Meet 9 American women shortlisted for the U.S. Supreme Court before Sandra Day O’Connor

As early as the 1930s, presidents were considering putting the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. So who were these other candidates on the shortlist, and why did it take until 1981 for Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles talks with Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson about their decade-long research project into the careers and personal lives of nine other women who could have been elevated to the Supreme Court. In Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court, Jefferson and Johnson also look at the factors that helped those nine succeed as women in the law, the institutional powers that stood in the way of their nominations, and the forces that eventually broke down the court’s gender barrier.

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