Amidst all the gloomy news, there's finally something to celebrate. The Supreme Court of Tennessee is now composed of a female majority for the first time in the state's history! Given that Tennessee has never elected a female Governor or a female US Senator and that females still hold only about 20% of the state's judgeships, the news is all the sweeter.
Tennessee has joined the ranks of a small and progressive group: states with a female majority on their highest court, in a profession long dominated by men.
Wisconsin, New York and Washington, D.C., are the only other states that can boast the distinction of having a female majority, and those in the legal community say Tennessee can attribute its progress, in part, to Gov. Phil Bredesen.
The historic swearing-in of Judge Sharon Gail Lee put three women on the five-member Tennessee Supreme Court.
Some context:
The creation of the female majority stunned Martha Craig Daughtrey, a pioneer in the legal profession.
"Now if I look a bit astounded by the proceedings today, it's because I've been somewhat astounded ever since the announcement came out,'' Daughtrey said at Lee's ceremony. "This is not an event that I really ever expected to see happen in my lifetime.''
In 1968, Daughtrey applied to a Nashville law firm and was told the firm did not have anything against women lawyers. It just thought its clients might.
Seven years later, she was Tennessee's first female state-level judge. In 1990, she was the first woman appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and today she is a federal judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
At Lee's swearing-in ceremony Daughtrey recalled the struggles of the 1960s and '70s.
"We were a bit naive in those days. We thought that once we explained to the world, even though it was a decidedly male-dominated world, how much women could be counted on to contribute to the profession and to society in general, that the men would simply get the point, step to one side and welcome us in. And of course it didn't really happen that way.
"There were at least a couple of decades of effort before we managed to take our place at the bar and on the bench in Tennessee. We were, to put it bluntly, pretty pushy. Some even called us uppity, but as the old saying goes, and one with which we are become much more familiar, well-behaved women rarely make history.''
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woo hoo! hip hip hooray!
congratulations! felicitations! celebration!
thanks for the report, this made my day.
Hee Mine too
...TN is so far behind on other things. It's nice to see us trail blaze for once. Oh and our chief justice is also a woman! And even better, most of our Supremes were appointed by Governor Bredesen so we've got a democratic supreme court for (hopefully) a very long time that will keep some of our crazy legislators in check!
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i'm jealous
y'all have gorgeous scenery there, the weather's not too cold in winter, and now women, democrats no less, in the majority in one of the branches of government! i'd move to tennessee if it weren't so darned far from salt water.
lol
Thanks hipparchia. It's just sinking in what a huge change that is!
As to the salt water... We had to have FDR build all but one of the lakes we have so maybe Obama will build us an ocean since he didn't send us a pony! Seriously, the mountains really are gorgeous as are other areas of the state.
We are one very strange combo in terms of politics (nothing is standard issue and a good bit of it is backwards). We're also usually either the first or the last to do something and it's not at all predictable what issue that will be.
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Interesting
I'd be lying to say that this didn't surprise me. Tenn was the last state I'd have guessed to join those ranks. Our Supreme Court, up here, is just a mess, so I'm not bashing. lol
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
DamonMI, I'm totally shocked by it
...so don't feel like you're bashing. :)
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The Supreme Court of
Massachusetts has three women and four men, so we're close. Our Chief Justice is a women. She's also a native of South Africa, but now a US citizen. And the majority that gave us the same sex marriage ruling were Republican, believe it or not! We were the last state to have Liberal
Republicans in power.
Maybe TN will get to work on felony disenfranchisement next
TN is still one of those states where a felony conviction loses you the right to vote for life. Other states like GA try to do the same in a weasely way -- you can vote only after completing probations and paroles, and paying all court and probation fines and fees, along with writing a few contrite letters and filling out forms that ask for personal recommendations, receipts and the like. VA is worse. There you have to write the governor. As a result, tens or hundreds of thousands here in GA are voteless.
At least in TN they don't pretend about it. They just take your vote away for life.
IA also did lifetime disenfranchisement until 2005, when the governor did away with it.
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com
Bruce, thank you for informing me
...of this. I've wanted to know what our status on this was and was unsure. Now that I know, I'll be putting it on my push for list.
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Something else here that needs work
The only statewide elected office in Tennessee government is that of governor. All other state officials are appointed either by the governor or the state legislature. I've been told that this is because there was a time that Tennessee elections were rigged so badly that the people actually felt that it was fairer to appoint the state officials.
The downside of this is that it makes it almost impossible for office-seekers to get name recognition. It's difficult to get any traction here unless you're a party insider or a millionaire.
...for the rest of us
...for the rest of us
party insider or a millionaire
I'd say its only marginally better in other states these days. I hope "buying elections" with insane amounts of money do not become the norm. Heck, in CA I was involved in a state legislative race where the GOP candidate put in over $7 million of his own money in the race--for state assembly! (We happened to win being outspent, but still.)
Yup Boss Crump
...pretty much controlled the entire state until the late 1940s when Estes Kefauver broke the hold (someone to be proud of if you haven't heard of him -- a real progressive) and later Al Gore Sr. drove the last nail in. One Governor tried to go against Crump and Crump had the Supreme Court knock him down because Crump's Machine put everyone, including the judges, in office. One of Crump's main men actually acted as FDR's VP for a time although he wasn't VP but Speaker (I think, speaker). Even now, remants remain in Memphis and Nashville. The GOP was confined to the East and had to make deals with Crump to get anything done. Now, we're stuck with single party regions. We DESPERATELY need a strong Democratic Party in the East and probably need decent GOP opposition in the Middle and West. Single party domination in each region is just killing and corrupting us all.
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Good history lesson, TNJen
The deal was that Boss Crump left East Tennessee alone in return for the state GOP's silence regarding his shenanigans in the rest of the state. Such are the beginnings of the gentlemans' agreements that run Tennessee politics to this day. Tennessee is a two-party state in name only; frequently the only difference between an East Tennessee Republican and a West Tennessee Democrat is geography.
But I'd gladly trade our local GOP for its East Tennessee variant anyday. The Republican Party in suburban Nashville and Memphis has become a nest of fundamentalist Christian lunatics, with my state rep, Debra Maggart, being a prime example. Maggart is nearly useless in the legislature because she can't work with anybody outside of her Christianist
clique. We have a decent Democrat running against her this time. Andy Allman is about as progressive as they get in these parts; he's got some good ideas on alternative energy. Sadly, given the demographics of the 45th District, he doesn't have much of a chance, but since it's payday, I plan to send him a little bit, and other interested folks might want to do the same.
...for the rest of us
...for the rest of us
What is with the suburbanites?!
...we've got a few of your GOP kind in some of the suburbs. I don't understand how the suburbanites turned so freaky Christianist
. I'm hoping now that the Evangelicals are starting to lose power and popularity within Protestantism that some of this will start too ease off.
On a depressing note, I got a mailer yesterday from a democratic candidate for the state house that never mentioned the word democrat on it AND the first thing it said was some nonsense about the rights of the unborn and gay marriage. It then went into good stuff on health care and working families. WTF
?! I've never heard a democratic candidate in the East spout this crap. Hell, I debated Van Hilleary for an hour the first time he ran and *he* never spouted so much crap. I hope this guy's an anomaly rather than some sort of Lincoln Davis spread contagion.
So then I listened to a debate in the 1st US House district because Russell (D) may have a chance to pull off a miracle with so many candidates in the field and the republican incumbent ousted in the GOP primary. Well the GOP candidate, is not as good as Russell on the issues but he sounds more like a democrat than the guy that's running for the state house that sent me flier. Ugh.
I've gotten to the point where I'm ready to takeover the party here.
ETA: And you're quite right that we're pretty much 2 party in name only. We've got to break it though.
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