First Women: Shirley Hufstedler

The law is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw and I, my lords, embody the law.

Someday a better singing commercial for the legal profession may be composed,but so far none has topped Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe written more than one hundred years ago. The British audience at the premiere probably tittered appreciatively. Today’s audience would probably be much less amused because lawyers and judges are even less popular these days, and litigation is more dreaded.

Of course dissatisfaction with lawyers and legal systems are not new. That grumbling was old in Shakespeare’s day, but the causes of disaffection with the legal profession, including the bench, are more complicated and intractable than they were more than 50 years ago and are even more poorly understood.