Helen Alice Kinnear, was a Canadian lawyer and judge. She was the first woman in the British Commonwealth to be made a King's Counsel, the first female lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court of Canada, and the first woman appointed as a judge by the Government of Canada.
Rose Elizabeth Bird was the 25th Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. She was the first female law clerk of the Nevada Supreme Court, the first female deputy public defender in Santa Clara County, the first woman to serve in the California State Cabinet, and the first female Chief Justice of California.
Florence Ellinwood Allen was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was the first woman to serve on a state supreme court and one of the first two women to serve as a United States federal judge. In 2005, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Susie Marshall Sharp was an American jurist who served as the first female chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was not the first woman to head the highest court in a U.S. state, but is believed to be the first woman elected to such a post in a state, like North Carolina, in which the position is elected by the people separately from that of Associate Justice. In 1965, Lorna E. Lockwood became the first female chief justice of a state supreme court, but in Arizona, the Supreme Court justices elect their chief justice.
Lindsey Gale Miller-Lerman is a justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, appointed by Governor Ben Nelson in 1998. She is the first woman to serve on the court. Miller-Lerman was retained in 2014 and 2020; her term expires in 2026.
Annette Abbott Adams was an American lawyer and judge. She was the first woman to be the Assistant Attorney General in the United States.
Justice Anna Chandy (1905–1996), also known as Anna Chandi, was the first female judge (1937) and then High Court judge (1959) in India. She was, in fact, one of the first female judges in the British Empire next to Emily Murphy.
Sara Rosalie Wahl was an American feminist, lawyer, public defender, clinical law professor, and judge. She was the first woman to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court where she served for seventeen years. Governor Rudy Perpich nominated Wahl to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1977 and Wahl won the election to the seat in a non-partisan election in 1978, defeating three male candidates. She chaired the state's Gender Bias Taskforce and Racial Bias Taskforce and led the American Bar Association's efforts to establish clinical legal education. She was a champion for the mentally ill and for displaced homemakers. She wrote 549 opinions including for the majority in holding that different penalties for crack and powder cocaine were unconstitutional in State v. Russell .
This is a short timeline of women lawyers in the United States. Much more information on the subject can be found at: List of first women lawyers and judges in the United States
This is a short timeline of women lawyers. Much more information on the subject can be found at: List of first women lawyers and judges by nationality.
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.
Meaza Ashenafi is an Ethiopian lawyer. In November 2018, she was appointed by the Federal Parliamentary Assembly as President of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia until her resignation on 17 January 2023.
Georgia Philipps Bullock was the first female Superior Court judge in California.
Annie Lola Price (1903–1972) was an Alabama, United States, lawyer, who was one of the first women to become licensed in the state. She was the first woman to serve as a legal advisor for a governor in Alabama and the first woman to serve on the state's appellate court. Between 1962 and 1972, she was the presiding judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Price was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1976 and into the Alabama Lawyers' Hall of Fame in 2004.
Zakia Ismael Hakki was an Iraqi Feyli Kurdish lawyer. She and Sabiha al-Shaykh Da'ud became the first female judges in Iraq respectively in 1956-1959. Hakki fled Iraq in 1996 after her husband was killed and was granted asylum in the United States. She returned to Iraq in 2003 and was elected to the National Assembly of Iraq and was an advisor in the drafting of the constitution.
Judith Nelson Dilday is an American lawyer and the first person of color appointed as a judge of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court.
