Law Archives - Page 14 of 14

Amabel Anderson Arnold

Amabel Anderson Arnold LL.M. was an American lawyer and law professor who received degrees from both Benton College of Law and City College of Law and Finance within a five-day period. On July 15, 1912, Anderson and her fellow St. Louis women attorneys organized the Woman’s State Bar Association of Missouri, the first association of women lawyers in the world. Caroline G. Thummel was the President. Prior to her law career, in 1907 she opened and managed for 6 years the Arnold Preparatory School for men and women whose early education had been neglected. Anderson and her assistants tutored them privately and placed them in nearly every department of every college and university in St. Louis and in other cities. Anderson built for herself a lasting name as a competent and modern teacher. While operating the school, Anderson also accepted a position as instructor of Latin in the Dental Department of the Saint Louis University in 1908, the only woman in the faculty. She was also a professor of medical botany at the American Medical College – again, the only woman instructor. Law and teaching came together in September 1913, when Anderson was elected director of the Woman’s Department at the University of Chicago Law School, the first woman to hold such an office in the United States. In 1914 Anderson was appointed to the regular faculty of the City College of Law and Finance as lecturer and instructor in the chair of International Law – once again, the only woman to hold such a position in St. Louis.
Anderson was also an advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s suffrage; she was a charter member of the Equal Suffrage League (St. Louis), and sent out the first invitations to business women, asking them to meet to consider the organization of a league to further suffrage.

Mary L Bonauto

Mary L. Bonauto is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has fought against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. US Representative Barney Frank called her “our Thurgood Marshall.” In 1990, she began working with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, later re-named GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Bonauto worked with the Maine legislature to pass a same-sex marriage law and helped to defend it at the ballot during the 2009 election campaign, narrowly losing. These efforts yielded results wen, in the 2012 election, voters approved the measure, making Maine the first state to allow same-sex marriage via ballot vote. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which, in 2004, made Massachusetts the first state where same-sex couples could marry. She also led the first strategic challenges to section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
On April 28, 2015 Bonauto was one of three attorneys who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, arguingthat state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The highly publicized case established that state bans against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional; it is considered one of the most important civil rights cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in modern history.

Unity Dow

Unity Dow a Motswana judge, human rights activist and writer currently who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation from 2 November 2019 – 26 August 2020. She successfully challenged a law that limited citizenship, inherited by children from the fathers but not from their mothers (Attorney General of Botswana v Unity Dow (1992)). The father of Unity’s children was not a Botswana citizen, meaning the children were not either. She later became Botswana’s first female High Court judge. She was also co-founder of the country’s first all-female law practice and was one of the founding members of the women’s organization Emang Basadi.
Dow has published several books, often addressing issues around the struggle between Western and traditional African values, as well as gender issues and her nation’s poverty.
In 2005, Unity Dow became a member of a UN mission to Sierra Leone to review the domestic application of international women’s human rights. On 13 December 2006, she was one of three judges who ruled on the prominent Kgalagadi (San, Bushmen or Basarwa) court decision, concerning the rights of the San to return to their ancestral lands. The court ruled that the residents had been forcibly and unconstitutionally removed, though forced relocation continued.
Since 2007, Dow has been a member of a special mission to review the Rwandan Judiciaries preparedness to take over the hearing of the 1994 genocide cases. Dow was also sworn in as Justice of the IICDRC (Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court) of Kenya by the Kenyan President to serve implementing the new constitution in Kenya.