UNT Dallas College of Law - Library Blog - LibGuides at UNT Dallas College of Law

In honor of Women's History Month, today's Law Library blog post discusses books written by women or edited by women about women and the law. All books listed below can be found in the print collection of the UNT Dallas College of Law Library.

Women-at-Law by Phyllis Horn Epstein

Call Number: KF299.W6 E654 2015

ISBN: 1634252381

Publication Date: 2016-04-07

Women at Law: Lessons Learned Along Pathways to Success Author Phyllis Epstein interviewed more than 500 women lawyers of all ages and backgrounds to compile the second edition of this book, which discusses the issues that women face working in the legal profession and maintaining a life outside of it. Chapters treat career choices, mentors, glass ceilings, full-time work, part time work, quitting work, dating, romance, and balancing it all; a final chapter discusses considerations in choosing a career in law, for those women who may be debating it. According to the author, while much has changed in the ten years since the first edition of this book was published (2005), much has also stayed the same.

Women Before the Court by Lindsay R. Moore; Pamela Sharpe (Series edited by)

Call Number: KF478 .M66 2019

ISBN: 9781526136336

Publication Date: 2019-05-04

Women Before the Court: Law and Patriarchy in the Anglo-American World, 1600-1800 This book takes a comparative approach to the study of women’s legal rights in Britain and British America during a “formative period of Anglo-American law.” Author Lindsay R. Moore, a historian, traces this period of women’s ongoing involvement in both countries’ legal systems, and shows how economic and legal developments during this era resulted in increasing opportunities for women to break from previously established patriarchal moulds. Scholars of early modern Britain and colonial America, as well as scholars of both British and American legal history, will find this book fascinating.

Rough Road to Justice by Betty Trapp Chapman

Call Number: KF299.W6 C457 2008

ISBN: 9781892542465

Publication Date: 2008-09-30

Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas Published by the State Bar of Texas, and authored by Texas historian Betty Trapp Chapman, Rough Road to Justice begins El Paso in 1902, where Edith Locke had just applied to the courts of El Paso for admission to the bar. What follows is a treatment of women lawyers over the course of the twentieth century, as they read the law, establish legal careers, integrate state bars, and work to balance the demands of their profession and their private lives. Women, initially considered to be unsuited to legal work due to their “genteel graces . . .[and] subordination of hard reason to sympathetic feeling” have now established themselves as “intelligent, hardworking, and capable as their male counterparts.” This book tells their stories.

Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers by Jill Norgren

Call Number: KF299.W6 N65 2018

ISBN: 9781479865963

Publication Date: 2018-05-22

A project of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, this book is taken from the oral histories of 100 outstanding senior lawyers through interviews conducted by younger colleagues. Legal historian Jill Norgren edits these stories, interweaving social and legal history with the interviewees’ personal experiences.

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

Call Number: KF8745.S67 A3 2013

ISBN: 9780307594884

Publication Date: 2013-01-15

In this autobiography, Sonia Sotomeyer, the first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the Supreme Court, discusses her journey from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench. Recounting a difficult, but loving, childhood, Justice Sotomeyer traces her unlikely path from a child whose only legal role models were television characters to her appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Open and honest, her writing is a testimony to the power of determination and belief in oneself.

The volumes in the Feminist Judgments series, each with different editors and different contributors, provide feminist perspectives on legal cases in the areas set out above--reproductive rights, family law, tax law, tort law, employment discrimination law, and trusts and estates law. Each volume contains court decisions rewritten with feminist ideas in mind, using only materials available at the time of the original decision. Ironically (at least for purposes of this blog post), the premise underlying much of the Feminist Judgments series is based on a quote by the above-mentioned Justice Sotomeyer made during her U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing, "[A] wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."