Judge This Book By Its Cover
Women lawyers must never become complacent, we must never think that the work on a particular issue is settled. The book stresses that point.
In dinosaur days, when I went to law school, books about women lawyers didn’t exist due to the paucity of women in practice. In the past 20 years or so, books have been written about women lawyers and their accomplishments. Dahlia Lithwick’s new book, “Lady Justice,” focuses on the accomplishments of women lawyers — some well known, others not, but all of them have contributed to where the law is today and how the fight for justice continues.
The book’s subtitle is apt: “Women, The Law, and The Battle to Save America.” Lithwick has been a senior editor for Slate for years, and the book is valuable and insightful, reporting on women lawyers who have battled inside and outside the courtrooms to preserve democracy. Not an easy task.
Looking back from the perspective of more than 40 years in the profession, I know that women in the law have come a long way, but we are not there yet. And if anything tells us that, it’s the Dobbs decision. Women lawyers must never become complacent, we must never think that the work on a particular issue is settled. The book stresses that point.
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Lithwick’s book couldn’t be timelier as hard-fought rights won and taken for granted face inroads and even rollbacks. She profiles a number of women lawyers — some familiar names and some not so — all of whom have been engaged in hard-fought battles to preserve our democracy, especially over the past six years. Vigilance is more important than ever. These are perilous times. All of these women are profiles in courage whose belief is that the law is there to serve all of us, whether it’s voter suppression, reapportionment, abortion, immigration, or the panoply of other issues facing us.
Who does Lithwick choose to highlight? She starts with Pauli Murray, “the most important woman lawyer that few people know about” who was “one of the most visionary and effective race and gender equality lawyers of the twentieth century.” Among her many accomplishments was her determination to make sure that the word “sex” was included in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That was just one of many achievements, but her work on the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments in a law school paper, subsequently used by the NAACP in the Brown v. Board of Education litigation, was not acknowledged. Watch the documentary about Murray’s life and career, especially if you know nothing about her and her many contributions to the development of the law in her lifetime.
Also profiled is Sally Yates, who was the acting attorney general when Donald Trump became president and who almost immediately signed the order banning entry into the United States by immigrants and refugees from certain specified countries with substantial Muslim-majority populations. Yates could not in good conscience as the acting attorney general represent that the Trump travel ban was justified. Trump fired her.
Another women lawyer profiled is Vanita Gupta, now the CEO and president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who says that right now it’s not just about litigation, it’s about organizing groups and coalitions to work together. In her career, she has, among other positions, worked for the ACLU on racial justice issues and the DOJ Civil Rights Division under Eric Holder. One point Gupta makes is that change is often easier to make from the inside, and thus the DOJ job allowed her to do just that. Something to think about when considering career moves.
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Another familiar name is Roberta Kaplan, who, along with Biglaw attorney Karen Dunn, litigated the case against the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville arising out of the Unite the Right rally in 2017. There’s Stacey Abrams, who has devoted her life to issues of voter suppression, and whose organizing efforts in Georgia gave Democrats a majority in the Senate in 2020.
Lithwick also devotes two chapters to the #MeToo movement, one of which includes her own remorse at not speaking up about the antics of now-retired Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski. The other chapter is, not surprisingly, about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination circus, and how Anita Hill viewed it all from her unique perspective (and if you don’t know who she is, Google her.)
But I want to highlight three women lawyers Lithwick writes about, perhaps not as well known in the fights for American democracy. One is Becca Heller, co-founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. She mobilized attorneys who went to airports across the nation to help those affected by the travel ban as soon as Trump signed the order.
The second is Brigitte Amiri, the Texas lawyer litigating the issue of abortion at the Texas border. It’s a story like Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” even more dystopian because the story is true: an unaccompanied detained immigrant minor sought an abortion. It’s the story of the Kafkaesque procedures it took to accomplish that objective.
The third is Nina Perales, an attorney for MALDEF, expert in election law and who confronted the whole thicket of reapportionment issues amid the unsuccessful attempt by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census. She optimistically believes that judges want to do the right thing in reapportionment cases.
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No matter the circumstances, no matter how many successful verdicts, no matter how many times women lawyers triumph in court, the message is to never give up fighting for what you think is right. The message is to keep going, regardless of how hard the road may be. It’s a book about women and the law and power. And the cover of the book is pink.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.
