The Untold Story of 150 Years of Women in State Judiciaries

Catherine Waugh McCulloch made history in 1907 when she was elected as a justice of the peace in Evanston, Illinois, and became the first woman judge in the state. Her competitor challenged her eligibility based on the fact that McCulloch, a lawyer and long-time proponent of women’s suffrage, did not yet have the right to vote under the state constitution. McCulloch prevailed and kept her office.

McCulloch viewed the justice of the piece position as lowly and unprofitable, but she seized the opportunity to serve in order to establish women’s legal right to hold office, demonstrate women’s professional capacity, and draw attention to the need for the franchise. Just six years later, Illinois enacted a partial women’s suffrage law, drafted by McCulloch. While McCulloch’s service was pathbreaking for Illinois, she built on decades of judicial service by women in other states.

That story began in 1870, 50 years before women secured nationwide enfranchisement through the 19th Amendment. Esther Morris secured the distinction of becoming the country’s first woman judge. Morris lived in Wyoming Territory, which had passed legislation to give women the vote and to authorize women to hold public office in 1869. A male justice of the peace was so deeply offended by these developments that he resigned in protest, and Morris was selected to complete his term. Press commentary about Morris’s performance was largely favorable, but this brief experiment ended at the expiration of the term when county residents reelected the male judge.

Morris’s experience is richly recounted by historian Marcy Karin, but the existence of women in the judiciary between Morris’s service and the 1920s has been largely overlooked and even doubted. In my recent article in the Washington University Law Review, I challenge the prevailing understanding that only a handful of women served in judicial roles prior to 19th Amendment.

Through review of newspapers from that time period, I identified nearly 100 women who served prior to 1920. Similarly, I found significantly more women in the judiciary in the decade following nationwide enfranchisement than was previously known. Most served in low-level judicial posts, such as justice of the peace and probate judge. But the importance of their service exceeded their contributions to specific cases. They provided high profile examples of women’s capabilities and ambitions, and they set the stage for women to obtain higher judicial posts.

State constitutions played a significant role in the history of women holding judgeships. Starting in the 1880s and strengthening through the 1910s, a regional divide developed in women’s access to judicial posts because of state constitutions’ differing language and judicial interpretations. In the West, state constitutions either clearly authorized women to hold judicial offices or were interpreted liberally by male judges to permit that result. By the mid-1910s, dozens of women were holding judicial posts in the western half of the country, with attorney and suffragist Lizzie Sheldon nearly becoming a state supreme court justice in Kansas in 1914. Meanwhile, in the Northeast, state supreme court justices — also male — held that their own state constitutions did not permit women to hold any judicial posts whatsoever. In some of these conservative states, women were excluded from even court-adjacent positions like notary public.

Lacking legal eligibility to become judges, women in Massachusetts, New York, and surrounding states funneled their professional interests into becoming the country’s first probation officers. Unlike judicial offices, the probation officer position was a creation of state statutory law and therefore not restricted to men. Judges and lawyers soon came to view women probation officers as essential court employees, especially for cases involving juvenile offenders, family law matters, or women defendants in criminal cases. Women were perceived as preferable due to assumptions about their maternal nature in overseeing children, as well as their ability to serve as role models for adult women. Journalists reported that in some courts, women probation officers acted as judges — without, of course, the formal title.

Pointing to women’s service as probation officers, leading women lawyers made the case for women to become official judges in juvenile courts, family courts, and now-obsolete “women’s courts.” After New York granted women the right to vote in 1917 and suffrage spread to the remaining East Coast states in 1920, women found their smoothest paths to the judiciary to be on the benches of juvenile and family courts. Although some of their counterparts in the West also obtained positions on these specialized benches, women in states that had long permitted women in the judiciary found a wider variety of opportunities.

Understanding state constitutions’ crucial role in women’s rights, as well as studying state court benches, helps us better appreciate the long and nuanced path of women in judicial service.

Elizabeth D. Katz is a professor of law at University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Suggested Citation: Elizabeth D. Katz, The Untold Story of 150 Years of Women in State Judiciaries, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Feb. 23, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/untold-story-150-years-women-state-judiciaries