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These Women Used the Rule of Law to Challenge Trumpism

In “Lady Justice,” Dahlia Lithwick celebrates the female lawyers, judges and others who stood up to the administration.

By Julie C. Suk

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LADY JUSTICE: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, by Dahlia Lithwick

In 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that women had no constitutional right to practice law. Indeed, as Dahlia Lithwick notes in this stirring book, a justice explained that the “natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.” But, in reaction, women mobilized to change the laws — and, ultimately, to become lawyers themselves.

“Lady Justice” focuses specifically on the women who, since the election of 2016, have mobilized against Trumpism and its threats to the rule of law. Combining biography and analysis, Lithwick — a lawyer and writer who covers legal matters for Slate — profiles several members of the profession who may not yet be household names, but who have, in her view, done real work to save American democracy. From Sally Yates and Becca Heller, who fought against the travel ban on Muslim-majority nations in the earliest days of Trump’s presidency, to Brigitte Amiri and Vanita Gupta, two women of immigrant backgrounds who resisted, among other things, the president’s efforts to prevent abortions and separate families at the U.S.-Mexico border, “Lady Justice” illustrates how “in a constitutional democracy, enduring power lies in the people who step into the fight.” Lithwick’s approach, interweaving interviews with legal commentary, allows her subjects to shine. She unabashedly casts them as heroines with the tenacity and courage to resist governmental pressure at crucial moments, but at the same time she rejects a simplistic, naïve narrative of social progress.

Attempting to redress a historical record that routinely denied women credit for their contributions to law, Lithwick notes that “change doesn’t result exclusively from the biographies of a Guy in a Hat Who Did a Thing.” This book, she explains, is not just the story of these people, but one about “timeless constitutional values: dignity, equality, justice, law, truth and reason.” And yet, by the book’s conclusion, the narrative is complicated; chapters that bring us to the present day reveal a reluctant but palpable doubt as to whether American constitutional democracy will, in fact, ultimately empower women.

The subjects of this book were drawn to their profession because law has an inherent logic and structure that can, in theory, achieve justice even in the absence of “brute power.” Lawyers, led by Heller, could show up at airports to find plaintiffs detained under the travel ban, and then file lawsuits invoking the Constitution. After white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, litigators like Robbie Kaplan could invoke the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 on behalf of those injured by the violence, and in so doing stop the perpetrators from continuing campaigns of terror after the march. When the Trump administration tried to stop a pregnant teenager in immigration detention from obtaining an abortion, Amiri could file an emergency petition relying on established constitutional law to restrain the government from preventing the procedure.

These lawyers did not see themselves as radicals; they were working with longstanding institutions and reasoning within frameworks that date to the 18th and 19th centuries. Their faith in our Constitution and our legal system enabled the protection of the powerless.

The narrative’s confidence in those values wavers somewhat in the chapters about the women, including Lithwick herself, who accused the legal profession’s most powerful men of abusive sexual behavior. In 2017, a woman who had formerly clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — known for his spectacular opinions and for sending his clerks on to Supreme Court clerkships — alleged that her boss had shown her pornographic images in his chambers and asked if they turned her on. Another woman who had clerked in the same building reported that Judge Kozinski, in response to her comment that she liked exercising when nobody else was around, had suggested that she work out in the courthouse gym naked.

These two were willing to be named, but others shared similar stories of Kozinski’s behavior without publicly revealing their identities. By their account, all of them felt demeaned and diminished by his conduct. Lithwick, who had clerked for another judge on the Ninth Circuit in 1996, had kept secret her own inappropriate encounters with Kozinski, but, inspired by the upswell of #MeToo, finally wrote about the experience in 2017. Shortly thereafter, Kozinski resigned a judgeship that the Constitution allowed him to keep for life.

In the book’s most poignant moment, Lithwick confronts her own complicity in enabling Kozinski’s continued abuses. For most of his nearly four decades as one of the most powerful judges in the country, she and many other women had known about the ways in which he made young women lawyers feel powerless; indeed, many female law students simply did not apply for clerkships in his chambers, despite knowing it was a proven path to the Supreme Court. (Brett Kavanaugh clerked for Judge Kozinski, then for Justice Anthony Kennedy.)

Women like Lithwick stayed publicly silent, she writes, not only out of fear of career-ending retaliation, but also out of a desire for the career-advancing benefits of playing along: “I’d been allowed to meet Supreme Court justices and to attend fancy parties and had done my fair share of junkets and prestigious events, some of them sitting next to Judge Kozinski himself, largely because I understood the drill: Men were men.” The drill, she now realizes, is that women bought their power with their silence. “I’d kept my own Kozinski story to myself for more than two decades,” Lithwick confesses, because “everyone understands that keeping secrets is part of the bargain.”

Lithwick then offers admiring but sobering portraits of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford, the women who accused Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh of inappropriate — or abusive — behavior during their Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Within the judicial appointments process required by the Constitution, even the bravest women, willing to speak up at great personal cost, could not stop the Senate from empowering these men.

As justices, Thomas and Kavanaugh recently cast two of the votes it took for the Supreme Court to end women’s constitutional right to terminate their pregnancies. And, although the lawyers featured in earlier chapters fought Trump’s travel ban with some initial success, five men on the Supreme Court refused to see it as discrimination against Muslims and exercised their power to legitimize the ban.

6 Paperbacks to Read This Week

As autumn approaches, grab a warm beverage and take a pick from our latest roundup, which includes Simone de Beauvoir’s previously unpublished interwar novel, a historical critique of white feminism and a look at how the world’s constitutions came to be.

Here are six paperbacks we recommend this week →

INSEPARABLE, by Simone de Beauvoir. Translated by Sandra Smith.

Originally written in 1954, this previously unpublished novel is based largely on the author’s relationship with a late childhood friend “through whose mirror she sought to loosen the silken chains binding them both to outdated ideals of femininity,” our reviewer, Leslie Camhi, wrote.

A PLAY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, by Jai Chakrabarti.

Inspired by a 1942 performance of a Tagore play in a Warsaw ghetto orphanage, this novel follows a Polish immigrant in 1972 New York who retrieves a friend’s ashes in India, where he is swept up in the production of a play he’d performed as a child.

AGAINST WHITE FEMINISM: Notes on Disruption, by Rafia Zakaria.

Making a case for a global, intersectional approach to gender politics, Zakaria methodically dismantles Western feminism and its individualist and exclusionary roots by drawing on examples of discriminatory aid organizations, the writings of Audre Lorde and more.

THE GUN, THE SHIP, AND THE PEN: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World, by Linda Colley.

An eminent British historian examines the forces that paved the way for the proliferation of constitutions across the West during the 18th century, from wars and revolutions to advancements in communication and globalization.

PEOPLE LOVE DEAD JEWS: Reports From a Haunted Present, by Dara Horn.

The 12 essays in this collection explore how Jewish tragedy is commemorated by the media, museums and literature in ways that are comforting distractions from “the very concrete, specific death of Jews,” as our reviewer, Yaniv Iczkovits, noted.

THE RECIPE FOR REVOLUTION, by Carolyn Chute.

Chute’s third novel to take place in the world of the Settlement, a farm cooperative in rural Maine that is home to the economically hopeless, retains a nontraditional plot where characters slowly emerge and recede while the author meditates on reality, humanity and capitalism.

Published on September 16.

Read more book news:

Lithwick might have started “Lady Justice” with the goal of telling the inspiring story of dedicated women rescuing American constitutional democracy from the Trump era. But even after the presidential election of 2020, threats to this same democracy are prolonging the battle for what many consider the nation’s soul. As the epilogue’s account of the Dobbs case indicates, Trump-appointed justices of the Supreme Court now have the authority to enforce wildly different definitions of dignity, equality, justice, law, truth and reason than those advanced by the women who animate this book. As disturbing as it is inspiring, “Lady Justice” leaves this reader wondering if women can ever achieve power in this system without being silenced into complicity.

Julie C. Suk is a law professor at Fordham University and the author of “We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment.”

LADY JUSTICE: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America | By Dahlia Lithwick | 368 pp. | Penguin Press | $29

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LADY JUSTICE

Women, the law, and the battle to save america.

by Dahlia Lithwick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 2022

Required reading for this post-Dobbs world.

The senior legal correspondent for Slate looks at the responses of women lawyers to the Trump era.

“Something extraordinary happens when female anger and lawyering meet,” writes Lithwick, who begins with oral arguments in the 2016 case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt before three female justices. She closes, of course, with the June 24, 2022, decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization . In the author’s telling, that span represents not only the nation’s six-year slide into an abyss, but also a time when women lawyers mounted dogged, directed resistance. Between starry-eyed opening and grim conclusion, she profiles women lawyers whose stories provide a contextualizing capsule tour of the era and offer some bracing hope. Readers will reconnect with Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who almost immediately found herself standing up to her new boss when he executed his first travel ban, and learn that the Democrats’ success in Georgia in 2020 and 2021 was mostly due to Stacey Abrams’ methodical, 10-year plan to mobilize Georgia’s Democratic vote. We also meet Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who successfully litigated against adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census; and the ACLU’s Brigitte Amiri, who defended the right of a pregnant 17-year-old refugee in U.S. custody to get an abortion—ultimately winning a case in which then–Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s preliminary opinion arguably paved his way to the Supreme Court. In this same profile, the author reveals that the same Office of Refugee Resettlement apparatchik who directed his staff to stop keeping track of the children separated from their families at the border also scrupulously maintained his own records of the menstrual cycles of the girls in custody. Though the text is necessarily bristling with names of court cases, Lithwick’s writing is friendly to lay readers and marked by her trademark pithy wit and an endearing faith in the promise of the legal system. “Women plus law equals magic,” she concludes.

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-525-56138-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | U.S. GOVERNMENT | PUBLIC POLICY | WOMEN & FEMINISM | POLITICS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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by Larry Berger & Dahlia Lithwick

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BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY

From the pocket change collective series.

by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.

Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.

The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Shavone Charles ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky

by Gaby Melian

by Leo Baker ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky

POVERTY, BY AMERICA

by Matthew Desmond ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2023

A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.

A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted .

“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.

Pub Date: March 21, 2023

ISBN: 9780593239919

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | POLITICS | BUSINESS | ECONOMICS | GENERAL BUSINESS

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by Matthew Desmond

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After Roe, what we can learn from the female lawyers who took on Trump

When I first cracked open Dahlia Lithwick’s “ Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America ,” I wasn’t sure if it was coming out at the worst possible time, or the best. Lithwick, the senior legal correspondent for Slate, is arguably the most influential and thought-provoking legal journalist in progressive circles, and “Lady Justice” is a retrospective look at the power of female lawyers during the Trump administration. In the midst of one of the darkest times in modern American history, the book essentially says, women stepped up, used the law to fight back and saved our collective bacon. Which at just about any point in the last two years would have been a welcome reminder of all the good that can happen in the face of extreme adversity, and a crucial contribution to our understanding of the Trump administration and how Americans behaved in response to its sins.

Except, of course, that this book is being published in September 2022 and went to press just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade , which set into motion a cascade of laws criminalizing abortion , stripping from many American women sovereignty over our bodies and our most intimate choices, and by extension the ability to fully determine our own futures. A half-century of progress was undone the moment the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was published, along with decades of feminist legal advocacy. As I turned Lithwick’s pink-covered book over in my hands and read the text on the back (which at least on my advance copy promised a “gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency — and won”), I felt my chest deflate. But we just lost , I thought.

Fortunately, I had the good sense (and the professional obligation) to actually read “Lady Justice.” And while I suspect that having this book come out just as American women have had a fundamental civil right stripped from them by a cabal of anti-feminist reactionary judges is not the timing Lithwick would have chosen, by the time I got to the end of the book, I was sufficiently convinced that it isn’t just an important historical document but a necessary guide right now to at least some of the paths forward post- Dobbs . Lithwick’s book insists that there’s simply no time for the sense of helplessness currently felt by so many pro-choicers, feminists and those who don’t believe that a fetus should have more rights than a woman.

In other words, “Lady Justice” is right on time.

Abortion rights cases bookend Lithwick’s argument, and although she wrote the bulk of the book before the Dobbs decision, the despair and urgency of this moment infuses the text. The 2016 oral argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt , after which the Supreme Court issued an opinion upholding and reaffirming Roe v. Wade , was, Lithwick writes in the opening line of the book, “the last truly great day for women and the legal system in America.” And this is the core of her argument: that if a legal system is not one that treats women fairly and equally, and that women participate equally in, then it is not a legal system that is fair or equal; that female lawyers, by nature of our history as outsiders and frankly often victims of a male-run legal system, are uniquely suited to harness the power of the law for good; and that there is no justice without gender equality, and there is no one who understands just how important legal protections are — and the limits of those protections — as much as American women and the other groups that have found themselves outside the law’s promise of liberty and justice for all.

If this book had come out six months ago, it would have been easy to read it as a look back, a kind of essential history of four chaotic years that felt like a thousand, and how so many women came to our collective rescue — while others participated in the nation’s imperilment. But coming as it does in this particular moment, when any semblance of normalcy brought on by the refreshingly boring Biden administration has been shattered by an unprecedented rollback of rights and progress, “Lady Justice” is less rosy historical overview and more stirring strategy doc.

While Lithwick keeps a tight focus on female lawyers and their accomplishments, how those lawyers do their work varies widely, opening up a vast landscape of potential actions — and making clear that the most important battles are won by attacks on multiple fronts. There are the quiet institutionalists whose fealty to the rule of law calls them to improbable heroism; there are the rule-breakers who do not venerate the justice system but make it their mission to bend unequal laws toward justice; there are the visionaries who, instead of responding to what is, get to work building what could be.

There is, in other words, no single prescription for the Lady Lawyer in “Lady Justice.” But there is an invitation: While each of the women Lithwick profiles has done extraordinary things, not one of them is venerated as a superhero She-Hulk; each is written as a human being, her work put into context and made something like attainable. The throughline of all their labor is less the law itself and more a talent for organizing others to stand as a collective force, with the power, Lithwick writes, of “first principles and lofty ideas” behind them. Each of these women, Lithwick writes, needed other women behind her to accomplish what she did. And each of them, Lithwick hints, could be you, too — if you follow your gut, have a sharp moral conscience and put in the work.

Some of the women profiled in “Lady Justice” are names you’ve heard: Sally Yates, Stacey Abrams, Christine Blasey Ford. Others, though, fomented mass movements and set major change into motion without ever becoming the public face of their victories. Remember when lawyers swarmed U.S. airports to provide emergency legal advice to travelers arriving from the majority-Muslim countries listed in what came to be known as the Trump Muslim ban? For that, you can thank Becca Heller, a young Yale law grad who has made a career out of seeing holes in the system, filling them and bending the rules where needed. (“I think a lot of the law is completely ridiculous,” Heller tells Lithwick. “I mean, to me, getting a law degree is just about using the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house.”) Heller, who founded an organization that helps law students use their budding skills to assist refugees, was tipped off that the Muslim ban was coming. And then she rallied the troops, making Google docs of every major airport and asking lawyers to show up. “The lawyers on the list could have been tax attorneys or real estate lawyers, Heller didn’t care,” Lithwick writes.

And then, a bunch of older, more experienced, mostly male lawyers and advocates told her to stand down, that a compromise was coming and that amassing lawyers at the airport would anger the government. Heller told her people to hit pause. But it turned out she had been right all along: The government was not allowing valid visa-holders from the targeted countries to enter, and folks who were stuck at airports and being ordered back on airplanes out of the United States needed lawyers, stat.

Heller and her comrades kept a whole lot of folks from being improperly deported. They also fought the government in court, and while the Trump Muslim ban never fully went away during his administration, some of the worst aspects of the law were eventually stripped out. And the legal battles opened up valuable windows for travelers to enter the United States legally.

Lithwick, like Heller, is not starry-eyed about the law nor ignorant of its limitations. But she is a keen observer of those who wield it — the ones who use it for good, but also the ones they are fighting against, who have also worked (mostly) within the bounds of the legal system to muscle outcomes in their own ideological favor. Some of those people, she notes, are women too — this is a sharply feminist story, but it is not one of feel-good Girl Power sloganeering.

By the end of “Lady Justice,” and in the context of a Supreme Court dead set on rolling back women’s rights and freedoms, Lithwick writes that “we have a long way to go, the road will be bumpy, and the destination still feels less than clear.” She’s right. But lucky for us, she’s drawn an excellent map.

Jill Filipovic is a journalist, a lawyer and the author of “ OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind .”

Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

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Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won

After the sudden shock of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration were going to pursue a series of retrograde, devastating policies. What could be done?   Immediately, women lawyers all around the country, independently of each other, sprang into action, and they had a common goal: they weren’t going to stand by in the face of injustice, while Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican party did everything in their power to remake the judiciary in their own conservative image. Over the next four years, the women worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020. These are just a handful of the stories Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail to tell a brand-new and deeply inspiring account of the Trump years. With unparalleled access to her subjects, she has written a luminous book, not about the villains of the Trump years, but about the heroes. And as the country confronts the news that the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, will soon overturn  Roe v. Wade , Lithwick shines a light on not only the major consequences of such a decision, but issues a clarion call to all who might, like the women in this book, feel the urgency to join the fight. A celebration of the tireless efforts, legal ingenuity, and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time,  Lady Justice  is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come, not just among lawyers and law students, but among all optimistic and hopeful Americans.

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Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America – A book review

February 8, 2024   By Val

Introduction: 

In the realm of legal literature, where the intricate dance between justice and societal dynamics unfolds, there emerges a profound exploration in the form of “Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.” Authored by [Author’s Name], this book weaves a compelling narrative that delves into the multifaceted relationship between women, the legal system, and the ongoing struggle to preserve the very essence of justice in America. 

Praise: 

One of the book’s standout features is its meticulous research, offering readers a comprehensive and insightful look into the historical and contemporary issues surrounding women and the law. [Author’s Name] masterfully crafts a narrative that not only educates but also engages readers, making complex legal concepts accessible to a broader audience. The inclusion of real-life cases and personal stories adds a human touch to the legal discourse, making it a compelling read for both legal enthusiasts and those unfamiliar with the intricacies of the legal system. 

The author’s nuanced examination of the challenges faced by women within the legal framework showcases a deep understanding of the subject matter. “Lady Justice” serves as a powerful call to action, urging readers to contemplate the persistent inequalities and systemic obstacles faced by women in their pursuit of justice. The book’s exploration of intersectionality is particularly commendable, shedding light on how various factors such as race, socio-economic status, and gender identity intersect within the legal landscape. 

Criticism: 

While “Lady Justice” excels in its coverage of the historical context and overarching issues, some readers might find the book lacking in proposing concrete solutions or policy recommendations. The narrative often leaves one yearning for more in-depth analysis and actionable insights to address the challenges highlighted. Additionally, a more balanced presentation of perspectives on certain controversial issues within the legal system could enhance the book’s overall credibility. 

Another aspect that may be perceived as a drawback is the occasional dense and legalistic language, which might alienate readers without a legal background. Striking a balance between academic rigor and accessibility is crucial in ensuring the widest possible impact of the book’s message. 

Conclusion: 

“Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America” stands as a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection of gender and the legal system in America. Its strengths lie in its well-researched content, powerful storytelling, and the illumination of critical issues facing women within the legal framework. While the book may benefit from a more solutions-oriented approach and a greater balance in presenting diverse perspectives, it undoubtedly contributes to the ongoing dialogue on justice, equality, and the role of women in shaping the legal landscape. Whether you’re a legal scholar, an advocate for social justice, or simply a curious reader, “Lady Justice” invites you to contemplate the evolving tapestry of law and its impact on the lives of women in America.”Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America” stands as a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection of gender and the legal system in America. Its strengths lie in its well-researched content, powerful storytelling, and the illumination of critical issues facing women within the legal framework. While the book may benefit from a more solutions-oriented approach and a greater balance in presenting diverse perspectives, it undoubtedly contributes to the ongoing dialogue on justice, equality, and the role of women in shaping the legal landscape. Whether you’re a legal scholar, an advocate for social justice, or simply a curious reader, “Lady Justice” invites you to contemplate the evolving tapestry of law and its impact on the lives of women in America.

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Ladies Justice

Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America Dahlia Lithwick Penguin Press, 2022

Slate ’s Dahlia Lithwick has given us a book explaining the magic that women bring to law and the courts.

She starts high, noting that things looked good when Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt , favoring abortion rights, was decided on March 2, 2016. It was the “last truly great day for women and the legal system in America.”

“And then it was gone,” with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the appointment of three anti-choice Justices to the Supreme Court, and the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Lithwick’s book explains how, nonetheless, extraordinary women do exceptional things. She recalls Pauli Murray, the unknown yet brilliant lawyer whose paper on the Civil War amendments helped other lawyers litigate Brown v. Board of Education . Murray’s work helped Ginsburg’s cases as a lawyer. Murray is “the most important woman lawyer few people know about.”

Lithwick then tells the stories of eight “strong women who stepped up, even though the practice of law typically rewards caution.” I review her stories and then tell a few of my own.

Lady Justice Sally Yates, acting attorney general, was traveling to the airport. Suddenly there was news of President Trump’s executive order banning Muslim travelers. Protesters hit the airports across the country. Yates showed her courage by saying no to the President, even though “very few DOJ lawyers have so publicly refused to do something unlawful or immoral.” Yates did not think the order was “wise or just,” and so refused to enforce it.

Trump fired her for her refusal to enforce the order. Lithwick sees Yates as “represent[ing] adults behaving like adults.” She admires her for being the first woman to say no.

Lady Justice Becca Heller is the activist who motivated the “airport revolution.” Heller is the co-founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. She led the lawsuits that protected Muslims targeted by the ban. Many women joined her in the work for democracy. Why? “[B]ecause, to paraphrase Becca Heller, they realized that ‘They don’t have anyone else to call.’”

Lithwick also observes that of the judges who declared Trump’s ban unconstitutional, “most were women.”

Lady Justice Robbie Kaplan is well-known for winning Windsor , a big LGBTQ rights Supreme Court case. She then objected to the 2017 Nazi march on Charlottesville, Virginia. She called Lithwick, who lives there, asking her help in finding local plaintiffs who could protest their injuries caused by the demonstrators.

Everyone let the victims down in this case; the “police, the courts, the university, the city, and the state had all let Charlottesville down, as had the federal government.” Kaplan won for them, using her new pro bono firm to get justice for the victims. She won her lawsuit against the emboldened racists. She had to wait until 2021 to hold the four-week trial, but her clients won a verdict and received $26 million in damages.

Kaplan is “fearless.”

Lady Justice Brigitte Amiri protects abortion rights. Lithwick describes how the Trump administration’s Scott Lloyd, head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), did everything in his power to stop abortions. He did all he could to protect the unborn child. Amiri says she did not attend a fancy law school, do a clerkship, or know any lawyers before she went to law school.

Nonetheless, Amiri argued an immigrant’s abortion case, Garza v. Hargan , in the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. before Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Patricia Millett, and Brett Kavanaugh. You know him, don’t you? Once he was on the Supreme Court, he became one of five Justices to overrule Roe . He was against abortion then and now.

Amiri won her case for her pregnant client, and won again when the government failed in its suggestion that Amiri herself be reprimanded for misrepresentations. She is “incredibly proud” that she was able to lead the case.

Lady Justice Vanita Gupta is a great litigator. She helped the 46 people of Tulia, Texas, who were successfully but falsely prosecuted in an undercover drug sting. She frequently helped the powerless and the unrepresented, as she did in Texas.

Gupta’s Leadership Conference also contested the addition of a citizenship test to the 2020 census. Her supporters realized that the question would cut down on minority participation in the census and in voting. She also brought her energy to the opposition to Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Court. Lithwick believes the “Kavanaugh nomination was a watershed moment for millions of women.”

Gupta warns against despair, and urges people to show up and to keep voting. There is a lot of work ahead to shore up democracy to protect the vulnerable, but she urges “these are not abstract principles.” They must be actively supported through work.

Lady Justice Dahlia Lithwick names her chapter about herself “#MeToo.” Why? Because she knew for many years that Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski had harassed women, including herself. He “was a well-known menace toward women, especially young ones.” By the way, Justice Kavanaugh clerked for Kozinski, but says he never knew about this history. Many women did. My great UNLV colleague, Nancy Rapoport , wrote “when she was a clerk, Kozinski invited her to have drinks with him and his clerks, then showed up alone and asked her, ‘What do single girls in San Francisco do for sex?’”

Lithwick reports similar complaints, which she kept quiet for over two decades. There are numerous stories of Kozinski’s misconduct. Another woman explains what Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt did to sexually harass her.

Then there are Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford and their complaints against Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh, respectively.

Kozinski retired soon after two former clerks complained publicly about his behavior. That took him outside of judicial control, which is usually not very effective anyway. His complete misconduct is not reported.

Especially after the Kavanaugh hearings, Lithwick stopped going to the Supreme Court. She no “longer felt I could cover the court without also giving cover to a system that erased women. As I concluded in that piece, ‘There isn’t a lot of power in my failing to show up to do my job, but there is a teaspoon of power in refusing to normalize that which was simply wrong, and which continues to be wrong.’”

Lady Justice Stacey Abrams got Georgians to vote. That was no small accomplishment. She lost her gubernatorial election, but then worked to organize the vote. Georgia voted for President Joe Biden, and for two Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Encouraging voting is hard, given how many politicians try to restrict it. Abrams keeps fighting the odds.

Abrams’ campaign was not about her. It was about voters exercising their right to vote. She has stood for voting principles without exception. The vote numbers increased in Georgia because of Abrams’ work. She is not only a lawyer and an organizer, but also a teacher. Lithwick notes, “It is astounding that the world’s oldest constitutional democracy continues to be unable to guarantee that every person who wishes to vote can do so.” Abrams works to get that right for everyone.

Lady Justice Nina Perales is the Latino Vote strategist. She protects voting rights at MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Some people forget that Mexican Americans have long been denied the right to vote. “Texas has been a kind of dark laboratory for years of efforts to suppress Latino votes.” Perales won League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry , a Latino vote dilution case.

Perales fought the Trump administration’s efforts to put a citizenship requirement into the census, arguing that it would undermine minority votes. She opposed efforts to count only citizens in voting districts when the Constitution says persons, not citizens. She helped show that many arguments given by the Trump administration were pretextual.

Perales notes that her case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was before three women judges. “I have never, in my years, argued to a three-judge federal panel of only women, as a trial panel, because they’re so rare. And it was me and the three judges, and then of course there was a guy representing DOJ. And I was like, ‘Yeah, he’s in the minority this time.’”

Lithwick concludes, “Women are doing this work of democracy building, usually in the shadows, because they are really good at it. They are doing it, too, because without it democracy—with all its legal force and protections—cannot stand.” She warns that some women are suffering the “Great Forgetting” of all the harm done to them. Lithwick feels the threat to democracy is strong. She thinks women can make the difference as the anti-democrats continue to work against them.

Lithwick’s book reminded me of Ladies I know who are Ladies of Justice. I add them to her list.

Lady Justice Mary Schroeder is a judge on the Ninth Circuit, where those other judges described by Lithwick worked. I clerked for her in her excellent chambers. Schroeder came to the court in 1979, when she “ joined a historic class of women judges who transformed the federal Judiciary…women were at best oddities, and sometimes were treated as unwelcome.” When she moved to Phoenix with her husband, her first job was threatened by her pregnancy.

Schroeder wrote the opinion reversing the conviction of Gordon Hirabayashi , a Japanese American who was interned during World War II.

Pointing to a picture of President Jimmy Carter with her and the other women judges he had named, she said , “This is what so-called pioneers have had to be—determined and strong, and not willing to yield because we don’t belong.”

Schroeder has always been determined and strong for women’s rights.

Lady Justice Barbara Babcock . I think Lithwick will join me in celebrating the late Barbara Babcock , the first woman faculty member, the first tenured woman, woman chairholder, and professor emerita at Stanford Law School, which is our alma mater. We are both her former students. Babcock’s website notes that Babcock “pioneered the study of women in the legal profession.”

Babcock wrote Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz , which is a biography of “the first woman lawyer in the west.” Lithwick positively reviewed that book on Slate. Babcock always stood for women’s rights. She was a public defender, and assistant attorney general for the Civil Division in the DOJ during the Carter administration. She taught all of us to support civil rights and democracy at its best. Women’s rights were always valued by Clara Foltz and by Barbara Babcock.

Lady Justice Marci Hamilton is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Founder and CEO of CHILD USA, an organization that protects children’s civil rights. Lithwick notes many times in her book that religion has been used to gain political force and harm civil rights. Hamilton has long protected civil rights against religions’ encroachment. I have been happy to support her work at CHILD USA.

Hamilton won City of Boerne v. Flores , which ruled that the federal government could not impose an RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) on all the state governments. She has long criticized the RFRAs for undermining women’s, LGBTQs’, and children’s civil rights. She seeks justice for women, LGBTQs, and children every day, even as religions are actively trying to strip them of their rights.

Like all the other Lady Justices, Hamilton keeps fighting the odds to protect people’s rights, especially by creating an organization that supports more rights for children.

I agree with Lithwick that the Lady Justices should be celebrated and supported. Add your list of Justices to mine!

Posted in: Book Reviews

Tags: Dahlia Lithwick , Women

Comments are closed.

• Published: 15 November 2022
• ISBN: 9780525561385
• Imprint: Penguin Press
• Format: Hardback
• RRP: $72.00

Lady Justice

Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

• Dahlia Lithwick

After the sudden shock of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration were going to pursue a series of retrograde, devastating policies. What could be done?   Immediately, women lawyers all around the country, independently of each other, sprang into action, and they had a common goal: they weren’t going to stand by in the face of injustice, while Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican party did everything in their power to remake the judiciary in their own conservative image. Over the next four years, the women worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020.

These are just a handful of the stories Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail to tell a brand-new and deeply inspiring account of the Trump years. With unparalleled access to her subjects, she has written a luminous book, not about the villains of the Trump years, but about the heroes. And as the country confronts the news that the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, will soon overturn Roe v. Wade , Lithwick shines a light on not only the major consequences of such a decision, but issues a clarion call to all who might, like the women in this book, feel the urgency to join the fight. A celebration of the tireless efforts, legal ingenuity, and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time, Lady Justice is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come, not just among lawyers and law students, but among all optimistic and hopeful Americans.

Winner of the LA Times Book Prize in Current Interest

An instant New York Times Bestseller!

“Stirring . . . Lithwick’s approach, interweaving interviews with legal commentary, allows her subjects to shine...Inspiring.” — New York Times Book Review

“In Dahlia Lithwick’s urgent, engaging Lady Justice , Dobbs serves as a devastating bookend to a story that begins in hope.” — Boston Globe

Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won

In the immediate aftershocks of Donald Trump’s victory over Hilary Clinton in 2016, women lawyers across the country, independently of one another, sprang into action. They were determined not to stand by while the Republican party did everything in their power to pursue devastating and often retrograde policies.

In  Lady Justice, Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, illuminates these many heroes of the Trump years. From Sally Yates and Becca Heller, who fought the Muslim travel ban, to Roberta Kaplan, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, to Stacey Abrams, who worked to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians, Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail the women lawyers who worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic presidency in living memory. A celebration of the legal ingenuity and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time,  Lady Justice  is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come.

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Briefly Noted

Sacred Nature , by Karen Armstrong (Knopf) . An urgent plea opens this nuanced exploration, by a veteran writer on religion, of our relationship to nature: if ecological disaster is to be avoided, Armstrong writes, “we need to recover the veneration of nature that human beings carefully cultivated for millennia.” What follows is a tour of how various spiritual traditions conceive of nature, with a focus on a common thread: an understanding of the natural world as a unified whole shot through by “an immanent sacred force.” This concept, prominent in Eastern thought, was also a feature of Western monotheist traditions before we began treating nature as “a mere resource.” “While it is essential to cut carbon emissions,” Armstrong writes, we also need to overhaul “our whole belief system.”

Lady Justice , by Dahlia Lithwick (Penguin Press) . In a richly layered set of profiles, a noted legal correspondent chronicles efforts by female lawyers to bolster democracy during the Trump Presidency. Some figures are familiar (the voting-rights champion Stacey Abrams), others less so (a co-founder of an organization that helps refugees seeking asylum). For all these women—and for Lithwick, who writes about her own sexual harassment by a former federal judge—law isn’t an “unassailable cathedral” but a “fragile arrangement of norms, suggestions, and rules.” Constitutional progress often takes a slow, zigzagging path rather than a linear one, and it is this, Lithwick muses, that “allows it to preserve histories that might otherwise be erased.”

The English Understand Wool , by Helen DeWitt (New Directions) . An orphaned heiress, Marguerite, is kidnapped as an infant and raised in a Moroccan riad , where she is taught to appreciate exquisite tailoring, beautiful manners, classical music, tennis. Years later, the captors, having spent her fortune, disappear, and Marguerite, now seventeen, is writing a memoir about her ordeal and weathering a media maelstrom. Chapters from the work in progress alternate with exchanges between Marguerite and her increasingly exasperated New York editor, who wants a tell-all blockbuster. DeWitt offers a paean to the lost art of connoisseurship, and also a critique of the way that commercial exploitation flattens anything it does not understand.

Poūkahangatus , by Tayi Tibble (Knopf) . This collection’s title poem, which describes itself as “An Essay About Indigenous Hair Dos and Don’ts,” mixes mythological and pop-cultural references with ruminations on female beauty, power, and inheritance: Medusa makes an appearance, as does Disney’s “Pocahontas.” Elsewhere, the poet, a Māori New Zealander, uses the film “Twilight” as a lens through which to examine racialized and gendered tensions of adolescence. Tibble’s smart, sexy, slang-studded verse is fanciful and dramatic, revelling in the pains and the pleasures of contemporary young womanhood yet undergirded by an acute sense of history. Her voice remains sure-footed across many registers, and the book, at its best, functions as an atlas for learning to explore the world on one’s own terms.

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Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America Hardcover – Sept. 20 2022

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• Print length 368 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Penguin Press
• Publication date Sept. 20 2022
• Dimensions 16.05 x 3.02 x 24.16 cm
• ISBN-10 0525561382
• ISBN-13 978-0525561385
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press (Sept. 20 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525561382
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525561385
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 601 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.05 x 3.02 x 24.16 cm
• #34 in Gender & Law (Books)
• #225 in Jurisprudence (Books)
• #425 in Criminal Law (Books)

About the author

Dahlia lithwick.

Dahlia Lithwick is a regular contributor at MSNBC and senior editor at Slate, and in that capacity, has been writing their "Supreme Court Dispatches" and "Jurisprudence" columns since 1999. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Commentary, among other places. She is host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law and the Supreme Court. In 2018, Lithwick received the American Constitution Society’s Progressive Champion Award, and the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis. Lithwick won a 2013 National Magazine Award for her columns on the Affordable Care Act. She has been twice awarded an Online Journalism Award for her legal commentary. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 2018. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Women’s Media Center’s Exceptional Journalism Awards. In 2021 she won a Gracie Award for Amicus Presents: The Class of RBG, which featured the last in-person audio interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Lithwick has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Georgia Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. She was the first online journalist invited to be on the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. She has testified before Congress about access to justice in the era of the Roberts Court and how MeToo impacts federal judicial law clerks. She has appeared on CNN, ABC, The Colbert Report, the Daily Show and is a frequent guest on The Rachel Maddow Show. Ms. Lithwick earned her BA in English from Yale University and her JD degree from Stanford University. Her new book, Lady Justice, is forthcoming from Penguin Press (September 2022). She is co-author of Me Versus Everybody (Workman Press, 2006) (with Brandt Goldstein) and of I Will Sing Life (Little, Brown 1992) (with Larry Berger). Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies including Jewish Jocks (2012), What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most (2013), About What was Lost (2006); A Good Quarrel (2009); Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare (2009); and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary (2008).

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