Timeline Stories
All timeline stories.
Shirley Schlanger decides to be a lawyer instead of president
Schlanger tells her parents that she wants to be a lawyer. They don’t discourage her because at least she is now being realistic. When she was four she insisted that she wanted to be a U.S. president.
Verle E. Sells is appointed Wisconsin’s first female judge
Gov. Phil La Follette appoints Sells to the Florence County municipal court, making her Wisconsin’s first female judge. At her death in 1940, she is still Wisconsin’s only female judge.
Shirley Schlanger (Abrahamson) is born
Schlanger is born in the Bronx, New York to Leo Schlanger and Ceil Sauerteig, Jewish immigrants from Poland.
Mabel Watson Raimey is Wisconsin’s first Black woman lawyer
Raimey is also the first Black woman known to have graduated from a law school in Wisconsin and the first Black woman to graduate from UW Madison.
Dorothy Walker is first woman elected county district attorney
Walker is elected Columbia County district attorney at age 23. She is the first woman to hold this position in Wisconsin. The press reports that she is also the first female district attorney in the United States. During her four-year term, she prosecutes over 300 cases.
Belle Case La Follette becomes the first woman to graduate from the UW Law School
La Follette says that it did not take much to convince her that she could handle law school without neglecting her baby and her husband, Dane County District Attorney Bob La Follette, who later became Wisconsin’s governor and senator.
Kate Kane becomes the first woman to run for the supreme court
Kane, Wisconsin’s second woman lawyer, becomes the first woman to run for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Only men could participate in elections then. She wins three votes.
Lavinia Goodell becomes the first woman to win an appeal in the supreme court
Lavinia Goodell becomes the first woman to win an appeal in the Wisconsin Supreme Court with Ingalls v. State, 48 Wis. 647 (1880)
Lavinia Goodell becomes the first woman admitted to the supreme court
In 1875, Goodell is denied admission to the Wisconsin Supreme Court solely because of her gender. She drafts a law prohibiting gender discrimination in the practice of law, persuades the legislature and governor to enact it, and finally gains admission.