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Lorna Elizabeth Lockwood (March 24, 1903 – September 23, 1977) was an American lawyer and judge who served as justice (and at times chief justice) of the
Arizona Supreme Court The Arizona Supreme Court is the state supreme court of the U.S. state of Arizona. Sitting in the Supreme Court building in downtown Phoenix, the court consists of a chief justice, a vice chief justice, and five associate justices. Each justice i ...
. Born in what was then
Arizona Territory The Territory of Arizona (also known as Arizona Territory) was a territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863, until February 14, 1912, when the remaining extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of ...
, Lockwood was the daughter of Alfred Collins Lockwood, who later served as chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. Lockwood attended the University of Arizona and the
University of Arizona College of Law University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law is the law school at the University of Arizona located in Tucson, Arizona and was the first law school founded in the State of Arizona, opening its doors in 1915. Also known as University of Ar ...
before entering private practice and serving several terms in the
Arizona House of Representatives The Arizona State House of Representatives is the lower house of the Arizona Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Arizona. The upper house is the Senate. The House convenes in the legislative chambers at the Arizona State Ca ...
. Lockwood spent a decade on the bench of the
Arizona Superior Court The Superior Court of the State of Arizona is the Arizona state court of general jurisdiction. Jurisdiction The Constitution of Arizona provides the Superior Court with jurisdiction over: * concurrent jurisdiction over cases and proceedings in whi ...
in Maricopa County, the first woman to serve in that role. In 1960, Lockwood was elected to the Arizona Supreme Court. She served as chief justice from 1965 to 1966 and 1970 to 1971, become the first female chief justice of a state supreme court in the United States. She retired from the court in 1975 and died three years later.


Early life and education

Lockwood was born on March 24, 1903, in Douglas,
Arizona Territory The Territory of Arizona (also known as Arizona Territory) was a territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863, until February 14, 1912, when the remaining extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of ...
, a mining town, to Daisy Maude Lincoln and Alfred Collins Lockwood. Her father was an attorney and later chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. In 1913, the family moved to Tombstone and Lorna graduated from Tombstone High School in 1920. Lockwood received her B.A. from the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1923, where she was a
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
major, and earned her J.D. from the
University of Arizona College of Law University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law is the law school at the University of Arizona located in Tucson, Arizona and was the first law school founded in the State of Arizona, opening its doors in 1915. Also known as University of Ar ...
in 1925. Lockwood was the only woman in her law-school class and the second woman to ever attend the school. She was elected president of the student bar association.


Legal and judicial career

Lockwood passed the Arizona State Bar and worked as a legal stenographer from 1925 until 1939. In 1939, she established the firm Lockwood & Savage with Loretta Savage Whitney in 1939. The two practiced together until 1942, when Lockwood began practicing with her brother-in-law, Z. Simpson Cox, and her father, who had by that time lost his campaign for reelection to the Arizona Supreme Court. In 1938, Lockwood was recruited by the Business and Professional Women's Club to run for the
Arizona House of Representatives The Arizona State House of Representatives is the lower house of the Arizona Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Arizona. The upper house is the Senate. The House convenes in the legislative chambers at the Arizona State Ca ...
. Lockwood won election and in 1940 won reelection. In 1942, Lockwood served as assistant to U.S. Representative John R. Murdock of Arizona. In 1944, Lockwood returned to Phoenix, Arizona, to assist the war effort as district price attorney for the Office of Price Administration. In 1946, after the end of World War II, Lockwood was returned to the Arizona House of Representative and became chair of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the House Rules Committee. In 1947, Phoenix Mayor Ray Busey appointed Lockwood to the Charter Revision Committee, an important local post. In 1949, Lockwood left private practice to become assistant attorney general for Arizona, overseeing the state welfare department. In 1950, Lockwood was elected a judge for the
Arizona Superior Court The Superior Court of the State of Arizona is the Arizona state court of general jurisdiction. Jurisdiction The Constitution of Arizona provides the Superior Court with jurisdiction over: * concurrent jurisdiction over cases and proceedings in whi ...
in Maricopa County, the first woman to sit on the bench in that court. She served as the county's juvenile court judge from 1954 through 1957 before returning to the general county bench for the following three years. In 1960, Lockwood challenged an incumbent justice of the
Arizona Supreme Court The Arizona Supreme Court is the state supreme court of the U.S. state of Arizona. Sitting in the Supreme Court building in downtown Phoenix, the court consists of a chief justice, a vice chief justice, and five associate justices. Each justice i ...
. Lockwood campaigned around the state, traveling by airplane piloted by Virginia Hash, a fellow attorney. Lockwood served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1965 to 1966 and again from 1970 to 1971. She was the first woman to become chief justice of a state supreme court. In 1965 and 1967, when vacancies occurred on the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
, Senator
Carl Hayden Carl Trumbull Hayden (October 2, 1877 – January 25, 1972) was an American politician. Representing Arizona in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1969, he was the first U.S. Senator to serve seven terms. Serving as the state's first Representa ...
recommended her nomination to President
Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
. Lockwood would have become the first woman and the first Arizonan to serve on the Court, but she did not receive a nomination. (The first woman appointed to the Court later became then-Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, who was appointed in 1981).


Death

Lockwood retired from the court in 1975. She died on September 23, 1977, at Phoenix’s Good Samaritan Hospital. The urn which holds her cremated remains is located in the
Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery Greenwood Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery is the official name given to a cemetery located at 2300 West Van Buren Street in Phoenix, Arizona owned by Dignity Memorial. The cemetery, which resulted as a merger of two historical cemeteries, Greenwo ...
south
columbarium A columbarium (; pl. columbaria) is a structure for the reverential and usually public storage of funerary urns, holding cremated remains of the deceased. The term can also mean the nesting boxes of pigeons. The term comes from the Latin "''colum ...
, niche #113. She was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 1981.Arizona Women's Hall of Fame
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See also

*
List of female state supreme court justices Female state supreme court justices First female justices Below is a list of the names of the first woman to sit on the highest court of their respective states in the United States. The first state with a female justice was Ohio; Florence E. ...


Notes


References

* Philip R. VanderMeer, "Lockwood, Lorna C (1903–1977)." in ''Encyclopedia of Women in the American West'' (eds. Gordon Moris Bakken & Brenda Farrington: SAGE, 2003), pp. 190–93.


External links


Lorna Lockwood at Women's Legal History Biography Project
at Stanford University
Lorna Elizabeth Lockwood: In Pursuit of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court Nomination

Lorna Lockwood
at Arizona Women's Heritage Trail {{DEFAULTSORT:Lockwood, Lorna 1903 births 1977 deaths Chief Justices of the Arizona Supreme Court Members of the Arizona House of Representatives People from Douglas, Arizona Women chief justices of state supreme courts in the United States Women state legislators in Arizona 20th-century American judges 20th-century American women politicians 20th-century American politicians Justices of the Arizona Supreme Court 20th-century American women judges