Legal History Commons^™

Portia's Deal, Karen M. Tani

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The New Deal, one of the greatest expansions of government in U.S. history, was a "lawyers' deal": it relied heavily on lawyers' skills and reflected lawyers' values. Was it exclusively a "male lawyers' deal"? This Essay argues that the New Deal offered important opportunities to women lawyers at a time when they were just beginning to graduate from law school in significant numbers. Agencies associated with social welfare policy, a traditionally "maternalist" enterprise, seem to have been particularly hospitable. Through these agencies, women lawyers helped to administer, interpret, and create the law of a new era. Using government records and …