ABSTRACT
The upper middle-class background that most Supreme Court justices share provides an early socialization to politics, a sense of competence and social responsibility, and contacts with established politicians, who could guide and succor the neophyte. The marital status of potential Supreme Court justices has some bearing on their careers. Florence Allen had a national and an international reputation as America’s outstanding woman jurist from the time of her election to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1922 to her retirement from the Sixth Circuit in 1959. She participated in the work of the American Bar Association and the International Federation of Women Lawyers, and advised and spoke before many local women’s bar associations. Congress-woman Bella Abzug questioned John Paul Stevens’s sensitivity to women’s rights, and the president of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund argued that he had sexist notions about women reflected in his testimony and circuit opinions.
