Judge Florence Allen was a trailblazing “first wave” feminist, but
not of the Marxist variety. She sought equal rights – as well as equal
accountability – for each individual woman.
Judge Allen cared about justice, not about politics, not about ideology.
Judge Allen cared about justice, not about politics, not about ideology.
***
Judge Florence E. Allen of the Court of Common Pleas,
Cleveland, Ohio, speaking before the Women Lawyers' Association, deplored the
tendency of men jurors to render verdicts in favor of women litigants on
sentimental grounds, whether the woman be the accused or accuser. It recalls
the famous instance in New York City where the court ordered a curtain draped
in front of the shapely ankles of Betty Inch. Because the men jurors seemed to
concentrate their attention on the tears rather than on the testimony.
“This fault should be corrected,” Judge Allen says.
“It is not born of chivalry, but of what men choose to call chivalry, something
totally different.”
“Criminal men take advantage of this condition. They
use women to perform acts essential to crime, counting on a woman to serve both
as a screen and as a blind. They figure that if she is arrested she will be
acquitted and that would weaken the case against them.” It is quite true that
all men – lawyers, judges, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and jurors – are
inclined to be lenient with a woman on trial or in any way connected with a
case. The leniency is not deliberate, but instinctive. Pretty women are all too
likely to make men lose their balance.”
[Excerpt from: “The Woman Judge Who Gives Husbands A
Square Deal – She Is Introducing a Novel Procedure In Seattle Where Tears and
Sentiment Carry No Weight and Women Are Not Regarded Today as 'Helpless and
Dependent Children,'” syndicated, Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (In.), Jun. 26,
1921, sec. 4, p. 1]
***
~ ~ ~ “WOMEN ARE MORE CLEVER” ~ ~ ~
By JUDGE FLORENCE ALLEN, First Woman Criminal Court Justice Elected in Ohio Supreme Court
Cleveland, O., Nov. 25.—There are a number of reasons
why women are so often acquitted in murder cases. Here are some of them:
1. Men have always sat on juries and men
instinctively shrink from holding women strictly accountable for their
misdeeds. Now that women sit on juries I expect the percentage of convictions
in cases of women to be greater.
2. Women are more clever than men in arousing
sympathy. I had one woman, a hardened criminal, stage a terrific fainting spell
in my courtroom after the jury found her guilty. It took four men to carry her
to jail. She continued having these spells, so long that I had to defer pronouncing
sentence. Finally I sent her word that the longer she acted so, the longer she
would be in jail. Within a few moments she sent up word that, she would be good
and received her sentence meekly, with no trace of feeling.
3. Cases in which women are tried for murder
usually involve circumstantial evidence only. A man may be tried for murder
arising out of a robbery, or some case in which direct evidence of the past
crime may help to prove the murder.
But when a woman murders someone it is apt to be through
jealousy or some personal reason. Women have murdered for life insurance, but
in general, personal reasons are involved oftener than with men and, because
motives and the workings of the human heart are so hard to trace, the murder
case against a woman is really harder to prove than the case against a man,
which so often arises out of some other crime.
[Excerpt
from: NEA, “Why Do Juries Acquit Women – Judge, Prosecutor and Defender Tell
Reason,” syndicated (NEA), Freeport Journal-Standard (Il.), Nov. 25, 1922, p.
7]
***
Florence Ellinwood Allen: Biography from Wikipedia
Belle
Sherwin and Florence Ellinwood Allen at Woman suffrage headquarters, Upper
Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, 1912
Florence
Ellinwood Allen (March 23, 1884 – September 12, 1966) was a United States Circuit Judge
of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was the first
woman to serve on a state supreme court and one of the first two women to serve
as a United States federal judge. In 2005, she was inducted into the National
Women’s Hall of Fame.
~
Early life and education ~
Allen
was born on March 23, 1884 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Clarence
Emir Allen Sr., a mine manager, and later United States Representative from
Utah, and his wife Corinne Marie, née Tuckerman. She was one of seven
children—five girls, one of whom died in infancy, and two boys. Her father was
a professor and a linguist, and the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he
was hired by what was then called the Western Reserve University and is today
called Case Western Reserve University. Young Florence grew up in Cleveland,
where her father shared his love of languages with her, teaching her Greek and
Latin before she was a teenager. She also showed an early love of poetry, as
well as a talent for music, and after attending New Lyme Institute in
Ashtabula, Ohio, she decided to attend Western Reserve, with music as her
major. Allen graduated in 1904 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and her father
then sent her to Berlin, German Empire to continue her musical studies. While
she was there, she worked as a correspondent for a New York magazine called the
Musical Courier. Her original plan was to become a concert pianist but
she sustained an injury that cut her music career short. She returned to Ohio
in 1906 and took a job as the music critic for The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland, Ohio) newspaper, a position she held till 1909. By this time, she
had begun showing an increasing interest in politics and law, which led her to
take a Master of Arts degree in Political Science from Western Reserve; she
completed it in 1908. She also took courses in constitutional law, and would have
pursued a degree, but at that time, Western Reserve’s law school did not admit
women. So Allen took special classes and tutorials, and became more determined
to have a legal career. She attended the law school at the University of
Chicago for a year, and then transferred to New York University School of Law.
In order to pay her tuition, she found work as a legal investigator and
researcher for the New York League for the Protection of Immigrants. In 1913,
she got her Bachelor of Laws, graduating with honors. She returned to Cleveland
and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1914.
~
Legal career ~
By
her own admission, she was not a success at first. She only made about $25
during her first month, and all she could afford for her office was two chairs
and a borrowed typewriter. As she told a reporter in a 1934 interview, “I had
no clients. And I had no money. But I had great hopes.” However, in order to
become successful, what she needed was some experience, so she did volunteer
work with the local Legal Aid Society, where she not only got that experience
but got involved with an important case about suffrage. As a child, her mother
had taken her to see famous suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw
giving talks about women’s rights. And the belief that women should be treated
as equals under the law undoubtedly resonated with her even more as a result of
her struggles to be taken seriously as an attorney. She became even more
interested in politics, and more committed to the cause of women’s suffrage.
She was active in the Women’s Suffrage Party and began challenging local laws
that limited women’s participation in the political process. And she argued one
particular case that went all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court: thanks to her
efforts, she won the women of East Cleveland the right to vote in municipal
elections. During this time, she also became involved in another cause, one
that would be important to her all of her life: disarmament and the quest for
world peace. For Allen, this was personal: both of brothers died while serving
their country during the First World War.
~
State judicial service ~
Once
she won a few cases and gained the respect of her male colleagues, her career flourished. In 1919, she was appointed the assistant prosecuting
attorney for Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County. An active Democrat, she nevertheless
encountered opposition from Democratic party chairman Burr Gongwer. However, the
appointment was approved and she became the first woman in Ohio to hold such a
position. She then began bringing cases before the grand jury. She also
continued to advocate women’s rights, even giving talks about her devotion to
the Democratic party and the political process. By 1920, she was elected as a
Common Pleas judge, on a non-partisan ticket. She was the first woman in this
position too, and during her time on the bench she tried nearly 900 cases.
Undoubtedly, her biggest challenge was a case involving gangster Frank Motto,
who was convicted of the murder of two men during a robbery. With women on the
jury and a woman judge, legal critics wondered whether the stereotype about
women being emotional, and thus lenient, would come into play, but it did not.
Motto was convicted, and in mid-May 1921, Allen sentenced Motto to the electric
chair. Her meteoric rise continued when in 1922, Allen was elected to the Ohio
Supreme Court. She immediately told reporters that she intended to keep
partisan politics out of the judiciary. It was a promise she would keep.
In
1928, Allen was re-elected to a second six-year term on the Ohio Supreme Court.
All of the winners in that election were Republicans except for her. She
continued to be a popular figure in Ohio, honored by numerous civic groups for
her fairmindedness; and lawyers who came before her praised her willingness to
listen. And while she was not afraid to make the difficult decisions, even on
death penalty cases, Allen was not just a “law and order” judge. She was also a
mentor, who encouraged young women to become lawyers. She continued to give
educational talks about the law, and she worked tirelessly to improve women’s
legal rights. She was a proponent of jury service for women, at a time when
many states still did not allow women to serve, and she continued to encourage
women to be politically active even while remaining non-partisan herself. By
1930, her reputation was so positive that some newspapers were suggesting that
she be nominated for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Among them was
the Christian Science Monitor, which praised Allen for her
“distinguished achievements” as a jurist.
A
pacifist, Allen was an opponent of war and argued that the only way to avoid
war was to outlaw it. War must be made outlawed and declared a crime, she said.
She also called for the establishment of an international court that have
jurisdiction over purely international disputes and that international law
should be codified on the basis of equity and right.
~
Federal judicial service ~
Allen
was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 6, 1934, to a seat on
the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated by Judge Smith
Hickenlooper. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 15, 1934,
and received her commission on March 21, 1934. She was the second woman to
serve in the federal judiciary and the first woman to serve as an Article III
federal judge. Genevieve R. Cline was earlier appointed to serve as an Article I
federal judge on the United States Customs Court. Her nomination to the
prestigious position received widespread praise. Newspaper articles described
Allen as “an able jurist” and a “profound student” of the law. Allen served as
Chief Judge from 1958 to 1959. She was a member of the Judicial Conference of
the United States in 1958. She assumed senior status on October 5, 1959. Her
service terminated on September 12, 1966, due to her death.
~
Women’s rights advocacy and pacifism ~
Allen
continued her ongoing advocacy of women’s rights. She was a member of the
National Association of Business and Professional Women, and spoke at several
of their conventions, and was a member of the National Association of Women
Lawyers. Allen continued to advocate an end to wars. In 1935, she was one of
ten “outstanding American women”, with Eleanor Roosevelt and feminist leader
Carrie Chapman Catt, to contribute to Why Wars Must Cease. In her essay,
Allen asserted that wars “unleash demoralizing instincts” such as “callousness,
cynicism, and greed.” She said they also contribute to numerous social
problems, including the break-up of families, and increases in crime.
~
Supreme Court speculation ~
The
press continued to speculate on Allen as a possible Supreme Court nominee. In
early 1939, when Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis was about to retire,
some of Allen’s supporters tried to persuade President Roosevelt that it was
time to name a woman, and they reminded the president that Allen was extremely
qualified. Chief among advocates on her behalf was Lillian D. Rock, former vice
president of the National Association of Women Lawyers and chair of a newly
created committee whose purpose was to encourage the appointment of more women
to important positions in government. Allen was not named to the Supreme Court,
however, and it was another male judge, William O. Douglas, who replaced
Justice Brandeis. For the next few years, every time a vacancy occurred, Allen’s
supporters would again suggest her, but to no avail.
~
Continued advocacy ~
On
the Circuit Court, Sixth Circuit, she heard cases from Ohio, Michigan,
Kentucky, and Tennessee. In 1940, she wrote This Constitution of Ours.
Even after World War II broke out, Allen remained steadfast in her
determination to work for peace. She continued speaking and gave talks both in
person and on radio. In 1944, the National Association of Women lawyers put her
name forth as someone who should be involved in international peace
negotiations. When the war ended, she continued to speak to civic groups,
especially women’s clubs. Her message was that relying on the United Nations
would not prevent the next war. It was essential for individual citizens to
keep demanding that each country—whether large or small—have respect for the
rule of law. “To secure peace, there must be justice,” she told 3,000 attendees
at a conference of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s
Clubs. “There cannot be justice unless there is a rebirth of moral principle
among the nations. There cannot be a rebirth of moral principle unless the
conscience of the peoples becomes articulate.” Allen herself remained a very
articulate spokeswoman on the issues she cared about. She was regarded as such
a credible figure that in 1947, the American Academy of Political and Social
Science asked her to do a study of women’s voting patterns, to offer her
assessment of whether women were in fact using the franchise, and whether they
were active in the political process. In later talks, Allen expressed the opinion
that while many women were in fact voting and speaking out on issues, there was
a generational shift taking place. The dynamic women leaders who had fought for
suffrage and brought about greater participation for women in other areas of
public life were now deceased, and they had not yet been replaced. She
expressed concern about this lack of new and dynamic leadership, and hoped new
leaders would emerge.
~
Renewed Supreme Court speculation ~
Allen’s
supporters again sought to have her appointed to the United States Supreme
Court during Harry S. Truman’s presidency, but Truman seemed to be opposed to
having a woman sitting on the highest court of the land. Allen was later told
that Truman’s reluctance to appoint her had to do with his belief that having a
woman around would make the male judges uncomfortable. “They say they couldn't
sit around with their robes off and their feet up and discuss the problems.”
Truman’s reluctance to appoint a woman extended to other venues. When there
were more than 20 Federal court vacancies, his original list of nominees was
all male; only after some influential women politicians protested, the
president named one woman, Burnita Shelton Matthews, to the Federal District
Court bench in 1949. After her retirement, she continued to do speaking
engagements and began working on her autobiography. It was called To Do
Justly, and was published in the autumn of 1965.
~
Death ~
In
declining health after falling and breaking her hip, Allen died on September
12, 1966 in Waite Hill, Ohio, where she had been living with a distant cousin
since her retirement.
~
Honor ~
In
2005, Allen was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
***
The Wikipedia page
contains footnotes; not included here.
***
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