Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, April 5, 2000

All-woman Supreme Court made history

It was 1925, in the Roaring Twenties, when Texas Gov. Pat Neff did something that startled not only Texas, but the country. On the first day of the year, Neff appointed an all-woman Supreme Court to hear one case. This was at a time when women were complete outsiders to the judicial system.
   The case involved two parcels of land in El Paso claimed by the Woodmen of the World, a fraternal organization. There was a problem when the case reached the state Supreme Court because all three justices were members of the Woodmen. They had to step down and Neff hit on the novel idea of appointing three women to hear the case. There were scarcely more than three women lawyers in the entire state then.
   Neff called the Supreme Court clerk's office to see if there were any legal reasons why he couldn't appoint women as justices. A deputy clerk, thinking it a joke, told the governor they would be qualified to serve if Neff could find three women who could agree on anything.
   The governor was serious, however. He named Hortense Sparks Ward, a Houston lawyer, to serve as chief justice, and he appointed Hattie Henenberg of Dallas and Ruth Brazzil, a lawyer in Galveston (she later moved to Bandera) to hear the case.
   Hortense Sparks Ward was the outstanding member of this special court. She was born in Matagorda County and lived in Edna as a child. She worked as a court reporter until she passed the state bar exam and became the first woman admitted to the state bar. She and Minnie Fisher Cunningham led the fight in Texas for women's right to vote. Mrs. Ward lobbied for, and helped to write, the Married Women's Property Rights Law, which passed in 1913, giving Texas women the right to manage their own property.
   All three women had succeeded at incredible odds in creating a place for themselves in what was then a man's profession. Because of the prejudice against women lawyers, Mrs. Ward never appeared in court for fear that it would hurt her client. She did her legal work behind the scenes, letting her husband handle the cases in court. Miss Brazzil also made it a point never to compete against a male lawyer, which kept her out of the courtroom.
   Neff's appointments gained a lot of attention; the New York Times sent a reporter to cover the activities of this unusual court. The three women met with Gov. Neff and were given their commissions, and when the oaths were administered, Mrs. Ward laughed when she repeated the oath, as it existed then, that required officials to swear they had never fought a duel.
   To cut through the legal foliage, a writ of error was granted and the justices decided to hear oral arguments. Within a month, the special court ruled in favor of J. M. Darr, the trustee for the Woodmen. The three women justices stepped down, a reception was held, and they returned to their law practices where they could not appear in court.
   Neff's motive in taking this unusual step was never made clear. He could easily have found male lawyers who were not members of the Woodmen of the World. Neff was on his way out of office within two weeks. The incoming governor was Miriam A. Ferguson, a stand-in candidate for her husband who had been impeached and couldn't run again. "Ma" (the nickname came from her initials) Ferguson was elected with a wink by voters who understood that her husband would call the shots; before his wife was elected, "Pa" had been one of the state's most virulent critics of women's rights.
   Texas women gained the vote in 1919 and the following year they helped Neff defeat Joseph W. Bailey, an old anti-suffrage enemy, in the 1920 governor's race. Perhaps Neff, on his way out of office, was repaying a political debt and, at the same time, showing Texans that given the opportunity women were fully capable of serving in the state's highest judicial positions.
   If that was Neff's lesson, it took a while to sink in. It would be another 30 years before women could even serve on juries and it was not until 1982 - 57 years later! - that a woman was named to serve full-time on the Texas Supreme Court.
  
   Notes & Sources: The suggestion for this column came from Corpus Christi attorney Colleen McHugh. Some of the research and background information was furnished by archivist Angela Dorau of the State Bar of Texas, based on a report by Sue M. Hall, professor of law at St. Mary's University, San Antonio. Other sources include the Corpus Christi Caller, Jan. 2-7, 1925, and the Handbook of Texas.
  

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