Trial Magazine
Books
Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers Lives in the Law
December 2018Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers: Lives in the Law
Jill Norgren
NYU Press
https://nyupress.org
304 pp., $30
Reviewed by Katherine Kiziah
Following U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ongoing pop culture moment, Jill Norgren’s Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers is perfectly timed for readers ready to take the next logical leap from a study of the current doyenne of law to stories of 100 of the most successful, and frequently the first, female lawyers in their own respective endeavors.
In 2005, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Commission on Women in the Profession began an oral history project, selecting women in the legal profession to be featured based on their accomplishments. Colleagues interviewed the women—including former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Judge Rosemary Barkett of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague, and plaintiff attorney Elizabeth Cabraser—using open-ended questions about their personal and professional lives. The ABA provided Norgren, a political science professor at New York University, access to the interviews, some of which are not publicly available today.
The result is a book assembling highlights of women who are each worthy of a biography. Although the voluminous subject matter can make for a disjointed read at times, Norgren expertly interweaves the stories and chapters using themes of persistence and progress. Readers will come away with an appreciation of an evolving 20th century American culture regarding women’s roles and the remarkable efforts of each trailblazer to succeed despite the odds against her.
Norgren notes that in 1889, Catherine Waugh McCulloch, the first female justice of the peace in Evanston, Ill., wrote about running for office and “her belief that having the male voters in her county hear a woman speak in public helped on the ‘Woman Question’”—a phrase used in America during the late 19th century to describe the public debate on women’s roles in society, including the right to vote. In 1989, 100 years later, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that “for both men and women, the first step in getting power is to become visible to others. . . . As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.”
Connecting the first female justice of the peace in an Illinois town to the first female Supreme Court justice, Norgren’s message is clear: Making women’s expertise and accomplishments publicly visible dispels notions of inequality and opens the door to success for future generations.
Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers is an inspirational story of individual successes and even more important, a historical analysis of the march toward improved gender equality in America.
Katherine Kiziah is an attorney at Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart and Shipley in West Palm Beach, Fla. She can be reached at kkiziah@searcylaw.com.