Catherine Waugh McCulloch made history in 1907 when she was elected justice of the peace in Evanston, Illinois, becoming the state’s first female judge. Her competitors challenged her eligibility based on the fact that McCulloch, an attorney and longtime supporter of women’s suffrage, did not yet have the right to vote under the state constitution. McCulloch won and kept his job.
McCulloch believed that the right to office was debased and disadvantageous, but she seized the opportunity to hold office in order to establish women’s legal right to hold public office, demonstrate women’s professional abilities, and draw attention to the need for the franchise. Just six years later, Illinois enacted a partial women’s suffrage law drafted by McCulloch. Although McCulloch’s service was groundbreaking for Illinois, she built on decades of judicial service by women in other states.
The story begins in 1870, 50 years before the 19th Amendment secured women the right to vote nationwide. Esther Morris secured the honor of becoming the nation’s first female judge. Morris lived in Wyoming Territory, which had passed a law in 1869 giving women the right to vote and empowering them to hold public office. A male magistrate was deeply offended by these developments and resigned in protest, and Morris was elected to complete his term. Although media commentary on Morris’ performance was generally positive, this short-lived experiment ended when county residents re-elected a male judge at the end of his term.
Although Morris’ experiences have been richly recounted by historian Marcy Currin, the presence of women in the judiciary from Morris’s tenure through the 1920s has been largely ignored or even questioned. In my recent article, University of Washington Law OverviewI challenge the common understanding that only a handful of women held judicial office before the 19th Amendment.
Through reviews of newspapers of the time, I identified nearly 100 women who served before 1920. Similarly, we found that in the decade following national suffrage, there were far more women in the judiciary than previously known. Most held lower judicial positions such as magistrates and probate judges. However, the importance of their service exceeded their contribution to specific cases. These provided notable examples of women’s ability and ambition, and prepared them for higher judicial positions.
The state constitution played an important role in the history of women judges. Beginning in the 1880s and strengthening through the 1910s, differences in the wording of state constitutions and judicial interpretation created regional disparities in women’s access to judicial positions. In the West, state constitutions either explicitly allowed women to hold judicial office, or were freely interpreted and recognized by male judges. By the mid-1910s, dozens of women were serving in the judiciary in the western half of the country, and in 1914, lawyer and suffragist Lizzie Sheldon was about to become a Kansas Supreme Court justice. Meanwhile, in the Northeast, another male state Supreme Court justice argued that his state’s constitution does not allow women to hold any judicial office. In some of these conservative states, women were even excluded from positions adjacent to the courthouse, such as notary public.
Without the legal qualifications to become judges, women from Massachusetts, New York, and surrounding states poured their professional profits into becoming the nation’s first probation officers. Unlike judicial positions, the probation officer position was established by state law and was therefore not restricted to men. Judges and lawyers soon came to view female probation officers as important court personnel, especially in cases involving juvenile offenders, family law matters, or female defendants in criminal cases. Women were perceived as preferred due to assumptions about their maternal qualities in supervising children and their ability to serve as role models for adult women. Journalists reported that female probation officers served as judges in some courts, although of course they had no official title.
Influential female lawyers pointed to the work of women as probation officers and advocated for women to serve as official judges in juvenile courts, family courts, and the now-defunct Women’s Court. After New York granted women the right to vote in 1917 and expanded suffrage to the rest of the East Coast states in 1920, women realized that the smoothest path to the bar was through the juvenile and family courts. While some of their peers in Western countries have achieved these professional judge positions, women in states that have long allowed women to serve on the judiciary have found more diverse opportunities.
Understanding the important role of state constitutions in women’s rights and studying the benches of state courts can help you better understand the long and nuanced journey of women in the judicial profession.
Elizabeth D. Katz is a professor of law at the University of Florida Levin School of Law.
Recommended Citation: Elizabeth D. Katz 150 years of untold stories of women in the state judiciary; Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (February 23, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/untold-story-150-years-women-state-judiciaries
