Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Miami, Florida. She attended Palmetto Senior high school, where she was a member of the debate team and president of the student body. She studied government at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude, and then worked for a short time as a researcher and reporter at TIME Magazine. In 1993, at 23, she continued her studies at Harvard Law School, where she served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1996, the same year she received her law degree, she married Patrick Graves Jackson. For the next decade, she worked in both the private and public sectors. She clerked for several federal judges, including Judge Patti B. Saris of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Bruce M. Selya of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. In 2003, at the age of 33, Jackson returned to work for the government, first as an assistant special counsel to the US Sentencing Commission and then as an assistant federal public defender. In 2009, President Obama nominated her to serve as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission for four years. After President Barack Obama’s nomination, she began serving on the US District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2013. In June 2021, following President Joe Biden’s nomination, she was confirmed as a circuit judge for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. In the following year, President Biden announced her nomination for associate justice of the US Supreme Court, and on April 7th, 2022, 52 years old Jackson became the first black woman in the Supreme Court. She is also the first federal public defender to sit on the court and the first justice in almost 30 years to have represented criminal defendants. Jackson is serving on various boards and committees, including the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, the Council of the American Law Institute, the board of Georgetown Day School, and the US Supreme Court Fellows Commission. Read more...

Clara Campoamor Rodríguez was born in Madrid, Spain, to a working-class family. Her father died when she was ten years old, and she had to leave school to help her mother and younger siblings. She did the house works, and at 13, worked as a seamstress while educating herself in her free time. At 21, Campoamor was hired as a telegraph assistant at the Post Office in San Sebastián and soon worked her way up in the office and then as a typing teacher in Madrid. At the time, Campoamor became involved in politics. She took a second job at a liberal newspaper, joined numerous women’s organizations, and published political commentaries at a liberal newspaper. In 1920, Campoamor realized that she had to further her primary education to get higher positions. So, at the age of 32, she began to take evening classes at a secondary school. After earning her university diploma, she enrolled in law school, and at the age of 36, Campoamor became the second woman to join the Madrid Bar Association. She founded a law firm specializing in women’s and children’s issues, defending women’s rights in divorce and paternity cases, and fighting for child labor laws. She also promoted women’s rights outside of work, co-founded the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the Spanish Women’s League for Peace. In 1931, after the Second Spanish Republic was formed, 43 years old Campoamor was among the 21 deputies elected to draft the constitution. Representing the Radical Party, Campoamor fought against sexual discrimination, for women’s right to divorce, for the legal equality of children born within and outside marriage, and for universal suffrage – the “women’s vote.” Promoting the cause, she became the first woman to address the Parliament’s plenary session in front of 470 men and one woman, arguing that preventing women from exercising their right to vote violates the natural law. Campoamor’s advocacy was opposed by both sides of the Parliament, including members of her party. She left the party and continued to represent women’s rights as an independent member of the assembly. With endless efforts and the support of women’s activists throughout the country, Campoamor managed to include in the new constitution the article that stated that “Citizens of either sex, over 23 years of age, will have the same rights elections as determined by law.” After the constitution got declared, Campoamor was outcasted by her party and lost her parliament seat in the elections of 1933. In 1936, on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Campoamor had to flee the country. First, she moved to Argentina, where she worked as a translator, and then, after being denied to return to Spain by the Franco regime, she settled in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she returned to work as a lawyer. She died in exile at the age of 84. Read more...

Catharine Alice MacKinnon was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She attended Smith College, graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in government, continued her education at Yale University, earning her J.D. in 1977 at the age of 31, and her Ph.D. in political science at 41 in 1987. During the 70s, MacKinnon became an active member of the newly formed women’s liberation movement. While in graduate school, she initiated a course that later will develop into Yale’s women’s studies program. As part of her law studies, MacKinnon wrote a paper in which she argued that sexual harassment in the workplace is a form of sex-based discrimination. That paper was the foundation of her first book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, published in 1978. In the book, MacKinnon categorizes two types of sexual harassment – sexual compliance in exchange for benefits and sexual harassment as a persistent condition. In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted MacKinnon’s guidelines and prohibited both kinds of sexual harassment, and in 1986 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of MacKinnon’s argument in its first sexual harassment case. During the 80s, MacKinnon focused on legal issues in the sex industry, fighting it as a form of sex discrimination and human trafficking, arguing it as a civil rights violation. Alongside activist Andrea Dworkin, MacKinnon wrote an ordinance that allows women harmed by trafficking in pornography to sue the producers for damages. In 1998, MacKinnon’s and Dworkin’s law against prostitution passed in Sweden and was termed as the Swedish Model, and later was adopted in various countries, including Canada, France, Norway, and Ireland. In 1993, MacKinnon represented Bosnian survivors of Serbian sexual atrocities and achieved legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide. She continued to advocate against prostitution and trafficking crimes as a Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and practiced nationally and internationally with organizations such as Equality Now, the ERA Coalition, and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Throughout her career, MacKinnon served as a professor at several law schools; among them are Yale, Stanford, the Hebrew University, and the University of Basel. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. She is also a Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and an Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. MacKinnon published 17 books about sexual harassment, pornography, and prostitution, helping to change the legal system in the U.S and abroad in gendered-based sex crimes.   Read more...

Sadie Tanner Mossell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A year after she was born, her father abandoned the family and moved to the UK. During high school, she moved to Washington, DC, where she lived with her relatives and attended M Street School. At 17, she returned to Philadelphia to study Education at the University of Pennsylvania. There, she suffered discrimination from both students and professors, and though she graduated with honors, she was denied joining Phi Beta Kappa. She continued her studies, and at 23, received her M.A in Economics, followed by a Ph.D. – becoming the second African-American woman in the USA to earn a doctoral degree and the first to receive a Ph.D. in Economics. Despite her academic accolades, she struggled to get a professorship. Unable to find a job in Philadelphia, she moved to Durham, North Carolina, and worked for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. At the time, she also served as the first national president of Delta Sigma Theta – the black women’s sorority. In 1923, she married the lawyer and civil rights leader Raymond Pace Alexander, and the couple moved back to Philadelphia. Once again, she had difficulties getting a job in the city, so she stayed home, concentrated on volunteering for a year, and then decided to go to law school. At the age of 26, Alexander became the first African-American woman to study at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and two years later she became the first to graduate and to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar – the first African-American person to hold both a Ph.D. and a J.D. Afterward, she joined her husband’s law firm as a partner, making them one of the early married legal teams in the USA. As an attorney, Alexander advocated against segregation, racial discrimination, and employment inequality. As a partner, she helped draft the Pennsylvania state Public Accommodations Law of 1935, prohibiting discrimination in public places. At 30, Alexander added another “First” to her list when she was appointed the first African-American woman Assistant City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia. During the two inconsecutive terms in this position (1928-1930 and 1934-1938), she established a legal aid bureau that assisted African-Americans who could not afford attorneys. In 1930, Alexander served as secretary for the National Urban League, a position she held for 27 years. In 1943, Alexander was chosen as secretary of the National Bar Association, becoming, once again, the first woman in this position. In 1947, President Harry Truman appointed her to his Committee on Human Rights, and in 1952 she began her 12 years term on Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations. At the age of 61, after her husband was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Alexander opened her law firm, continuing to practice law for the next 15 years. At 78, she joined Atkinson, Myers, and Archie law firm as a general counsel until her retirement at 84. Alexander passed away at the age of 91 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Read more...

Catherine Cortez was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. She studied finance at the University of Nevada, Reno, and then law at the Gonzaga University School of Law. In 1995, she became the chief of staff of the former Nevada Governor Bob Miller, as well as served as an assistant to the United States Attorney General. During that time, she married Paul Masto, a former Special Agent in the US Secret Service. In 1999, Cortez Masto moved to Washington, DC, for a few years to work as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, 42 years old Cortez Masto won the state Attorney General’s elections, serving full two-term after winning the re-election of 2010, the second woman to serve as Nevada Attorney General. In this position, she focused on social issues such as sex trafficking, elder abuse, domestic violence, and the methamphetamine epidemic. As state attorney general, Cortez Masto investigated a nationwide mortgage-fraud, which the settlement of the case brought to the state more than $1.9 billion. In 2016, Cortez Masto ran for a seat at the US Senate. In her campaign, she asserted topics such as immigration reform, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and raising the minimum wage. She won with 47% of the votes, and when she took office, Cortez Masto became the first Latina in the US Senate and the first woman to represent Nevada. While in office, she advocates for gun control, pro-choice, and federal government limitations on greenhouse gas emissions. She is a member of numerous committees, including the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Committee on Finance, and the Committee on Indian Affairs. In her efforts to promote women and children, Cortez Masto introduced two bills addressing missing, murdered, and trafficking of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, as well as introduced the Interdiction of Protection of Child Victims of Exploitation and Human Trafficking Act, providing tools for law enforcement officers to recognize and rescue exploited children. Read more...

Jennifer Granholm was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. At the age of 4, she moved with her family to the US, settling in California. After graduating high school, she worked in various jobs, including as a tour guide at Universal Studios, in customer service at the Los Angeles Times, and at John B. Anderson’s presidential campaign. She studied Political Science and French at the University of California, Berkeley, then continued to a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard University, where she met her future husband, a fellow law student named Daniel Mulhern. After graduating with honors, she was active in the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign for the 1988 election while working as a clerk for Judge Damon Keith at the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Granholm started working as an attorney in the Wayne County executive office, where she prosecuted gang members, drug dealers, and child pornographers. At the age of 36, she was appointed to the Corporation Counsel for Wayne County – the youngest person to serve in this post. In 1998, she won a close and dirty race for Michigan Attorney General – the first woman in this position. In-office, she established Michigan’s first High Tech Crime Unit, sued RVP Development for the disruption of Lake Michigan, and enforced regulations on gasoline dealers in the state. In 2002, she entered the race as the Democratic candidate for Governor of Michigan. She won and became the first woman to serve as Governor of the state of Michigan. As Governor, Granholm pushed for education reform, promoting education for children from birth to age 5, advocating for post-secondary education, and leading the state to double its number of college graduates. Under her leadership, she led Michigan through the national crisis of 2008, channeling $2 billion to attract jobs and investing in clean energy, homeland security, and manufacturing sectors. During her eight years in office, the state of Michigan had attracted 4,000 companies and became the 2nd highest state in the country with child health care coverage. After leaving office in 2011, she began to teach law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and became a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute. She founded the American Jobs Project at UC Berkeley, served as a senior advisor for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Clean Energy Program. She is a board member of the Dow Chemical Company and of The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. She is also a regular contributor to CNN, serving as a Managing Partner of RIDGE-LANE LP company and chairing the Priorities USA Action as well as the American Jobs Project.   Read more...

Erin Pattee was born in Lawrence, Kansas. After graduating high school, she attended Kansas State University for a year before transferring to Wade College, earning an associate’s degree in applied arts. At the age of 20, she moved to Newport Beach, California, where she worked as a management trainee at Kmart, but left shortly to participate in the Miss Pacific Coast beauty pageant, winning the title. At the time, she met her first husband, and the couple moved from one place to another until they settled in Reno, Nevada. Not long after, they got divorced, and she began to work as a secretary at a brokerage firm, where she met her second husband, Steve Brockovich. The marriage lasted a year, and at 29, pregnant with two children, Brockovich moved to San Fernando Valley, California. After been severely injured in a car accident, Brockovich hired Masry & Vititoe law firm to represent her in the case. The lawyer felt sympathetic to her and recognized her abilities, so he offered her a job as a clerk in his firm. In 1993, while filing documents on a real estate case, Brockovich found suspicious medical records. In her investigation, she uncovered that for more than 30 years, the power company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) had contaminated the groundwater of Hinkley’s town with the toxic chemical hexavalent chromium, caused severe illnesses in almost every household in Hinkley. More than 600 residents of Hinkley filed a lawsuit against the company, and in 1996 PG&E was forced to pay a settlement of $333 million – the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in the US. Brockovich herself received a $2 million bonus for her work on the case. In 2005, Brockovich left Masry & Vititoe to open her own company – Erin Brockovich Research & Consulting. There, she is assisting people with cases of environmental-contamination issues. She was involved in various successful lawsuits against environmental polluters in the US and abroad and has given lectures about consumer advocation worldwide. Read more...

Amy Coney Barrett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb. Her family is Catholic, and throughout the years, she studied at catholic education institutes. After high school, she studied English literature and French at Rhodes College, graduating magna cum laude. Afterward, she studied law at Notre Dame Law School, graduating first in her class with a Juris Doctor summa cum laude. At the age of 25, Barrett began to work as a judicial law clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman and then for Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court. In 1999, she married Jesse M. Barrett, whom she met at Notre Dame Law School. The couple moved to Washington, DC, where she worked for a prestigious litigation law firm. At 29, Barrett served for a year as a visiting associate professor at George Washington University Law School, before returning to Notre Dame Law School as an assistant professor, soon becoming a full-tenured faculty member. She taught federal courts, statutory interpretation, and constitutional law and was voted Professor of the year three times. In 2010, she was named a Professor of Law, and during 2014-2017 she held the Diane and M.O. Miller Research Chair of Law. At the age of 38, Barrett was appointed to the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, a position she served for six years. In 2017, Barrett was nominated by the US President Donald Trump to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, she was asked how her faith could affect her law-making decisions. Barrett answered that her faith would never compromise her work as a judge. The hearing, as well as her opinions on abortion and gay marriage, made her popular with religious right conservatives. She was voted 55–43, and in her confirmation, Barrett became the first woman to serve in the Indiana seat on the Seventh Circuit. While serving in this position, she authored more than 100 opinions that reinforce her name as a textualist. On September 26th, 2020, Barrett was nominated by President Trump to the US Supreme Court, to replace the deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On October 27th, 2020, Barrett became the 103rd associate justice of the US Supreme Court, the fifth woman in this position. Read more...

Clara Shortridge was born in Milton, Indiana, but was raised in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, attending a co-educational school. At 14, she accepted a teaching job, but in the following year, she eloped with Jeremiah D. Foltz – a Civil War veteran and a farmer who was ten years older than her. The couple moved from one place to another until they settled in San Jose, California. She raised their children and wrote articles for several local newspapers. When she was 27 years old, her husband left her with their five children. Already involved in the suffrage movement, she supported herself by giving public lectures on the subject, and simultaneity began to study law independently. When she wanted to take the bar examination, her admission declined because of her gender. Her response was to write the Woman Lawyer Bill, in which she changed “white male” into “person.” The Bill passed, and within a few months, she became the first woman to be admitted to the California bar and the first female lawyer on the west coast. Foltz wished to deepen her education, so she tried to enroll into Hastings College of the Law, but once again was denied for being a woman. So, together with Laura de Force Gordon, she argued before the state Supreme Court that if women could serve as lawyers, they should be allowed to attend law school. They also wrote an amendment to the California state constitution to change the law accordingly. By the time she won the case, she had no money to pay for her education, and she had to give up her dream to attend law school and return to serve as an attorney. As such, she had a successful career, practicing family, criminal and corporate law, first in San Francisco, then in Los Angeles and NYC. In 1893, during the Chicago World Fair, Foltz presented the pioneering idea of providing legal assistance to criminal defendants with low means, as well as segregating juvenile offenders from adult prisoners. Although it took 20 years, her revolutionary initiative came to practice first in California and then throughout the US. As a suffragist, Foltz always pushed for progressive legislation for women’s rights and encouraged women to participate in the legal field. In 1911, she led a campaign to secure the vote for women in state elections in California, and afterward, she became the first woman to serve as LA’s deputy district attorney. It is only one of her “firsts list,” that include- first female clerk for the State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, the first female licensed Notary Public, the first woman appointed to the State Board of Corrections, the first woman director of a major bank, the first woman member of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, and at 81, she became the first woman to run for Governor of California. She passed away at 85 of heart failure. Read more...

Mary Ann Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware, to free African-Americans and abolitionists parents. Her father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and their home was a refuge for fugitive slaves. When she was 10 years old, it became illegal for African-Americans to receive education in Delaware, so the family moved to Pennsylvania, where she attended a Quaker Boarding School. At 16, after graduating high school, she established a school for black children in East Chester, and later she taught in several cities, including NYC. At the age of 27, the family moved to Canada, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed everyone to capture free slaves and returning them to their masters. As a natural-born activist, Shadd became an outspoken advocate for full racial integration and encouraged African-Americans to immigrate to Canada. She founded a school for both black and white children, and in 1852, she published a pamphlet titled “Notes on Canada West,” in which she discussed the benefits and the opportunities that wait for African-Americans in Canada. In 1953, she established “The Provincial Freeman” – the first anti-slavery newspaper, which made her the first female journalist in Canada and the first black female editor in North America. In its seven years of publication in Canada and the US, it explored a variety of topics, from immigration to world events and culture. Her unorthodox approach toward immigration made her a controversial figure in her community, and it almost cost her speech at the Philadelphia Colored Convention of 1855. When Shadd was 33, she married Thomas F. Cary, and when he died four years later, while she was pregnant with their second child, she returned to the US. During the Civil War, she served as a recruiting officer, enlisting black volunteers for the Union Army. After the war, she settled in Washington, DC, where she worked as a teacher while attending evening classes at Howard University Law School. In 1883, Shadd graduated at the age of 60 and became the second black woman in the US to earn a law degree. She never stopped writing, publishing articles in numerous newspapers, including The People’s Advocate and the National Era. Shadd was also a women’s rights activist, working alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony at the National Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1880, she established the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise – an organization promoting equal rights of African-American women. She died at the age of 70 from stomach cancer. Read more...