CBJ - June 2011 #01. A hundred years later, a trailblazer gets her due.

AuthorBy Kristina Horton Flaherty Staff Writer

California Bar Journal

2011.

CBJ - June 2011 #01.

A hundred years later, a trailblazer gets her due

The California LawyerJune 2011A hundred years later, a trailblazer gets her dueBy Kristina Horton FlahertyStaff WriterJust before midnight on April 1, 1878, Clara Shortridge Foltz, a young mother of five, bolted through a horde of men into the California governor's chambers. She could not accept the news that the unsigned Woman Lawyer's Bill - legislation entitling women to practice law - was dead. But, as Foltz's account goes, the governor listened to her appeal, then retrieved the bill from a discard pile and, just moments before the midnight deadline, signed it into law.

The historic moment was just one of many in Foltz's once-celebrated career as the first woman lawyer on the Pacific Coast, California's first female deputy district attorney and the founder of the public defender movement. She sued for entrance into California's only law school, tried cases in court when women were not allowed to serve on juries and played a key role in winning women's suffrage in California 100 years ago.

But Foltz's renown then virtually disappeared, and for decades her remarkable story lay buried in old court transcripts, letters and countless newspaper clippings preserved on microfiche.

"She was so famous in her day and did so much and yet she was just completely forgotten," says retired Stanford law professor Barbara Babcock, who recently finished the first and only biography of Foltz after years of research.

Babcock's new book, Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (Stanford University Press 2011), tells the unlikely story of a young girl who elopes with a Union soldier at age 15, begins married life on a farm in the Midwest and bears five children - then goes on to become a lawyer, suffragist, newspaper editor, influential thinker and popular orator who once captivated audiences nationwide.

Much of the story unfolds in the late 19th century, a time marked by turbulent politics, a rapidly changing way of life and a sense of hope. In telling Foltz's story, Babcock reveals the links between the suffrage movement and other struggles for civil rights and legal reform. And she shows what Foltz and her fellow suffragists faced in their push for the vote and equal access to education and employment, and the right to serve on juries...

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