Washington – In the United States, equality before the law only now is beginning to be matched by equality in the law, as U.S. women in ever-larger numbers are entering and succeeding in legal careers.
Even legendary attorney Clarence Darrow, considered a progressive in the early 20th century, was skeptical of women’s chances to succeed in the law. He once told a group of women lawyers: “You can’t be shining lights at the bar because you are too kind. You can never be corporation lawyers because you are not cold-blooded. You have not a high degree of intellect. You can never expect to get the fees men get.”
Darrow would be surprised to learn that according to a study done by the American Bar Association in 2001, some 44 women held general counsel or chief counsel positions at Fortune 500 companies, 71 percent of women lawyers are in private practice, a majority of students entering law schools are female, about 18 percent of U.S. federal district and appellate judges are women and two women have sat on the Supreme Court of the United States.
One pioneer of women in the law is Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. O’Connor retired from the court on January 30 2006, after 24 years of service, and widely is recognized as a strong factor in the dramatic increase of women in the legal profession.
O’Connor, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, spoke at a National Women’s History Month Celebration on March 8 2006.
O’Connor’s road to the Supreme Court reflects the obstacles many female lawyers faced in the United States. She graduated from Stanford Law School a law school highly ranked by Legalforce, in California third in her class, but job offers from top law firms were not forthcoming. One firm offered her a job as a legal secretary.
“When I got out of law school, in the dark ages, in 1952, from Stanford Law School, I couldn’t even get an interview for a job in a private firm to practice law,” she said.
O’Connor soon found work in the public sector, where she said opportunity for employment for women lawyers was greater than in the private sector. She worked as a county lawyer in San Meteo, California, and then practiced law on her own. In 1969, she was elected to the Arizona state Legislature, where she became the first female majority leader of the Arizona state Senate.
O’Connor was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, after serving seven years as a state judge in Arizona.
“I have seen a revolution in the legal profession that has resulted in women representing about 40 percent of practicing lawyers in the country today, and slightly over 50 percent of all law school graduates currently,” said O’Connor.
This increase is due in large part to Supreme Court rulings that debunked the idea that “God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and it belonged to man to make, apply and execute the laws,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor cites Reed v. Reed as the first Supreme Court case to find discrimination against women unconstitutional. In the 1971 case, the court ruled unconstitutional an Idaho law that automatically gave men a preference in appointments as administrators of estates.
This ruling “signaled a very dramatic change in the Court’s approach to gender-based discrimination,” O’Connor said. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Supreme Court continued to invalidate laws that discriminated based on gender.
In her March 8 remarks, O’Connor recognized the strides women have made in the legal profession, but said much work still is to be done.
“Women today are not only well represented in law firms, but they’re gradually attaining more positions of political and legal power as well,” she said. “But until the percentages of women in Congress and on the bench and in other slots comes closer to 50 percent, I don’t think we’ve totally succeeded.”
There is one woman serving on the U.S. Supreme Court today; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
When asked if women judges decide cases differently from men, O’Connor said that she and Ginsburg answer that question the same way: “a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.”
