SAVE THE SUPREME COURT — SAVE WOMEN'S LIVES

Maintain O'Connor's Legacy: Nominate a Woman for Women's Rights

Many feminists were concerned that when Sandra Day O'Connor resigned from the Supreme Court, George W. Bush would dishonor her record as a moderate conservative by nominating a radical right-wing judicial extremist who opposes women's rights and could ultimately vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Well, that's just what Bush did when he nominated John G. Roberts to fill O'Connor's seat.

Now that an additional position on the Court has opened with the passing of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Bush has another chance to get it right. Will the President again choose to nominate a man, leaving only one woman on the high court?

The President says that he is committed to the promotion of women and minorities and yet, in the past six years, only twenty-one percent of his judicial nominees have been women. (In contrast, 33% of President Clinton's nominees were women). There are many exceptional women jurists who could fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat. Although we have not extensively researched their careers, three women come immediately to mind: Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey, Judge Gladys Kessler, and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Women have made impressive gains in the legal profession since the historic passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. From 1972 to 1996, the percentage of female law students more than quadrupled, from 9.4 percent to 44 percent. Today, women comprise approximately one-half of all law students. In the last ten years, the number of women applying to law school has increased by twenty-two percent, with almost 50,000 women seeking a legal education each year.

The number of women judges nationwide has also risen dramatically over the last few decades as well. From 1987 to 1998, the number of women increased 170 percent in the federal bench and 186 percent in the highest state courts. Although still proportionately low, women currently comprise twenty-three percent of the federal judiciary. The proportion in the state courts is slightly better. In 2002, women comprised twenty-eight percent of the highest state courts, including nineteen female Chief Justices. From this wealth of women jurists, certainly the president can find a fair and impartial moderate jurist in the mode of Justice O'Connor.

It is time that women are fairly represented at all levels of the federal judiciary, particularly in the highest court of the land. Justices who sit on the nation's highest Court should have a judicial philosophy that reflects mainstream values, including, of course, supporting the rights of women. The National Organization for Women urges George W. Bush to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court who will promote mainstream values by standing up for civil rights and women's rights.

Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey

Martha Craig Daughtrey is an attorney, law professor and federal judge. Her distinguished career consists of many firsts: the first woman professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, the first woman prosecutor in Tennessee, the first woman on the Tennessee Supreme Court, the first woman on the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, and the first Tennessee woman appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Nashville.

Daughtrey is a past president of the National Association of Women Judges, the Women Judges' Fund for Justice, and the Lawyers' Association for Women-Marion Griffin Chapter. She has served as chair of the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association and chair of the ABA's Appellate Judges Conference. She has also served on the boards of the American Judicature Society, the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations, and the Nashville Bar Association.

Daughtrey has received a number of awards for excellence in the practice of law, including the National Association of Women Lawyers President's Award of Excellence, the National Association of Women Judges Honoree of the Year, Woman of the Year for the Nashville Business and Professional Women, and one of the Ten Outstanding Young Women of America. In 2003, Daughtrey received the ABA's Margaret Brent Award for Women Lawyers of Achievement. She shares this honor with, among others, Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Congress member Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia. In the course of her nomination process to the federal bench, the ABA gave Daughtrey a rating of "Well Qualified," its highest rating.

Daughtrey received both her bachelor's and law degrees from Vanderbilt University, where she placed sixth in her graduating law school class. From 1968 to 1972, she was a prosecutor in the federal and state courts in Nashville. Daughtrey joined the Vanderbilt law faculty in 1972 and taught there until her appointment to the Court of Criminal Appeals in 1975. She then served on the Tennessee Supreme Court for three years before being nominated by Bill Clinton in 1993 to the federal bench.

Judge Gladys Kessler

Throughout her distinguished career, Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, has helped change societal expectations around issues pertinent to women, such as child support, access to justice, and domestic violence.

After receiving a B.A. from Cornell University and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School, Kessler held many illustrious positions. She served as an appellate attorney for the National Labor Relations Board during the Kennedy administration, a Legislative Assistant to former Rep. Jonathan Bingham and former Sen. Harrison A. Williams, and a special assistant at the New York City Board of Education. She then opened the public interest law firm of Roisman, Kessler & Cashdan.

In 1977, President Carter appointed her to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, where she remained for 17 years. From 1981 to 1985, Kessler served as Presiding Judge of the Family Division and was a major architect of one of the nation's first multi-door courthouses. Kessler was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by President Clinton in 1994.

Kessler served as President of the National Association of Women Judges from 1983 to 1984. She has taught courses at Harvard Law School, George Washington University Law School, and the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She is currently a Board member of Our Place, DC, and the Frederick B. Abramson Memorial Foundation, and serves on the Executive Committee of the ABA's Conference of Federal Trial Judges and the U.S. Judicial Conference's Committee on Court Administration and Management. Additionally, during her nomination process to the federal bench, Kessler received a rating of "Well Qualified" from the ABA, its highest rating.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton

Eleanor Holmes Norton has been a champion of women's rights and civil rights as well as an outstanding figure in the academic, corporate, and political worlds.

Since 1991, she has served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the District of Columbia. Norton, now in her eighth term in Congress, has been extremely successful in writing legislation and getting it enacted. She has had an extensive career in the House, serving on the Democratic House leadership group, the Committee on the Reorganization of the Congress, the Committee on Homeland Security, the Government Reform Committee, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. She also served as the Democratic chair of the Women's Caucus.

Norton received her bachelor's degree from Antioch College, and then simultaneously earned her J.D. and M.A. in American Studies from Yale University. She has received the Citation of Merit as an Outstanding Alumna of Yale Law School, and the Yale Wilbur Cross Medal as an Outstanding Alumna of the Graduate School, the highest awards conferred by each on alumnae. In the course of her career, she has received more than 50 honorary degrees.

After working as a lawyer in private practice, Norton became a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Leon Higginbotham. She later became an assistant legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she specialized in First Amendment cases. Norton served as the chair of the Human Rights Commission of New York City, was executive assistant to the Mayor of New York, and was the first woman to chair the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. She continues to be a tenured faculty member at Georgetown University, and was an adjunct assistant professor at New York University Law School. She was also a senior fellow of the Urban Institute.

Norton has served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar Association, as well as the boards of civil rights and other national organizations. In 2002, she was honored by the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession as the recipient of the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.

Sources:

• Judicial Disappointments, Nan Aron, In These Times (2/17/2004)
• Facts About Women and the Law, American Bar Association, Division for Media Relations and Public Affairs (1998)
• LSAC Volume Summary by Ethnic and Gender Group
• Gender Gap in Government
• White House Press Release, President Names Circuit and District Court Judges (8/7/1993)
• White House Press Release, President Nominates Seven Federal Judges (3/22/1994)
• U.S. District Court - D.C.: Judge Gladys Kessler Bio
• Biography of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton