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Diversifying The Judiciary: The Influence Of Gender And Race Of Judging, Susan Moloney Smith

University of Richmond Law Review

In 1978, political scientist Beverly Blair Cook wrote Women Judges: The End of Tokenism for a publication of the National Center for State Courts. She observed that the "national proportion of women judges has matched the national proportion of women lawyers on a time lag basis." She compared the number of women law graduates with the number of women judges, finding that in the 1960s, women composed 1-2% of the legal profession and accounted for 1-2% ofjudges. With women repre- senting 4% of all law graduates in the 1960s, the number of women judges increased to 4% in the 1970s. …