First Women: Barbara Babcock

I am honored to be the first of the first women to speak in this space. My major first was professor at Stanford Law School—which has led in turn to associate firsts (to gain tenure, hold an endowed chair, be an Emerita).

We first women are a vanishing breed in the legal profession –soon all the first spots will be occupied. Soon too in legal time (though not in my lifetime), we will reach nirvana when the sex of the person who wrote the brief, ran the agency, argued the case or taught the class is no longer a matter of notice or comment.

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.