In this episode: Professor and legal historian Elizabeth Katz shares the history of women in the legal profession dating back to the first women lawyer in 1869. She highlights the gains women have made in the profession including the fact that women now make up over 50% of all students entering law school.
About Our Guest:
Professor Elizabeth D. Katz is an award-winning legal historian. Her research explores the development of family law and criminal law doctrines and institutions, with special attention to the influence of gender, religion, and race. Professor Katz’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, and William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law. Her writing for popular audiences has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Professor Katz’s scholarship has been recognized by prizes including the American Society for Legal History’s Kathryn T. Preyer Award, the Association of American Law School’s Section on Law and Religion Harold Berman Award for Excellence in Scholarship, and the Haub Law Emerging Scholar Award in Gender and Law. Her research has been supported by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Early Career Scholar Fellowship awarded by the American Society for Legal History; an Albert J. Beveridge Grant from the American Historical Association; the Carrie Chapman Catt Center’s Prize for Research on Women and Politics; a fellowship and grant from Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies; and a fellowship in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s History and Public Policy Initiative in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance.
Professor Katz is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History, and she is a book review editor for the American Journal of Legal History. She is currently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and will join the University of Florida Levin College of Law in 2024.