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Rose Spector (born July 9, 1933) is a lawyer and judge based in Texas. In 1992, she became the first woman to be elected to the state's highest court.
Spector was born in San Antonio, Texas, the daughter of Jack Birenberg and Sophie Weprinsky Birenberg. Her family was Jewish; her father was in the garment trade. She attended Barnard College of Columbia University in New York, receiving her B.A. in 1954. She attended St. Mary's University School of Law, receiving her J.D., magna cum laude, in 1965 and was admitted to the Texas bar. Her older sister, Marcia Nasatir, was a film producer and vice-president of United Artists.
Spector became a judge on the Municipal Court of the city of Olmos Park, Texas, in 1969 and of the Bexar County Court of Law in 1975. She served as District Judge of the 131st Judicial District of Texas from 1981 to 1992. She was elected Justice of the Texas Supreme Court in 1992 and served from 1993 until 1998. She was the first woman to be elected to the state's highest court. [1] She served until 1998, when she lost her re-election during a sweep of judicial elections in Texas by Republican candidates. Alongside Raul A. Gonzalez, whose term also expired in 1998, Spector is one of the last two Democrats to have served as a Texas Supreme Court Justice.
Among her many judicial opinions, her dissent in Twyman v. Twyman is often studied in family law. In that case, the majority opinion was authored by then-justice John Cornyn, adopting the Restatement of Torts standard for intentional infliction of emotional distress, but Justice Spector dissenting, arguing that in this case, award of damages to the wife for the proven abuse of the wife by her husband should be upheld under the standards for negligent infliction of emotional distress that had been thought to apply at the time of the lower court's verdict.
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts. Since 1850, the court has issued many influential decisions in a variety of areas including torts, property, civil and constitutional rights, and criminal law.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress is a common law tort that allows individuals to recover for severe emotional distress caused by another individual who intentionally or recklessly inflicted emotional distress by behaving in an "extreme and outrageous" way. Some courts and commentators have substituted mental for emotional, but the tort is the same.
The tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) is a controversial cause of action, which is available in nearly all U.S. states but is severely constrained and limited in the majority of them. The underlying concept is that one has a legal duty to use reasonable care to avoid causing emotional distress to another individual. If one fails in this duty and unreasonably causes emotional distress to another person, that actor will be liable for monetary damages to the injured individual. The tort is to be contrasted with intentional infliction of emotional distress in that there is no need to prove intent to inflict distress. That is, an accidental infliction, if negligent, is sufficient to support a cause of action.
Martin v. Ziherl, 607 S.E.2d 367, was a decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia holding that the Virginia criminal law against fornication was unconstitutional. The court's decision followed the 2003 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, which established the constitutionally-protected right of adults to engage in private, consensual sex.
Roger John Traynor was the 23rd Chief Justice of California (1964–1970) and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California from 1940 to 1964. Previously, he had served as a Deputy Attorney General of California under Earl Warren, and an Acting Dean and Professor of UC Berkeley School of Law. He is widely considered to be one of the most creative and influential judges and legal scholars of his time.
Priscilla Richman is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She served as Chief Judge of that court from 2019 to 2024. She was previously a justice of the Supreme Court of Texas from 1995 to 2005.
The Supreme Court of Texas is the court of last resort for civil matters in the U.S. state of Texas. A different court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, is the court of last resort in criminal matters.
Janice Marie Holder is an American judge who served as a circuit court judge for Tennessee's Division II Circuit Court in the 30th district, served as the third woman justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1996 until 2014, and was the first female Chief Justice of Tennessee on the Tennessee Supreme Court from 2008 until her retirement in 2014.
Elizabeth Bermingham Lacy is a Virginia jurist. She was the first woman named to the Virginia State Corporation Commission and later was the first woman named to be a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, where she served until her retirement in 2007.
Barbara Louise Milano Keenan is a senior United States circuit judge of United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and a former justice on the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Patricia Breckenridge is a former judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri. She was first appointed to the court in 2007 and served as chief justice from July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2017. Breckenridge was the fourth woman to be appointed to the high court.
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 .
Dillon v. Legg, 68 Cal. 2d 728 (1968), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of California that established the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress. To date, it is the most persuasive decision of the most persuasive state supreme court in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century: Dillon has been favorably cited and followed by at least twenty reported out-of-state appellate decisions, more than any other California appellate decision in the period from 1940 to 2005. It was also favorably cited by the House of Lords in an important case on nervous shock, McLoughlin v O'Brian [1983].
Thing v. La Chusa, 48 Cal. 3d 644 (1989), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of California that limited the scope of the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress. The majority opinion was authored by Associate Justice David Eagleson, and it is regarded as his single most famous opinion and representative of his conservative judicial philosophy.
Penny J. White is an American attorney and former judge who served as a judge on Tennessee's First Judicial Circuit, a judge for the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, and a justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court. she was the second woman to serve on the Tennessee Supreme Court. White was removed from office in a judicial retention election in 1996 as the only justice to lose a retention election in Tennessee under the Tennessee Plan. After her time in the judiciary, White served as a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law until retiring in 2022.
Hot Coffee is a 2011 documentary film that analyzes and discusses the impact of tort reform on the United States judicial system. It is directed by Susan Saladoff, who has practiced as a medical malpractice attorney for at least 26 years. The film premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2011, and later aired on HBO on June 27, 2011, as a part of HBO films documentary summer series. The title is derived from the Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants lawsuit, in which the plaintiff Liebeck was severely burned after spilling into her lap hot coffee purchased from a McDonald's.
Georgina "Gina" Martinez Benavides was a justice at the Texas Thirteenth Court of Appeals based in Corpus Christi and Edinburg. She was first elected in 2006, and re-elected in 2012. She is a member of the Democratic Party and resides in McAllen, Texas. Benavides sought election to the Thirteenth Court's Chief Justice position in 2024. She retired from the court after losing to the Republican candidate.
The All-Woman Supreme Court refers to a special session of the Supreme Court of Texas which met in 1925. The court consisted of Hortense Sparks Ward, who was appointed special chief justice, Hattie Leah Henenberg, and Ruth Virginia Brazzil. It sat for five months, ruling on the case Johnson v. Darr, and was the first all-female supreme court in the history of the United States.
Myra Consetta Selby is an Indiana attorney in private practice and is a former nominee to be a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Her nomination was denied a hearing by the Republican-majority Senate and subsequently expired on January 3, 2017. She served as an associate justice of the Indiana Supreme Court from 1995 to 1999.
Women have been underrepresented in all three branches of Texas state government. Texas has had only two female governors over 175 years since statehood, and many prominent executive positions - such as Lieutenant Governor - have yet to be filled by women. While the percentage of women in the Texas Legislature has increased over the past few legislative sessions, as of December 2021, the percentage of female legislators in both the Texas House and the Texas Senate still fell far short of 50.3% - the percentage of women in the overall Texas population. The state's highest courts – the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals – have seen similarly low numbers of female justices throughout their history.
