Lavinia Goodell

Rhoda Lavinia Goodell (May 2, 1839 – March 31, 1880) was the first woman licensed to practice law in Wisconsin.

Lavinia Goodell, c. 1870

Goodell was born in Utica, New York, to prominent abolitionist William Goodell. She worked at her father's newspaper, The Principia, and at Harper's Magazine before moving to Janesville, Wisconsin in 1871. She studied law on her own and was admitted to the Rock County, Wisconsin bar in 1874. After her petition for admission to the bar of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin was denied in 1876, Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly John B. Cassoday sponsored a bill expressly authorizing women to be admitted to the state bar. The bill passed in 1877, and Goodell was admitted to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1879.

In 1880, Goodell argued and won her first case in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, shortly before she died of cancer in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Legacy

Betty Diamond's play Lavinia is about Goodell.[1] Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, the State Court’s Office, and several notable professors of women’s studies brought Goodell's story to the Wisconsin Humanities Council for grant funding in 2012.[1] The WHC first funded Diamond’s research and writing of the play, and then with a second grant in 2014 funded the performance of the play throughout Wisconsin.[1] In 2019 the WHC awarded another major grant to help fund the development of a digital biography of Lavinia Goodell. [http://www.laviniagoodell.com/ Official Website]. In November 2019 the State Bar of Wisconsin awarded Lavinia a posthumous lifetime legal innovator award for opening the Wisconsin bar to women.

References
  1. "Past Lavinia Goodell - Wisconsin Humanities Council - Wisconsin Humanities Council". Wisconsinhumanities.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-03-19.

Further reading
  • Cleary, Catherine B. "Lavinia Goodell, First Woman Lawyer in Wisconsin", Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 74, no. 4 (Summer 1991), pp. 242–271.
  • Schier, Mary Lahr. Strong-Minded Woman: The Story of Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin's First Female Lawyer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-9671787-3-8
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.