By Marc Zucker
One hundred and forty years have passed since Carolyn Burnham Kilgore, then known as Carrie Burnham, graduated in 1883 from Penn Law School at the age of 45 – a noteworthy achievement in Pennsylvania, where no woman ever had been admitted to practice law. (Indeed, only four years had passed since 1879, when Belva Lockwood became the first woman ever to be admitted to the bar in the United States.) Twenty years earlier, in 1863, Burnham had earned a medical degree.
Despite the medical profession’s willingness to accept women at that time, the legal profession was far less accommodating. Burnham’s application to attend Penn Law initially was rejected when the dean threatened to resign if she were accepted. The Pennsylvania Board of Bar Examiners repeatedly refused to allow Burnham to sit for the examination. At a time when individual admission to particular local courts was required, she was admitted to Philadelphia Orphans Court but was denied admission to the Courts of Common Pleas until the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law in 1885 that allowed women to practice before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She later became one of the first women to be admitted to the United States Supreme Court and, according to Penn, the first woman ever to argue before that high court.
Similarly remarkable in her persistence, in 1921 Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander became the first Black woman to practice law in Pennsylvania, having already received a master’s in economics from Penn, a Ph.D. and, ultimately, a law degree.
It would be yet another 20 years before a woman was elected to the Pennsylvania judiciary (Sara Soffel of Allegheny County, in 1941). Not until 1959 when Juanita Kidd Stout was appointed as a municipal court judge would a Black woman serve in the Pennsylvania judiciary. Decades later, in 1988, Justice Stout become the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (after having been appointed to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas), and the first Black woman in the nation to serve on any supreme court.
Again and again, we read of challenges overcome, and new challenges faced. Each of these women had difficulty being hired by law firms after receiving their law degrees. Each of them faced blatant discrimination, quite openly in a society that did not value women in the workplace, let alone in the courtroom. Today’s challenges are of a different variety, though equally insidious. Women in our profession still face discrimination in hiring, advancement and compensation, harassment and hostility from clients, micro-aggressions and macro-aggressions in the workplace, work-life balance issues and basic misunderstanding by law firms and organizations of the difficulties they face. Attrition of women lawyers has been targeted by the ABA, by Pennsylvania’s Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness, and by our bar association.
Our Women’s Rights Committee and Women in the Profession Committee have paved the way for women practicing in Philadelphia to have allies and advocates, highlighting the need for change and illuminating the pathways to that change, even when firms and organizations were reluctant to adapt. By way of example, attorney and longtime bar leader Judy Berkman recalls a survey having been conducted in 1974, highlighting the paucity of women and minorities in law firms and in government agencies. She recalls a time when women were not even allowed to ascend the front steps of the Union League, and instead were directed to the basement door. The late Judge Norma Shapiro, prior to taking the bench, was a driving force behind the bar association’s efforts, as were allies like former chancellor Andre Dennis and others. Our Women’s Rights Committee urged the formation of a task force on gender fairness, which advanced the ball before a statewide task force was formed. The Women’s Rights Committee along with other committees later established the Committee to Promote Fairness in the Philadelphia Justice System, which heard reports of bias in conjunction with Philadelphia’s Fair Practices Ordinance. More recently, the committee commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment.
The Women in the Profession Committee has been equally noteworthy in its advocacy, programming, education and support of Philadelphia women lawyers. Established in 1986 by then-Chancellor Bennett Picker, the committee has had a remarkable track record for leadership development both within the bar association community and the community at large. Through its implementation of the Sandra Day O’Connor Award each year, that com- mittee shines a light on some of the trailblazing women in our midst.
While we all can celebrate the fact that Pennsylvania finally has its first woman Chief Justice and first woman Speaker of the House, and Morgan Lewis and other Philadelphia-based firms are chaired by women, much work is left to be done. The Philadelphia Bar Association stands ready to do that hard work, with your help. Time to step up!
Marc J. Zucker is 2023 Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. You can email him at chancellor@philabar.org.
