A Closer Look at President Carter’s Groundbreaking Judicial Appointments

Mary Clark’s article focuses on President Carter’s appointments of women to the federal bench and the impact this made on future judicial appointments. According to Clark, “Carter’s groundbreaking appointment of women judges was motivated by his commitment to women’s equality as a human right and was achieved through substantial reliance on merit selection and affirmative action principles” (Clark, Carter’s Groundbreaking Appointment of Women to the Federal Bench: His Other “Human Rights” Record 2003, 1132). Prior to Carter’s term in office, just eight women had been confirmed to Article III judgeships (Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy each appointed one woman, Johnson appointed three women, Nixon and Ford each appointed one woman).  When Carter took office in 1977, just “one woman served among ninety-seven judges on the federal courts of appeal and five women among nearly 400 district court judges. By the time he left office in 1981, Carter had appointed forty women to Article III courts of general jurisdiction; eleven at the appeals court level and twenty-nine at the district court” Id. at 1133. The contrast of Carter’s appointments is clear when recognizing that 15.8% (or one in six) of Carter’s 259 judicial appointees were female, compared with less than one percent of each of his predecessors’ appointments.

Justice Ginsburg’s Tribute to Judicial “Way Pavers”

This article was taken from Ginsburg’s address at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Women Judges in Atlanta, Georgia on October 7, 1995.  In her address, Ginsburg discusses three “way pavers” who made women’s inclusion in the judiciary more than just a rare curiosity.  Judges Florence Ellinwood Allen, Burnita Shelton Matthews, and Shirley Mount Hufstedler – those among the first women to be seated on the federal bench, are discussed.