Her Honor Takes the Bench

As she started to park her car at the Arizona State Capitol building one day in 1960, redheaded Lorna Lockwood was sternly waved away. "This space is reserved for a Supreme Court Justice," huffed the guard. Miss Justice Lockwood finally persuaded the doubter that she was in the right space. Now, four years after her election to Arizona's highest bench, Lorna Lockwood has risen again. Her Honor's four brethren have unanimously elected her the first woman state Chief Justice in U.S. history.

Chief Justice Lockwood's achievement is roughly akin to a woman taking over as coach of the Cleveland Browns.

Of the nation's 8,748 judges, only 300 are women. Though the first U.S. woman lawyer was licensed in 1869, the not undying male reaction was summed up by Wisconsin's Chief Justice in 1875, when he flatly rejected a woman applicant in his state: "It would be shocking to man's reverence for womanhood that women should be permitted to mix professionally in all the nastiness of the world which finds its way into courts of justice."

Pioneering Gal. That attitude persists, but the barriers are crumbling. It was, after all, a woman federal judge, Sarah T. Hughes of Dallas, who swore in President Johnson 99 minutes after President Kennedy's death. "The sooner we get to consider women as individuals rather than as women, the better it will be," says Judge Hughes. "All women are not alike, just as all men are not alike."

Of the 412 federal judgeships, only three are now actively held by women, including the peppery Mrs, Hughes. But the precedent was set back in 1928 when Calvin Coolidge appointed the late Genevieve R. Cline to the U.S. Cus toms Court in New York. Later came the doughty suffragette, Florence E. Allen, now 80, whom F.D.R. promoted from the Ohio Supreme Court to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1934. Now retired, Miss Allen eventually became chief judge of the U.S. Sixth Circuit, the highest federal judgeship ever attained by a woman.

Community Builder. There are at present 17 vacancies on the federal bench, and there is talk that President Johnson is shopping for qualified women. Possible candidates include the two women (besides Arizona's Lorna Lockwood) now sitting on state Supreme Courts--North Carolina's Justice Susie Sharp and Hawaii's Justice Rhoda V. Lewis. Indeed, the opportunity for choice enlarges each year. Denver, for example, recently acquired its first woman judge of any kind--Zita Weinshienk, 31, a lawyer's bright young wife who got her own law degree at Harvard in 1958. Already a municipal judge, seasoned in traffic cases, she was upped to county judge last week.

Chicago takes particular pride in Cook County Judge Edith S. Sampson, 63, a strong-faced woman with an acid tongue for lawyers and infinite compassion for underdogs. A trained social worker, Judge Sampson got her master of laws degree at Loyola University, spent seven years as assistant corporation counsel of Chicago, and was twice appointed a U.S. delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. In 1962 she became the nation's first elected Negro woman judge (four others now serve elsewhere); last fall she won a full six-year term at $26,500 a year.

Patience & Powder Rooms. Arizona's new Chief Justice Lorna Lockwood, great-niece of Abraham Lincoln, decided to emulate her lawyer father at the age of ten, in order "to sit on a bench and aid destitute families." Raised in Tombstone, she graduated from the University of Arizona Law School in 1925--the year her father rose to the State Supreme Court, where he set his daughter's future goal by serving as Chief Justice for nearly 18 years.

To reach the same peak, Daughter Lorna served three terms in the state legislature, was an assistant state attorney general, and in 1950 was elected as a county judge in Phoenix. In 1957 she swallowed hard and performed "the most distasteful" duty of her career--sentencing a wife murderer to death in the gas chamber. "May God have mercy on your soul," said she, bowing her head. "Thank you, judge," said he.

Chief Justice Lockwood's brethren have now elected her on merit to a job that involves supervision of the state's entire judicial system. "Her most enduring quality," says one, "is patience, patience and patience. She will listen to both sides of every question. Furthermore, she has overcome the emotional reaction common to many women. She has all the qualities that make a great judge."

Some Arizonans are already looking forward to a day when the country's only woman Chief Justice will rise even higher--to the U.S. Supreme Court. In theory, nothing prevents that millennium, but the odds against the appointment of a woman Justice seem overwhelmingly high. At the very least, the court would need some remodeling. The present robing room is directly connected to a men's room. As one Justice darkly muses: "Why, we'd have to build a Justices' ladies' room."

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