Women are entering the legal profession in record numbers, but no powerful legal institution-no law school faculty, no large corporate law firm, no appellate court-has been dominated by women. Until now.
Earlier this year, in the waning moments of his tenure, Gov. Rudy Perpich of Minnesota named Sandra Gardebring the fourth woman to the state Supreme Court.
When she was quickly sworn in Jan. 4, it marked the first time that women have achieved a majority in a state`s highest court.
It is no longer unusual when a woman is named to a state supreme court.
(Currently, 29 of the state high courts have at least one woman member, according to the National Center for State Courts, a research organization in Williamsburg, Va.) But for the most part, the count has remained at one, just as it has on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only Oklahoma and Michigan have two women state high court justices; none has three.
Rosalie E. Wahl, the first woman named to the Minnesota court, appointed by Perpich in 1977, was more prelude than token. A second woman, M. Jeanne Coyne, was appointed by Gov. Albert Quie in 1982. Perpich named the third, Esther M. Tomljanovich, in August 1990, and Gardebring on his last work day in office.
No one is predicting that the new female majority on the seven-member Minnesota court will produce changes instantly in its jurisprudence, though some lawyers anticipate a heightened sensitivity to cases involving domestic abuse, child custody, spousal support, sexual harassment, employment discrimination and other issues of traditional concern to women.
Edward L. Winer, a Minneapolis divorce lawyer, said he expected the state Supreme Court to accept more family law cases and to ”be more sensitive to traditional homemakers being forced to return to the job market.”
In at least three instances in the last several years, the women on the court dissented from rulings in which the then-male majority reduced support payments for older women who had spent their prime years raising children.
”It`s not a question of liberal or conservative but of a different set of experiences,” said Aviva Breen, director of the state legislature`s Commission on the Economic Status of Women.
At the same time, no one is minimizing the symbolic significance of the new majority, on and off the court.
To boys and girls growing up in Minnesota, Breen said, an important institution with a majority of women never will seem an oddity.
Moreover, the women on the court say the new numbers afford them a peculiar freedom: to be themselves rather than to be perceived as standard-bearers for their sex.
”I wouldn`t expect the women to vote as a bloc any more often than the men,” Gardebring said.
The four women come from different legal backgrounds:
Wahl was a public defender and law professor before her appointment. Coyne was a partner in a large Minneapolis law firm. Tomljanovich was a trial judge. Gardebring was a state administrator before being named to the state appellate court in 1989.
Their personal experiences differ also. Wahl, 66, is the divorced mother of five. Coyne, 64, has not been married. Tomljanovich, 59, has been married for many years. Gardebring, at 43 the court`s youngest member, was married recently.
Public reaction to the historic change has been muted. Still, it appears to have occasioned a quiet pride in the state`s political tradition.
”To the extent that we elected Rudy Perpich governor, it reflects a part of us: the part that feels liberal, likes the unconventional, likes to think of ourselves as socially advanced,” said Eric J. Magnuson, a Minneapolis lawyer who often argues before the Supreme Court.
Privately, several male lawyers pleaded with Perpich not to appoint another woman, according to Perpich`s son Rudy, a lawyer and adviser to his father.
”With the white male establishment, one woman was OK and two women were not bad; but when it came to a majority, they were dead set against it,” said the former governor`s son.
”Over and over, I heard, `But governor, only 15 percent of the lawyers in the state are women.”`
But no one has expressed such sentiments on the record.
”To hear those comments, you`d have to go to the men`s locker room at the athletic club,” Wahl said.
D. Gerald Wilhelm, the county prosecutor in Fairmont, Minn., doubted that critics could be found even there.
”I cannot recall a rational person being terribly upset over this,” he said.
”There are always some people who are going to gripe, but that`s antediluvian thinking.”
The men on the court seem unperturbed by the change.
”It just all of a sudden happened, and I don`t think anyone has thought of it yet,” said Alexander M. Keith, 62, chief justice.
Lawrence R. Yetka, 66, the court`s senior member, seemed nonchalant. ”I don`t feel picked upon-yet, at least,” he said.
The seventh justice is John E. Simonett.
Perpich appointed Wahl to what then was a nine-member court in 1977, when only four other states had women justices. When Wahl joined the court in 1977, its quarters, then in the east wing of the state Capitol, did not have a women`s restroom.
”They hadn`t thought of it,” she said. She used a public restroom in the corridor.
Of his appointments, Perpich said, ”I wasn`t consciously trying to create a majority. As governor, I decided that the bench should be more reflective of society, and more than half of society are women.”
Ironically, Perpich, who named many women to other top positions in his administration and championed women`s rights, lost his re-election bid largely because women, offended by his anti-abortion stand, voted for his opponent.
Undeterred, he named Gardebring, who favors a woman`s right to choose abortion.
She, like Tomljanovich, was a longtime protege of the former governor`s, proving that new-fangled sexual politics can combine with old-fangled politics of loyalty.
Whether women behave differently from men on the bench is unclear.
Suzanna Sherry, of the University of Minnesota Law School, who analyzed the opinions of U.S. Supreme Court Justices William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O`Connor, suggested that rather than devise abstract rules, women jurists are more likely to scrutinize the facts in particular cases, and might place a higher premium on what Sherry called ”fostering community.”
That is, they try to decide cases in ways that leave losing parties feeling less alienated or disenfranchised, Sherry said.
The divergent personal styles and philosophies of the women, as well as the changing complexion of the legal profession, were apparent during oral arguments the court held in a special appearance last month at William Mitchell Law School in Minneapolis, the alma mater of former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.
Half of the students in the audience were women, as were three of the four lawyers at the counsel`s table.
Later, a student asked the justices to assess the significance of the new balance on the court. The women justices disagreed.
”I don`t think men are going to have to run for the hills, but there is definitely a woman`s perspective,” Tomljanovich said.
Coyne dissented, saying she was ”not going to get very excited” over the change.
”A wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion,” she said.
”In the vast majority of cases, it will have no impact whatever.”
