Abrahamson speaks of challenges for women
State Supreme Court justice discusses career
MADISON - Shirley Abrahamson couldn’t get a library card.
The future Wisconsin Supreme Court justice was a child in Union City, New Jersey, and the library wouldn’t issue her a card without a signature from a parent who owned property — and her parents didn’t own any.
“That really was quite an event for me because I was embarrassed,” Abrahamson said Friday in a wide-ranging talk at the University of Wisconsin Law School “And how do you live — how do I live — without a library card?”
She eventually got a card when the landlord of her father’s grocery store agreed to sign a document for her.
“I have only one dislike in life, and it’s New Jersey — because they didn’t give me a library card,” she said.
“I view impediments (such as the) ownership of property for basic needs like a library card askance. You should know that about me if you have a case.”
The talk — moderated by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb — was one of Abrahamson’s first public events outside of the court since she disclosed in August she has been diagnosed with cancer. Seated in her wheelchair, Abrahamson discussed her career as the longest-serving justice in state history and her time as a lawyer when there were few women practicing law.
She described a conversation she had with the dean of the Indiana University Law School when she finished at the top of her class in 1956.
“He usually placed the person who was first in the class with the largest leading law firm in Indianapolis, but (he said) that he could not place me in that law firm,” she said. “I said that was OK because I didn’t want to go to Indianapolis, so we were even. They just weren’t going to hire a woman.”
Abrahamson went on to work in private practice in Madison but found she could not join the Madison Club, where deals get brokered, because she was a woman.
“I couldn’t get into the Madison Club, which was really hampering my style,” she said. “One day a group of lobbyists took me out to lunch because they wanted to hire me to do something for them. They said we’re going to go to the Madison Club. I thought to myself, ‘Uh oh.’ ”
The group was told to use the side door and once inside was informed the group couldn’t have a meal there. The issue eventually hit the newspaper and Abrahamson was able to join the club, she said. She said she doesn’t go to the club anymore but feels obligated to continue to pay dues there.
“I never eat there but I have to keep my membership,” she said. “I made such a big deal about this thing.”
Gov. Patrick Lucey appointed Abrahamson to the state’s high court in 1976 after making a series of other appointments. She became the first woman on the court.
Asked what guidelines she would advise justices to use, Abrahamson said justices should look “not only at the state court law, but law across the globe.”
The talk she gave was the annual Robert W. Kastenmeier lecture, named after the former U.S. representative who represented the Madison area for decades. Crabb noted Kastenmeier used to stop by to talk to judges on a regular basis to find out what the needs of the court were up until he lost his 1990 election.