In a recent issue of the St. Mary’s Law Journal, Alice G. McAfee writes about the fascinating story of the all-woman Texas Supreme Court. As McAfee describes, before women could sit as jurors, there was a brief moment when all three justices of the Texas Supreme Court were women, appointed to hear one and only one case (Johnson v. Darr, 114 Tex. 516 (1925)).
McAfee’s article paints this story on the larger canvass of the women’s movement in Texas and attempts to shed new light on the history of woman in the judiciary.
[Alice G. McAfee, “The All-Woman Texas Supreme Court: The History Behind a Brief Moment on the Bench,” 39 St. Mary’s Law Journal 467 (2008).]
For those interested in this story, there is an interesting paper on Hortense Sparks Ward, one of the three Texas “lady justices”, on the Women’s Legal History Biography Project website. The paper, written by Michelle Skinner, focuses on both Ward’s legal career and the story behind the Johnson v. Darr case.