Bazelon, David Lionel (3 September 1909–19 February 1993), lawyer and United States Circuit Court judge, was born in Superior, Wisconsin, the son of Israel Bazelon, a shopkeeper, and Lena Bazelon. Bazleon was the youngest of nine children. Raised in poverty, his family’s already precarious financial situation was exacerbated by his father’s death when Bazelon was two years old. In search of increased economic opportunity, the family then moved to Chicago. Bazelon attended the University of Illinois, and then transferred to Northwestern University where he received his law degree in ...
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Bazelon, David Lionel (3 September 1909–19 February 1993), lawyer and United States Circuit Court judge
Reuel E. Schiller
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Bolin, Jane Matilda (11 April 1908–8 January 2007), attorney, judge, and civil rights activist
Jacqueline McLeod
Bolin, Jane Matilda (11 April 1908–8 January 2007), attorney, judge, and civil rights activist, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York to Matilda Emery Bolin and Gaius Charles Bolin. Matilda Emery immigrated with her parents to the United States from Northern Ireland and settled in Poughkeepsie, where she later met and married Gaius Charles Bolin, who had deeper roots in New York as a descendant of a long line of free Duchess County Black residents. The Bolins had lived in and around Poughkeepsie for nearly two hundred years and left an impressive legacy of civil rights protest upon which Jane Bolin built. Her grandfather, Abram Bolin, was an activist and reformer, who in ...
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Bork, Robert H. (1 March 1927–19 December 2012), conservative legal theorist, Solicitor General of the United States, federal appellate judge, and writer
Johnathan O’Neill
Bork, Robert H. (1 March 1927–19 December 2012), conservative legal theorist, Solicitor General of the United States, federal appellate judge, and writer, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Harry Philip Bork, a purchasing agent for a steel company, and Elizabeth Kunkle, an English teacher. He graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut in ...
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Dana, Richard (1700-1772), lawyer, justice of the peace, and resistance leader
William Pencak
Dana, Richard (26 June 1700–17 May 1772), lawyer, justice of the peace, and resistance leader, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel Dana, a selectman of Cambridge, and Naomi Croswell. Little is known of his early life. In 1718 he graduated from Harvard College, where his roommate was John Hancock, father of the famous patriot and in 1721 he was inoculated against smallpox. He then began to practice law in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts General Court appointed him notary public for the ports of Marblehead and Salem in 1733, a post he held until Marblehead elected him to the House of Representatives for one term, his only one, in 1738. In 1737 he married Lydia Trowbridge, the daughter of Thomas Trowbridge and sister of Judge ...
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Morris, Esther Hobart (1814-1902), suffragist and justice of the peace
Janet Clark
Morris, Esther Hobart (08 August 1814–02 April 1902), suffragist and justice of the peace, was born in Spencer, Tioga County, New York, the daughter of Daniel McQuigg and Charlotte Hobart. Her mother died when Morris was a young girl, and she lost her father before she had reached maturity. Orphaned at an early age, she was fully aware of the need for women to be able to support themselves and to live independently. Forced to earn her own living, Morris started a millinery shop through which she enjoyed relative success and prosperity. In 1841 she married Artemus Slack, a civil engineer with the Erie and Illinois Central railroads; they had a child the following year. Her husband died in 1845, and Morris moved with her son to Illinois to claim land owned by her late husband. At that time, however, Illinois did not recognize the right of women to own or inherit property, and the difficulties Morris encountered in the settlement of the estate showed her that women needed legal rights equal to those of men. In Peru, Illinois, in 1845 she met and married John Morris, a prosperous merchant from Poland. The couple lived in Illinois for more than twenty years and had twins, born in 1851, and a third child who died in infancy....
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Motley, Constance Baker (14 Sept. 1921–28 Sept. 2005), civil rights lawyer, politician, and judge
Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Motley, Constance Baker (14 Sept. 1921–28 Sept. 2005), civil rights lawyer, politician, and judge, was born Constance Baker in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children of Willoughby Baker, a chef for various Yale University student organizations, and Rachel Huggins Baker, a preschool teacher prior to her marriage. Her parents hailed from Nevis, the Caribbean island and English colony, and had immigrated to the United States during the early twentieth century. The family’s immigrant background shaped the young girl’s upbringing and values; she grew up in a tight-knit community of immigrants who shared cultural practices, worshiped together, and secured work in New Haven’s service industries. Coming of age during the Great Depression in the 1930s, Constance attended the city’s racially integrated schools and lived in a racially mixed, working-class immigrant neighborhood. Her neighbors and schoolmates included Italians, Irish, Jews, and Nevisians....
