Janet Healy Weeks (born 19 October 1932) is a retired American lawyer and judge. [1] She was the first woman to be admitted to the bar in Guam and the first female judge in Micronesia. [2]
Weeks was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and studied chemistry at Emmanuel College, Boston, graduating in 1955. [3] She went on to study law at Boston College Law School, graduating in 1958. She was then selected for the Attorney General's Honor Graduate Program, and from 1958 to 1961 she worked at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. [2] [4] In 1971 she took a position in a law firm in Guam, Trapp & Gayle, and four years later, became a partner. [4]
Weeks was a trial judge in the Superior Court of Guam from April 1975 to April 1996, when she was appointed an Associate Justice in the Supreme Court. She held this position until her retirement in April 1999. She also sat as a designated justice in the Supreme Court of the Federated States of Micronesia, the District Court of Guam and was a justice pro tem in the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. [2]
In 2009, Weeks was awarded the Hustisia Award, in recognition of her contribution to the improvement of the administration of justice and of good government in Guam. [4] Weeks also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Guam. [3]
Barbara Joan Pariente is an attorney and jurist from Florida. She was chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court from July 1, 2004, until June 30, 2006. Pariente is the second woman to hold the position of chief justice and served on the court from 1997 to 2019. From 1993 to 1997 she was a judge on Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal.
Sandra Lea Lynch is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She is the first woman to serve on that court. Lynch served as chief judge of the First Circuit from 2008 to 2015.
The Supreme Court of Guam is the highest judicial body of the United States territory of Guam. The Court hears all appeals from the Superior Court of Guam and exercises original jurisdiction only in cases where a certified question is submitted to it by a U.S. federal court, the Governor of Guam, or the Guam Legislature. The Supreme Court of Guam is the ultimate judicial authority on local matters. In the past, appeals of questions involving the U.S. Constitution or federal laws or treaties were heard by a three-judge appellate panel of the U.S. District Court of Guam, from which appeals could be further taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but this is no longer the case. Since 2006, the court's decisions have only been appealable to the Supreme Court of the United States, in line with the practice regarding the highest courts of the 50 states. The Court sits in the Monessa G. Lujan Memorial Courtroom, which is on the third floor of the Guam Judicial Center in Hagatna, Guam.
Betty Cantrell Roberts was an American politician and judge from the U.S. state of Oregon. She was the 83rd justice of the Oregon Supreme Court. She was the first woman to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court, and had also been the first woman on the Oregon Court of Appeals. Roberts served from 1982 to 1986 on the high court and from 1977 to 1982 on the Court of Appeals.
Carolyn Chalmers Simpson was a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales for 24 years and of its Court of Appeal for nearly three. Justice Simpson made legal history in 1999 as one of three women judges who formed the first all-female bench to sit in an Australian court. She was the second woman to be appointed to the court.
Debra McCloskey Todd is an American lawyer who serves as the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Prior to her election to the Supreme Court in 2007, she served as a judge on the Superior Court of Pennsylvania from 2000 through 2007. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Howard University School of Law is the law school of Howard University, a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is one of the oldest law schools in the country and the oldest historically black law school in the United States.
Lelia Josephine Robinson was the first woman to be admitted to the bar and practice in the courts of Massachusetts in 1882.
Florence Kerins Murray was a high-ranking officer in the Women's Army Corps, the first female state senator in Rhode Island, the first female judge in Rhode Island and the first female member of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.
Alma Dorothy Bell Wilson was an Oklahoma attorney who was appointed as the second female district judge in the state of Oklahoma in 1975. In 1982, she was elevated as the first woman to serve on the Oklahoma Supreme Court and between 1995 and 1997 was the first woman chief justice. Wilson was honored by many awards in her lifetime including induction into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and was named Appellate Judge of the Year in both 1986 and 1989.
Beauleen Carl-Worswick is a Micronesian judge. She has been an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Federated States of Micronesia since September 2010. She is the first woman judge of the Supreme Court.
Katherine Ann Maraman is an American judge who has been a member of the Supreme Court of Guam since 2008. From 2017 to 2020, she served as the court's chief justice, becoming the first female chief justice on the island and across Micronesia.