The All-Woman Supreme Court refers to a special session of the
Supreme Court of Texas which met in 1925. The court consisted of
Hortense Sparks Ward, who was appointed special chief justice,
Hattie Leah Henenberg, and
Ruth Virginia Brazzil. It sat for five months, ruling on the case ''Johnson v. Darr'', and was the first all-female supreme court in the history of the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Background
The roots of the All-Woman Supreme Court lay in a lawsuit which originated in
El Paso
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the s ...
and reached the state supreme court in 1924.
The case, styled ''Johnson v. Darr'' (114 Tex. 516), involved a so-called "
secret trust A secret trust is a trust which arises when property is left to a person (the legatee) under a will on the understanding that they will hold the property as trustee for the benefit of beneficiaries who are not named in the will.
Secret trusts are ...
" under which the
Woodmen of the World
WoodmenLife (officially Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society) is a not-for-profit fraternal benefit society founded in 1890, based in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, that operates a large privately held insurance company for its members.
...
were claiming ownership of two tracts of land in the city. The high court was asked to review the decision made by the El Paso Court of Civil Appeals in the case.
The case involved a
lien
A lien ( or ) is a form of security interest granted over an item of property to secure the payment of a debt or performance of some other obligation. The owner of the property, who grants the lien, is referred to as the ''lienee'' and the per ...
on two tracts of land owned by the Woodmen in El Paso. A group of trustees from the group deeded both pieces to F. P. Jones, and the deed was properly recorded. That same day, Jones signed an agreement to hold the property in trust for the trustees and deed it back upon request. This was not recorded. Jones's creditors, including W. T. Johnson, claimed the land as payment for debts, whereupon the trustees brought suit to establish the agreement and prevent a transfer of the land.
The trial court held for the defendants on one piece of property, and for the plaintiffs on the other. The El Paso Court of Civil Appeals held for the Woodmen on both.
The Woodmen of the World were very influential in Texas politics, and nearly all of the state's elected officials were members,
as were most lawyers. Consequently, most of the state's judges and attorneys had enough personal interest in cases involving the organization that they would have to recuse themselves. The state supreme court was no exception, and on March 8, 1924, Chief Justice
Calvin Maples Cureton
Calvin Maples Cureton (September 1, 1874 – April 8, 1940) was the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court from 1921 to 1940.
Born near Walnut Springs in Bosque County, Texas, Cureton's father was a rancher and his grandfather was a pioneer so ...
indicated to
Governor of Texas
The governor of Texas heads the state government of Texas. The governor is the leader of the executive and legislative branch of the state government and is the commander in chief of the Texas Military. The current governor is Greg Abbott, who ...
Pat Morris Neff
Pat Morris Neff (November 26, 1871 – January 20, 1952) was an American politician, educator and administrator, and the 28th Governor of Texas from 1921 to 1925, ninth President of Baylor University from 1932 to 1947, and twenty-fifth presid ...
that he and associate justices
Thomas B. Greenwood and
William Pierson were members of the Woodmen, and as such would have to recuse themselves from the case.
Texas law indicated that in instances such as this the governor should act immediately and as quickly as possible to find replacements for the justices in question.
Even so, the longtime Deputy Clerk of the Supreme Court, H. L. Clamp, later recorded that Governor Neff tried for ten months to find male judges or lawyers to sit on the court, but to no avail; every one approached responded that he, too, was a member of the Woodmen and could not sit on the court. Not until the first day of 1925 – one week before the case was to be heard – did he hit upon a solution; as the Woodmen were a fraternal organization, and accepted no female members, he would appoint a court made up of only women.
Discreet inquiries revealed that as long as the women were eligible under Texas law to serve in the position, there should be no barrier to their appointment.
Neff's choice was particularly appropriate given the fact that he was the first Texas governor with a female private secretary
and his record of appointing women to all state boards and commissions throughout his term of office.
Furthermore, women were gaining more power in Texas politics throughout the decade; the state's first female governor,
Miriam A. Ferguson
Miriam Amanda Wallace "Ma" Ferguson (June 13, 1875 – June 25, 1961) was an American politician who served two non-consecutive terms as the governor of Texas: from 1925 to 1927, and from 1933 to 1935. She was the first female governor of Texas, ...
, was scheduled to be inaugurated later in the month, and it was seven years both since Texas women had gained suffrage and since the first woman,
Annie Webb Blanton, was elected to statewide office. Furthermore, in 1922
Edith Wilmans
Edith Eunice Therrel Wilmans (December 21, 1882 – March 21, 1966) was a Texas lawyer and politician. She was the first woman elected to the Texas State Legislature, in 1922.
Life and career
Born in 1882 Edith Eunice Therrel was a native of Lak ...
had become the first woman elected to the
Texas House of Representatives
The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Texas Legislature. It consists of 150 members who are elected from single-member districts for two-year terms. As of the 2010 United States census, each member represents abou ...
.
Even so, there was little precedent for such an action, and the governor is often said to have taken it only after all other avenues had been exhausted,.
Court
![HortenseS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/HortenseS.Ward.jpg)
The first three women appointed to the court were Wilmans, a lawyer in practice in Dallas;
Nellie Gray Robertson of
Granbury, county attorney of
Hood County; and
Hortense Sparks Ward of Houston, also in private practice.
Robertson was designated chief justice. Problems soon appeared in the composition of the court. First, on January 5, Wilmans announced her resignation; she lacked by two months the required seven years' experience practicing law in the state. She was replaced by another woman from Dallas,
Hattie Leah Henenberg. Next, Robertson also announced that she had to step down, having only practiced law in Texas for six years and nine months.
She was replaced by
Ruth Virginia Brazzil of
Galveston
Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Ga ...
only one day before the case was to be heard.
Ward was appointed special chief justice.
Neff was lucky that the appointments stuck, as he had only about two dozen other women licensed to practice before the state from whom he could choose.
The court sat for five months, during which time the three male justices conducted all other business as usual. Its first meeting, on January 8, was noted in that morning's edition of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Chief Justice Cureton administered the oath to the three justices; the ceremony was attended by the other associates,
Attorney General of Texas Dan Moody, Clerk of Court Fred Connerly, and several journalists. No women were among the crowd. The chief justice indicated that there were three possible dispositions in the case; either the court could refuse to grant a
writ of error
In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...
or affirm the decision of the local court, in effect refusing to hear the appeal, or it could grant the writ and hear the appeal.
The writ was granted, and Ward announced that the appeal would be heard on January 30.
Ultimately, the question which had to be decided concerned recording of the trust agreement, and whether or not it should be noted down prior to the lodging of the creditors' claim. At the time, trust agreements did not need to be recorded for them to be legally binding, and the court had to decide whether or not placing a trust on record can keep it from being called in as debt payment.
Decision and aftermath
The special court handed down its unanimous decision, in favor of the Woodmen, on May 23, 1925. Ward wrote the majority opinion, in support of the decision by the El Paso Court of Appeals; concurring opinions were written by associate justices Brazzil and Henenberg.
The decision was based mainly on an upholding of the state law regarding secret trusts and deeds.
Thereafter the court disbanded.
It would be thirty years before women were legally allowed to serve on juries in the state of Texas.
Furthermore, women would not serve on the state supreme court again until 1982, when on July 25
Ruby Kless Sondock became the court's first regular female justice, when she was appointed to replace Associate Justice
James G. Denton who had died of a heart attack. Sondock served the remainder of Denton's term, which ended on December 31, 1982, but did not seek election to the Supreme Court in her own right.
Rose Spector became the first woman elected to the court in 1992 and served until 1998 when she was defeated by
Harriet O'Neill. It would be 66 years (2015) before another state high court, this time the
Minnesota Supreme Court
The Minnesota Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The court hears cases in the Supreme Court chamber in the Minnesota State Capitol or in the nearby Minnesota Judicial Center.
History
The court was first assemb ...
, contained more women then men.
''Johnson v. Darr'' has since its decision been cited as
legal precedent
A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...
for over thirty cases. In only one of those citations was the gender of the court even mentioned.
References
{{reflist
1925 in Texas
1925 in American law
*
Women in Texas
Women in law