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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
In 1922, Mabeth Hurd Paige became one of the first four women to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.
Best known for initiating the effort to free an enslaved woman named Eliza Winston in 1860, she weathered mob violence for her efforts. She rebuilt her home and business after the incident and lived in Minneapolis for the remainder of her life.
The Wakayama case was a wartime test case that challenged the detention of Japanese Americans forcibly removed from the West Coast.