Article by Aliya Yanga, Catt Center public relations/events planning intern
Long before most women could vote, audacious women in the 1870s were stepping onto the bench and reshaping the political process. Elizabeth D. Katz has uncovered many forgotten stories of the nation’s first women judges.
Katz, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and a 2016 honorable mention award recipient of the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics, recently published the most comprehensive account of the first women judges in the United States.
Her article, “’May It Please Her Honor’: The United States’ First Women Judges, 1870-1930,” explores the legal and political barriers women faced in obtaining judgeships and highlights trailblazing women who broke the status quo, many of whom have been overlooked in traditional histories.
The publication grew out of Katz’s dissertation research on specialized family courts, where she uncovered connections between these courts and the emergence of women judges. Katz originally envisioned the piece as a political history of women’s efforts to persuade others to permit them to hold public office, particularly in the judiciary. However, further research showed persuasion was not the only obstacle, as legal restrictions often barred women from the bench.
When conducting her research, Katz relied heavily on digitized newspaper databases, which provided access to hundreds of historical publications with searchable keywords. She used open-ended searches such as “women judge” or “lady judge,” producing extensive lists of names that required further investigation. From there, Katz confirmed evidence of women serving by cross-referencing records of when and how they were elected or appointed.
“I wanted to be confident that I was telling the whole story. It was an enormous amount of research and tracing out lots of threads, some of which worked and some of which were dead ends,” Katz said. “Thousands and thousands of newspaper articles are the foundation for the article.”
The article highlights influential figures such as Catharine Waugh McCulloch and Florence E. Allen, both instrumental in advancing the women’s suffrage movement. In 1907, McCulloch became the first woman in Illinois to hold a judicial position, serving as justice of the peace in Evanston. Allen made history in 1922 as the first woman to serve on a state supreme court and later became the first woman to lead a federal bench as chief justice from 1958 to 1959.
The Catt Prize encourages and rewards scholars pursuing significant work in gender and politics. Receiving the Catt Prize proved not only financially supportive but also professionally reaffirming for Katz. She received the honor while beginning her Ph.D. dissertation, research that would eventually inspire her publication.
“The Catt Prize was extremely consequential and helpful for me because it reaffirmed the significance of the project. It showed me that there was a community of scholars who would be genuinely interested in my eventual publication,” Katz said.
In reflecting on the parallels between the obstacles early women judges faced and the challenges women judges still encounter today, Katz finds that gender continues to shape both opportunities to serve and experiences on the bench.
“According to the American Bar Association, women now make up one-third of federal judges. While legal barriers are gone, stereotypes about women’s abilities and interests continue to hinder progress,” Katz said.
You can find Katz’s publication at https://ssrn.com/abstract=5440594.