Women of the bar
L ast week I wrote about some of the early female lawyers in Arkansas—including a handful who attempted to practice before 1917 when the legislature finally allowed them into the legal profession. In the almost 100 years since they were admitted to practice, women have slowly but steadily made an impact on the profession.
Jacqueline S. Wright, the Supreme Court Librarian, calculated in 1985 that only about 150 women were admitted to practice from 1917 to 1959. Annabelle Clinton Imber Tuck, who would later go on to a distinguished career on the state Supreme Court, wrote in 1985 that 450 women were licensed to practice in Arkansas from 1960 to 1984. Since 1984 the numbers have ballooned to the point women often comprise the majority of students in the state’s two law schools.
While the number of women attorneys grew dramatically after 1970, their numbers were not evenly distributed. For example, in 1985 Arkansas had 380 female lawyers, but fully 227 of them lived in Pulaski County. Indeed, in that year 33 counties had no female lawyers at all.
Like their male counterparts, many of the early female lawyers in Arkansas came from families of attorneys. One of the early examples of these “law-daughters” was Ethel Jacoway Hart. Admitted to practice in 1929, Hart was the daughter of J.C. Hart, chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court from 1927 to 1933.
Elsijane Trimble Roy, appointed the first female federal judge in Arkansas in 1977, “came from a family steeped in jurisprudence,” as one journalist wrote at the time. Judge Roy’s father, Thomas C. Trimble, was also a federal judge. Her grandfather practiced law in Lonoke with U.S. Senator Joe T. Robinson. Judge Roy said she decided to become a lawyer while in the fourth grade and “I never changed my mind.”
Other early female lawyers were married to attorneys. A good example of this was Neva Talley-Morris, admitted in 1947, who read law in her husband’s law offices and would go on to become a leader in the Arkansas Bar Association and president of the National Association of Women Lawyers in 1956-57.
Perhaps the most famous married lawyers in Arkansas were Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both graduates of Yale Law School. In 1977, Hillary Clinton joined the prominent Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, not long after her husband was elected Arkansas attorney general. Mrs. Clinton flourished as a member of the firm, becoming the first partner at a large Arkansas firm in 1979.
While it was a long time in coming, in the 1970s female lawyers began seeking elective judgeships. The first elected woman judge in Arkansas was Bernice L. Kizer of Fort Smith, who was elected chancery judge in 1974.
Another early elected female judge in Arkansas was Judith Rogers of Pulaski County. She was elected a chancery judge in Pulaski County in 1982. In 1989 she was elected to the state Court of Appeals where she served until 2000.
I am not sure who was the first black female lawyer in Arkansas, but the first black woman judge was the late Andree Layton Roaf of Pine Bluff. Roaf was late in coming to the law, having worked for years as a bacteriologist and later as a research biologist at the National Center for Toxicological Research near Pine Bluff.
Roaf became the first black woman to serve on the state Supreme Court when she was appointed by Gov. Jim Guy Tucker in 1995. Gov. Mike Huckabee later appointed her to the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and then she won election to the court in her own right, serving through 2006. She died prematurely in 2009.
Pine Bluff was also the home of Betty Dickey, who in 1995 became the first elected female prosecuting attorney in Arkansas. In that same year Carolyn Witherspoon of Little Rock was elected as the first female president of the Arkansas Bar Association—the first woman to run for the post.
Amazingly, women today make up a majority on the Arkansas Supreme Court. The justices are Karen R. Baker, Courtney Goodson, Josephine L. Hart, and Rhonda K. Wood. While this is undoubtedly a major breakthrough for women in the law, the accomplishment has been tarnished by discord within the Court.