Law Archives - Page 3 of 19

Frances Farmer

Frances Farmer was a law librarian and the first female law professor at the University of Virginia.

Elizabeth Key Grinstead

Elizabeth Key was a principal in one of the important early court cases that shaped the evolving law of slavery in seventeenth-century Virginia.

Carrie Buck was the first person involuntarily sterilized under Virginia’s eugenics laws. In Buck v. Bell (1927), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia’s law was constitutional and that Buck should be sterilized, the first of approximately 8,300 performed under state law between 1927 and 1972.

Aline E Black

Aline E. Black was a teacher known primarily as a principal in a civil rights court case on equal pay.

Sarah Roberts

Benjamin Roberts, an African American, sued the city of Boston in 1848 stating that his daughter Sarah Roberts was unlawfully refused entrance to five schools between her home and the Smith School.

Anna E Hirsch

The first woman president of the Board of Trustees of New England School of Law was Anna E. Hirsch (1902-97), a 1928 graduate of Portia Law. Hirsch was elected register of probate for Norfolk County in 1954 and 1960.

Mary A Mahan

The first woman member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and suffragist

Blanche Woodson Braxton

In 1923, Blanche Woodson Braxton became the first African American woman to be admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. She later became the first African American woman admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court in the state.

Jennie Loitman Barron

The first full time woman judge in Massachusetts and the first woman judge on the Massachusetts Superior Court

Sarah Parker Remond

International anti-slavery lecturer and activist for African American and women’s suffrage. Later, she moved to Italy where she became a medical doctor.