Women’s Museum of California
Liberty Station
San Diego
October 14, 2018
We visited the exhibition on Women in Law at the Women’s Museum of California in Liberty Station, and we learned a great deal we had not known before about the history of women in the legal profession in the United States.
We read about 19th century pioneers like Arabella Mansfield in Iowa (admitted to the bar after Iowa amended the state constitution in 1869 to drop its male gender restriction) and Clara Foltz in California (admitted in 1878). Not only did women face legal barriers to earning their law licenses, even after admitted to the bar they struggled to build practices. The 19th century attitude toward women in the legal profession was exemplified by this quote by Chief Justice C. J. Ryan of the Wisconsin Supreme Court displayed near the entrance:
Nature has tempered women as little for the judicial conflicts of the courtroom as for the physical conflicts of the battlefield. Our profession has essentially to do with all that is selfish and extortionate, knavish and criminal, coarse and brutal, repulsive and obscene in human life. It would be revolting to all female sense of innocence and the sanctity of their sex.
(Ryan made this statement in opposition to admitting Lavinia Goodell to the bar in 1895.)
Closer to our own time, we read that:
- Only in the 1970’s did the percentage of women in law schools and legal practice exceed the single digits;
- 80% of women practicing law in 1988 entered the profession after 1980; and
- An ABA survey conducted in 1983 revealed that 65% of male attorneys had no female colleagues.
That is the context in which Meredith entered the legal profession. She started law school at the University of San Diego in 1983 and was admitted to the California bar in 1987. When she worked as a law clerk at the San Diego office of a major national law firm in 1985, all of the attorneys in that office – more than 65 total – were men.
The museum was running a video on a loop, with short segments featuring women in the legal profession, both current attorneys and retired. Meredith was particularly interested in the video excerpt and papers on display regarding Madge Bradley, the first female judge on the bench in San Diego County. Bradley was appointed to the bench in 1953. Years ago Meredith heard then-retired Judge Bradley give a riveting talk at a luncheon sponsored by Lawyers Club, the local feminist bar association. Judge Bradley reminisced about what law practice was like in the 1940’s and 50’s, when all the lawyers in the county knew one another and there were only about half a dozen women practicing law. During World War II, she remembered, people were supposed to ask themselves before driving anywhere, “Is this trip necessary?” Bradley handled divorces at a time when, as she put it, “you needed grounds for divorce,” and said that mental cruelty was her preferred ground because “mental cruelty, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” A portrait of Madge Bradley was hanging as part of the exhibition.
The Women in Law exhibition will close very soon, on October 28.
We also looked through the museum’s permanent exhibit, on the women’s suffrage movement. We have seen it on prior visits to the museum, but this time noticed new artifacts on display.
General admission to the Women’s Museum is $5; students and seniors over 55 are $3; military and children under 12 are free. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 12 noon to 4:00 p.m. Parking is free, and the museum is wheelchair accessible.
We had headed to the museum after church and stopped to enjoy a brunch at the Fig Tree Café before heading over to the museum. The food and service were excellent. Several other Boston fans greeted us, as we walked around Liberty Station in our Red Sox ballcaps. Go Sox!