued, he intended to make Brill the “chief presiding officer in such court,” as well as for her to spend part of her time presiding over family court. Brill did not comment about her potential assignments at the time, and it does not appear her cases were so limited. However, when she later advocated for more women judges, she endorsed women’s supposedly special contributions in cases involving women, children, and families.
The most successful woman to begin a judicial career in the 1920s was Florence Allen, whose refusal to accept a gendered docket was a major factor in her accomplishments. Allen first won election to an Ohio county court in 1921. Crucially for her later trajectory, Allen rebuffed her colleagues’ efforts to create and assign her to a special divorce division. Instead, she insisted on hearing the full range of civil and criminal matters within the court’s jurisdiction. In November 1922, Allen became the first woman to reach a state high court bench, when voters elected her to the Ohio Supreme Court. While most commenters celebrated her victory, a former Ohio mayor publicly cast doubt on her eligibility to no avail. After more than a decade in the role, she became the first woman to serve on a federal court of appeals, in 1934. She served for twenty-five years, with her final year of service allowing her to achieve one additional “first”—as the first woman chief justice of a federal bench.
Rounding out the decade following the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification, Massachusetts finally welcomed its first women judges in a manner that foreshadowed how gender stereotypes would continue to complicate women’s pursuits. Both women were appointed to district courts by a Massachusetts governor, nearly sixty years after a governor there had first tried to appoint a woman to a judicial office. The Boston Globe covered the duo under the headline Two Mothers Named Bay State Judges, even though both had notable accomplishments unrelated to their families and neither were placed on specialized court benches for which motherhood might seem relevant. One had served as the assistant corporation counsel for Boston. The other came from a suffragist family, earned graduate degrees in law and social work, served as a probation officer for women and girls early in her career, and more recently became the first woman in Massachusetts appointed an assistant attorney general. She had also served as the president of the Massachusetts Women Lawyers’ Association, and she had been one of its members to advocate for women’s eligibility for judgeships in 1914.
By 1930, women had made undeniable strides in obtaining judgeships, a development that commenters saw as indicative of women’s progress and potential. Journalist Julia Blanshard authored a widely reprinted article about women judges, in which she offered that “no women in any profession win quite the influence nor the public respect for their success that judges do.” The number of women holding judgeships had “grown so tremendously in the past three decades,” she continued, that the position “offers enormous future opportunities to the women of tomorrow.” Still, gendered expectations remained salient. Especially in the places where women had faced the greatest hurdles in securing eligibility, the most accessible judicial offices were often in specialized courts handling children and family issues. For women able to break out of that mold, there were broader opportunities.
Conclusion
For more than a half-century prior to federal enfranchisement, women across the nation sought to join the judiciary. Nearly one hundred succeeded. Long overlooked in accounts of women’s legal, political, and professional history, women judges were in fact a central and consistent feature in women’s advocacy for equal rights and opportunities. Importantly, progress occurred unevenly and varied by region. State constitutions and lawmaking mattered. Individual ambitious women and their supporters mattered. Decades of campaigning and competent service on lackluster benches mattered.
Where judgeships remained out of reach due to ineligibility and political barriers, advocates for women in the judiciary developed arguments about women’s supposedly natural ability to oversee cases involving children, women, and families. Some women seemed to prove the veracity of those assertions by serving as the country’s first probation officers, typically in juvenile and family courts. While gendered strategies were particularly common in conservative regions, women across the country struggled over how to balance claims about the importance and fairness of women’s representation versus their potentially unique qualifications.
Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 helped eliminate the final eligibility constraints, and women began to obtain judgeships in new places and in greater numbers over the following decade. Still, women’s acceptance onto judicial benches was difficult and contested. Especially in regions where women long offered gendered arguments to seek inclusion, their opportunities to serve as judges clustered in specialized courts focused on children, women, and families. Women in states with longer traditions of women in the judiciary found broader opportunities, yet few obtained positions above the trial court level. Pursuing equal access to judgeships remained a major endeavor for decades to come.
Appendix
A Note on Methodology
This Appendix was created by combining dozens of secondary sources and by conducting extensive primary source research in historical newspaper databases. I began with Virginia Drachman’s table listing the first woman judge in each state. I next compiled women judges from other secondary sources, most notably: (1) the judicial entries posted on the website Her Hat Was In the Ring, which documents women who ran for elective office prior to 1920; (2) lists purporting to collect all the women judges in a particular state; and (3) biographies of individual women judges. In conducting research to verify these sources and to develop the broader context, I found dozens of additional women judges. This finding, in turn, led to more open-ended searches for key terms in historical newspaper databases.
There are limits to this research method. Newspaper coverage of women judges is uneven by time and place. Evidence of some women’s service is limited to small newspapers. It is likely there are many other judges whose service cannot be identified through this method because newspapers have been lost or have not been digitized. Additionally, once it became commonplace for women to serve in certain judicial posts, it was less likely that newspapers would cover their election or appointment. I identified many women whose service is plausible but for whom I deemed the evidence insufficient to include in this chart. For women whose service is a closer call, I included their names in the chart and noted evidentiary uncertainties in the footnotes. Accordingly, the chart is sufficiently comprehensive to identify patterns but inevitably has omitted some pioneering women judges.
The Appendix deliberately omits some women included in other accounts of women judges. One reason is that some women’s positions, as well as public perception of their service, were meaningfully distinct from regular judges. The most notable examples are masters in chancery and U.S. Commissioners. Second, the chart excludes women who were referred to informally as “judges” because of their pseudo-judicial roles. These women were important for reasons discussed in the Article text, but this chart records only official women judges. Finally, this chart does not include women who served officially as judges for brief periods of time (such as one day), while a permanent judge was unavailable. Although these women mattered for proving women’s competence for the role, their position was distinct from women who were the primary holders of judicial titles. By contrast, the chart does include women who were selected to complete the term of judges who died, retired, or otherwise vacated positions early. These women held the full powers of the position, and newspaper coverage indicates people regarded them as true judges.
For women who were appointed to complete the term of late husbands or fathers, the chart indicates in the “Selection Method” column if there is evidence that the women were subsequently elected. This information is not provided exhaustively, but it is included frequently to indicate that such appointments were not merely honorary. Similar information is included selectively for other appointees.
The First Women Judges in the United States (1870–1930)
|
Selection Date
|
Name
|
Location
|
Vote
|
Position
|
Selection Method
|
|
Feb. 1870
|
Esther Morris
|
Sweetwater County, WY Territory
|
F
|
Justice of the Peace (JP)
|
Appointed by
county commissioners
|
|
Feb. 1870
|
Caroline Neil
|
Point of Rocks,
WY Territory
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by
county commissioners
|
|
Sept. 1870
|
Anne P. Ladd
|
Kennebec County, ME
|
N
|
JP
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Sept. 1870
|
Inez A. Blanchard
|
Portland, ME
|
N
|
JP
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Dec. 1870
|
Clara H. Nash
|
Columbia Falls, ME
|
N
|
JP
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Nov. 1876
|
Mary Davis
|
Tie Siding, WY
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1884
|
J. Anderson
|
King County,
WA Territory
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1884
|
Eliza A. Forbes
|
King County,
WA Territory
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1889
|
Mary F. Groundwater
|
Cottonwood Falls, KS
|
M
|
Police Judge
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1890
|
Jessie Greer
|
Edgerton, KS
|
M
|
Police Judge
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1891
|
Mary L. Burton
|
Jamestown, KS
|
M
|
Police Judge
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1891
|
Jessie McCormick
|
Burr Oak, KS
|
M
|
Police Judge
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1892
|
Ann Scally
|
Buffalo, WY
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1894
|
Laura N. Anderson
|
Spring Hill, KS
|
M
|
Police Judge
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1894
|
L.E. Castle
|
Callender, IA
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1896
|
Mary L. Foote
|
Gaylord, KS
|
M
|
Police Judge
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1902
|
M. Agnes Garrett
|
Garrett, WY
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1902
|
Maggie H. Gillespie
|
Lookout, WY
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1902
|
E.L. Cole
|
Salubria, ID
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1907
|
Catharine McCulloch
|
Evanston, IL
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Oct. 1907
|
Clara M. Hess
|
New Durham Township, IN
|
N
|
JP
|
Appointed by
county commissioners
|
|
Apr. 1908
|
Mary H. Cooper
|
Mitchell County, KS
|
M
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late husband; then elected
|
|
Nov. 1908
|
Clara Kaiser
|
Franklin County, KS
|
M
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to fill vacant position until judge-elect’s term
|
|
Sept. 1909
|
Helen McClung
|
Wichita County, KS
|
M
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late husband; then elected
|
|
Apr. 1910
|
Mary Phares
|
Clintonia Township, IL
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1910
|
Jeannette Shaffer
|
Washington County, CO
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Feb. 1911
|
Lydia
Berkeley Tague
|
Eagle County, CO
|
F
|
County Judge
|
Appointed by county commissioners to complete term of late husband; then elected several times
|
|
Jan. 1912
|
Lily Laird (Files)
|
Rocklin, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors to complete term of late husband
|
|
Apr. 1912
|
Clara Alice Jess
|
Daly City, CA
|
F
|
City Recorder (similar to JP)
|
Selected by city’s board of trustees
|
|
Apr. 1912
|
Carrie Partridge
|
Stillman Valley, IL
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
May 1912
|
Isabelle Earll
|
Joplin, MO
|
N
|
JP
|
Selected by county court to complete term of late husband
|
|
Nov. 1912
|
Maggie Gilmore
|
Wichita County, KS
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1912
|
Edmonia Mills
|
Fruit Valley, WA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1913
|
Edna Keeran
|
Princeton Township, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors to complete term of late husband; lost reelection but appointed to complete term of another deceased judge in 1917; elected in 1918
|
|
Feb. 1914
|
Abbie Barkway (Sears)
|
Denverton Township, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors to complete term of late father; then elected
|
|
Apr. 1914
|
Achsah L. Cullison
|
Elk County, KS
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late husband
|
|
Apr. 1914
|
Lura Middaugh
|
Kansas City, KS
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by governor; later elected
|
|
May 1914
|
Miriam Rains
|
El Cajon, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by city council
|
|
Aug. 1914
|
Kathryn Bingham
|
Farmersville, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Aug. 1914
|
Mary Kenney
|
Cedarville, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1914
|
Reah Whitehead
|
King County, WA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1914
|
Sara Bullock
|
Twin Lakes, CO
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1914
|
19 women:
1. Katie Barnes
2. Nellie Burk
3. Joy Fuller
4. Roxie Fulton
5. Blanche Grubb
6. Flora Johnson
7. Ida Kerr
8. Mrs. M.U.
Lockwood
9. Josie McCoy
10. Ida Neer
11. Carrie Pierce
12. Grace Rude
13. Olive Smith
14. Mary E. Stark
15. Mrs. John Terry
16. Mrs. Chase
Warner
17. Mrs. R.P.
Whipple
18. Mrs. W. Willey
19. Mrs. I.A.
Williams
|
Counties
throughout KS
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1914
|
Mary Hale
|
Ford County, KS
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1914
|
Anna Garten
|
Gray County, KS
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1914
|
Frances Hopkins
|
Jefferson City, MO
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late father
|
|
Feb. 1915
|
Watie S. Duff
|
Chinook Township, MT
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county commissioners; then elected
|
|
Mar. 1915
|
Mettje Middaugh
|
Kansas City, KS
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of sister, who resigned
|
|
Apr. 1915
|
Mattie M. Hoff
|
Clinton, IL
|
M
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1916
|
J.A. Hebrew
|
Farmington Township, KS
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1916
|
Martha Warner
|
Anderson Island, WA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1916
|
M.N. Clark
|
Quinault, WA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1916
|
Minnie Penn
|
San Luis Obispo County, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors to complete term of late husband
|
|
Jan. 1917
|
Isabelle Charles
|
Santa Clara County, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors to complete term of late husband
|
|
Feb. 1917
|
Edith M. McGahan
|
Stonyford Township, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors to complete term of late husband; then elected
|
|
Apr. 1917
|
Othilia G. Beals
|
Seattle, WA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed to brother’s position when he left to fight in WWI; then elected
|
|
June 1918
|
Nellie Burtis
|
Grimes, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Appointed by county supervisors
|
|
July 1918
|
Lulu Barry
|
Trenton, MO
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of judge who resigned
|
|
July 1918
|
Kathryn Sellers
|
Washington, D.C.
|
N
|
Juvenile Court
|
Nominated by U.S. President and confirmed by Senate
|
|
Nov. 1918
|
Nellie T. Bush
|
Yuma County, AZ
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1918
|
Ethel C. Blair
|
Shasta Township, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
(Nov.) 1918
|
Kate S. Evans
|
Kern County, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
(Nov.) 1918
|
Margaret Lee
|
Inyo County, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1918
|
Margaret Hopkins
|
Superior, MT
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1918
|
Amelia Kuhrt
|
Sherman County, KS
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1918
|
Emma Tucker
|
Sherman County, KS
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1918
|
Sadie E. Dechambeau
|
Bridgeport Township, CA
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Apr. 1919
|
Phoebe Patterson
|
Plymouth, MI
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
May and June 1919: The U.S. House and Senate Passed the Nineteenth Amendment
|
|
Oct. 1919
|
Jean H. Norris
|
New York, NY
|
F
|
Magistrates’ Court (assigned to Women’s Court)
|
Appointed by mayor to
30-day term during another judge’s illness; appointed by mayor again in 1920 to complete term of a different judge (over seven years remaining)
|
|
Nov. 1919
|
Ella Eggleston
|
Barry County, MI
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor; then elected
|
|
Nov. 1919
|
Gertrude A. Williams
|
Kennedy, NY
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Jan. 1920
|
Camille Kelley
|
Memphis, TN
|
N
|
Juvenile Court
|
Appointed by mayor; then elected
|
|
Feb. 1920
|
Maggie Mettler
|
Rawlins County, KS
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late husband
|
|
Apr. 1920
|
Ada Newberry
|
Sioux Falls Township, SD
|
F
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
June 1920
|
Jessie O. Simpson
|
Greeley County, KS
|
F
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor; then elected
|
|
August 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment Was Ratified
|
|
Sept. 1920
|
Grace Dyson
|
Missoula, MT
|
Y
|
JP
|
Appointed by county commissioners to complete term of late husband; then elected
|
|
Nov. 1920
|
Florence Allen
|
Cleveland, OH
|
N
|
Court of Common Pleas
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1920
|
Jessie Hance
|
Stockton, KS
|
Y
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1920
|
At least 4 women:
1. Alice Drieu
2. Marion L.
Gildersleeve
3. Alice O’Neill
4. Maud Potter
|
Several cities in CT
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Jan. 1921
|
Fannie C. Scott
|
Greenville, SC
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected (unopposed in special election to complete term of late husband); reelected
|
|
(Apr.) 1921
|
Jennie MacMillan
|
Glen Park, NY
|
Y
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
June 1921
|
Blanche Butler
|
Fenton Township, AR
|
N
|
JP
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
July 1921
|
Mary O’Toole
|
Washington, D.C.
|
N
|
Municipal Court
|
Nominated by U.S. President and confirmed by Senate
|
|
Nov. 1921
|
Belle Russell
|
Haddam, CT
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1921
|
Mary Freed
|
Atlantic City, NJ
|
N
|
Magistrates’ Court
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1921
|
Annie Anderson
|
Laurens County, GA
|
N
|
Juvenile Court
|
Appointed by superior court judge
|
|
Feb. 1922
|
Bessie S. Bellinger
|
Escambia County, FL
|
N
|
County Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late husband
|
|
Sept. 1922
|
Kerr M. Harris
|
Danville, VA
|
N
|
Juvenile Court
|
Appointed by circuit court judge
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Florence Allen
|
OH
|
N
|
Supreme Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Blanche Funk Miller
|
Tacoma, WA
|
Y
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Anna Joy
|
Buckeye, KS
|
Y
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Bessie M. Flick
|
Sherman County, KS
|
Y
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Luella North
|
Clinton County, NY
|
Y
|
Children’s Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
43 women including
• Ruth Benton
• Edith
Breckenbridge
• Julia Conway
• Pansy C. Dart
• Gertrude Smith
|
Cities in CT
|
N
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Mary P. Lewis
|
Canton, CT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Susie B. Rogers
|
Salem, CT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
F. Victoria Markham
|
Saybrook, CT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1922
|
Clara Arnold
|
Nickerson, KS
|
Y
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Jan. 1923
|
Elizabeth Forhan
|
Benton Harbor, MI
|
Y
|
JP
|
Appointed by city commission
|
|
May 1923
|
Rose MacDonald
|
Clarke County, VA
|
N
|
Domestic Relations Court
|
Appointed by circuit court judge
|
|
Sept. 1923
|
Virginia H. Mayfield
|
Jefferson County, AL
|
N
|
Domestic Relations Court
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Nov. 1923
|
Mary Belle Grossman
|
Cleveland, OH
|
N
|
Municipal Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1923
|
Mary M. Bartelme
|
Chicago, IL
|
N
|
Circuit Court (assigned to Juvenile Court division)
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1923
|
Fannie Belle Sutherland
|
Paris, KY
|
N
|
Police Judge
|
Appointed by city council
|
|
Nov. 1924
|
Edith Atkinson
|
Dade County, FL
|
N
|
Juvenile Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1924
|
Ruth Thompson
|
Muskegon, MI
|
Y
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1924
|
Tina Strayer
|
Madison, OH
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1924
|
Clara Allen
|
East Windsor, CT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1924
|
Georgia Bullock
|
Los Angeles, CA
|
Y
|
Police Judge/ Municipal Court (assigned to Women’s Court division)
|
Appointed by city board of supervisors; then elected
|
|
Jan. 1925
|
Cora Lipscomb
|
McDonald County, MO
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Appointed by governor to complete term of late husband; then elected
|
|
Feb. 1925
|
Matilda Robb and Beulah Taylor
|
Harrison County, TX
|
N
|
JP
|
Appointed by county commissioners
|
|
Apr. 1925
|
Maude A. Palmer
|
San Juan, UT
|
Y
|
Juvenile Court
|
Appointed by juvenile court commission
|
|
Mar. 1926
|
Mary Jane Spurlin
|
Portland, OR
|
Y
|
District Court
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Apr. 1926
|
Lila M. Neuenfelt
|
Fordson, MI
|
Y
|
JP
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1926
|
Alberta Wright
|
Macon County, MO
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1926
|
Alice P. Mitchell
|
Salem, CT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1926
|
Gertrude C. Roe
|
Brookfield, CT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
June 1927
|
Louisa Wright
|
Jefferson County, GA
|
N
|
Court of Ordinary (Probate Court)
|
Elected
|
|
May 1928
|
Genevieve R. Cline
|
Federal
|
|
U.S. Customs Court (now Court of International Trade)
|
Nominated by U.S. President and confirmed by Senate
|
|
Nov. 1928
|
Mary H. Adams
|
Bennington, VT
|
N
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Nov. 1928
|
Grace Miles
|
Coffeyville, KS
|
Y
|
Probate Court
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1928
|
May D. Lahey
|
Los Angeles, CA
|
Y
|
Municipal Court
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
May 1929
|
Jeannette
Goodman Brill
|
Brooklyn, NY
|
Y
|
Magistrates’ Court
|
Appointed by mayor
|
|
Feb. 1930
|
Annabel Matthews
|
Washington, D.C.
|
N
|
Board of Tax Appeals
|
Nominated by U.S. President and confirmed by Senate
|
|
July 1930
|
Mary Wetmore
|
San Francisco, CA
|
Y
|
Municipal Court
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Aug. 1930
|
Theresa Meikle
|
San Francisco, CA
|
Y
|
Municipal Court (Women’s Court division)
|
Appointed by governor; then elected
|
|
Aug. 1930
|
Sara M. Soffel
|
Allegheny County, PA
|
N
|
County Court
|
Appointed by governor; then elected
|
|
Nov. 1930
|
Mary Drury
|
Brule County, SD
|
Y
|
County Court
|
Elected
|
|
Dec. 1930
|
Emma Fall Schofield
|
Malden, MA
|
N
|
District Court
|
Appointed by governor
|
|
Dec. 1930
|
Sadie L. Shulman
|
Dorchester, MA
|
N
|
District Court
|
Appointed by governor
|
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