Afterword

Afterword

Description

In January 2006, I arrived in Berkeley, California, for a job interview for an entry-level position teaching at the law school. The day was already pressure- filled, so imagine my utter terror when the appointments chair informed me that that Herma Hill Kay, Berkeley Law’s former dean and resident expert in Family Law and gender equality, was “very interested in talking to [me].” Our first audience began inauspiciously. I perched awkwardly on a chair in her office, trying hard not to stare at the photos and newspaper clippings that dotted the wall and shelves. I knew that Herma was a leader in many academic fields—Family Law, Conflict of Laws, Sex Equality—but it was nonetheless overwhelming to see her professional accomplishments splayed out across her office. There was Herma, resplendent in navy blue and gold, the first female dean of Berkeley Law. A framed certificate honored Herma’s service as one of the first women presidents of the Association of American Law Schools. On an adjacent shelf was the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award, honoring Herma’s work advancing women’s rights and professional progress. There was a framed certificate commemorating Herma’s work as a member of Governor Edmund Brown’s Commission on the Family, which paved the way for California’s adoption of a no-fault divorce statute in 1969. Newspaper clippings chronicled Herma’s advocacy on behalf of California’s therapeutic abortion statute and the state’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. In a smaller silver-edged frame was a photograph of Herma and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, heads together, editing their Sex Discrimination casebook. A framed newspaper article featured a photo of Herma throwing out the first ball at an Oakland As game with enviable form. There was even a photo of Herma piloting a single-engine plane. I tried hard to pay attention as she peppered me with questions, but I was dazzled. Everywhere I looked, I came face to face with Herma’s status as a living legend—a pioneer for women in the law. Six months after that first meeting, I joined the Berkeley Law faculty as an assistant professor, and Herma and I began building a professional and personal friendship that would last until her death in 2017. But curiously, in the ten years of our friendship, we rarely talked about Herma’s many accomplishments. Whenever I would try to get her to open up about her many successes, she would grace- fully steer the conversation in another direction. The only aspect of her work that she seemed especially eager to discuss was her book project chronicling the careers of the fourteen women who had preceded her as professors at accredited law schools. This project occupied her attention for the last fifteen years of her life. She spent countless hours interviewing her subjects and their colleagues, and poring over microfiche, newspaper clippings, and remnants of the women’s personal papers. Her goal, as she noted on more than one occasion, was to paint a complete picture of their professional lives. Despite long odds, these women had persisted, claiming a place in a profession that was often dismissive of them and their professional aspirations. Herma wanted to capture both the exhilaration of having made it, and the often-palpable loneliness of being the only woman in the room. She also wanted to ensure that, even as the profession and the professorate grows ever more diverse, these pioneering women were not forgotten. In this, she was, predictably, wildly successful. The book paints a searing portrait of what it was like to be a woman in the legal academy at a time when women were scarce and white men dominated both the ranks of the professorate and the student body. Her accounts of her pathbreaking predecessors make clear the indignities, both banal and profound, that these women routinely endured as the lone female on their faculties. One can only wince upon learning that for much of her career at Berkeley, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong was chronically under- paid relative to her male colleagues. By the same token, it is cringeworthy to read that the social worker charged with evaluating Marygold Melli for an adoption balked at the prospect of an adoptive mother who was also a full-time law professor. Of course, we can all chuckle at Melli’s pluck in dealing with the situation: she briefly surrendered her faculty position at the University of Wisconsin, only to be immediately reappointed to the faculty once the adoption was finalized.

Source Publication

Paving the Way: The First American Women Law Professors

Source Editors/Authors

Herma Hill Kay, Patricia A. Cain

Publication Date

2021

Afterword

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