Law Archives - Page 2 of 16

Lorraine Bannai

Attorney, law professor and member of Fred Korematsu’s coram nobis team.

Mitsuye Endo

Plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit that ultimately led to the closing of the concentration camps and the return of Japanese Americans to the West Coast in 1945.

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga played a crucial role in the Japanese-American redress movement by discovering critical evidence of premeditated governmental misconduct during WWII, and making it available to multiple groups of activists.

Chiyoko Sakamoto

Chiyoko Sakamoto Takahashi (1912-94) earned the distinction of being the first Asian American woman admitted to the California State Bar as well as the first and only Nisei woman to practice law in California into the early post-World War II period.

Haruye Masaoka

The 1950-52 California court case Haruye Masaoka v. California (39 Cal 2nd 883) was the final victory in a series of postwar legal cases by Japanese Americans in California courts that led to the demise of the state’s established Alien Land Act.

Lily Okamoto

A Hawai’i-born, politically active Sansei who was the first woman in the Islands to be both a certified public accountant and licensed attorney.

Rose Matsui Ochi

While serving as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow for the Western Center on Law and Poverty she won the landmark educational law reform case, Serrano v. Priest, serving as the co-counsel of record.

Rosalie Wahl

Rosalie Wahl was a pioneering figure in Minnesota law during the second half of the twentieth century. She became the state’s first female Supreme Court justice at a time when there were no women on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martha Dorsett

Martha Angle Dorsett is best known for being Minnesota’s first female lawyer. After being denied the right to practice law in Minnesota in 1876, she successfully petitioned the Minnesota legislature to change the state law governing attorney admissions. With the law amended to permit admission regardless of sex, Martha went on to practice law and remained active politically throughout the rest of her life in Minneapolis.

Mabeth Hurd Paige

In 1922, Mabeth Hurd Paige became one of the first four women to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives.