Judge Florence Ellinwood Allen, First Lady of the Law
From the beginning of her career, Judge Florence Ellinwood Allen opened doors that were previously closed to women. From Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor to Federal Circuit Court Judge, she went where no woman had gone before.
Florence Ellinwood Allen was born March 23, 1884 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the third of seven children of Clarence Emir Allen and Corinne Tuckerman. Her father won a seat in Congress in 1895 when Utah became a state.
At age 16, Florence entered the College for Women at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She received an AB degree in music with honors from Western Reserve in 1904. Upon graduation, she traveled to Berlin with her mother and sisters where she spent the next two years attending the University of Berlin and covering concerts as assistant music correspondent for the New York Musical Courier.
From 1906 to 1909, at her mother’s urging, she returned to Cleveland and accepted a position at Laurel School, an exclusive private girls’ school, where she taught Greek, German, Geography, Grammar and American History. She also taught music and trained the glee club. At the same time, she worked as music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. During Ohio’s Bicentennial in 2003, Miss Allen was honored with an historical marker at Laurel.
During the same period, she began to pursue a master’s degree in political science at Western Reserve University, where one of her professors encouraged her to study law. Because Western Reserve’s schools of law and medicine were not open to women at the time, she entered law school at Chicago University, the only woman in her class.
She developed a friendship with Frances Kellor, an attorney, and head of the New York League for the Protection of Immigrants. Encouraged by Miss Kellor, she left Chicago at the end of her first year and went to New York to work for the League. She was assigned to meet and assist immigrants at Ellis Island.
She hoped to attend Columbia University Law School but found that the school only admitted women in the summer. She enrolled at New York University Law School, graduating cum laude, second in her class, with a LL.B. degree in June 1913.
Between 1910 and 1920, she worked tirelessly for women’s suffrage with such well-known suffragists as Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriet Taylor Upton, and Maud Wood.
In 1914, after gaining admittance to the Ohio Bar, Ms. Allen established her own law office in Cleveland. She also volunteered at the Cleveland Legal Aid Society. As a young attorney, she successfully argued before the Ohio Supreme Court, persuading them to uphold laws granting women the right to vote in municipal elections in three Cleveland suburbs, before passage of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment.
Florence Allen was a charter member of the Cleveland Woman’s City Club and active in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). With her friend Marie Wing, the executive secretary of the YWCA, she established the Cleveland Business Women’s Club. This group would become part of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPW) when it was organized in 1919.
Florence Ellinwood Allen was born March 23, 1884 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the third of seven children of Clarence Emir Allen and Corinne Tuckerman. Her father won a seat in Congress in 1895 when Utah became a state.
At age 16, Florence entered the College for Women at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She received an AB degree in music with honors from Western Reserve in 1904. Upon graduation, she traveled to Berlin with her mother and sisters where she spent the next two years attending the University of Berlin and covering concerts as assistant music correspondent for the New York Musical Courier.
From 1906 to 1909, at her mother’s urging, she returned to Cleveland and accepted a position at Laurel School, an exclusive private girls’ school, where she taught Greek, German, Geography, Grammar and American History. She also taught music and trained the glee club. At the same time, she worked as music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. During Ohio’s Bicentennial in 2003, Miss Allen was honored with an historical marker at Laurel.
During the same period, she began to pursue a master’s degree in political science at Western Reserve University, where one of her professors encouraged her to study law. Because Western Reserve’s schools of law and medicine were not open to women at the time, she entered law school at Chicago University, the only woman in her class.
She developed a friendship with Frances Kellor, an attorney, and head of the New York League for the Protection of Immigrants. Encouraged by Miss Kellor, she left Chicago at the end of her first year and went to New York to work for the League. She was assigned to meet and assist immigrants at Ellis Island.
She hoped to attend Columbia University Law School but found that the school only admitted women in the summer. She enrolled at New York University Law School, graduating cum laude, second in her class, with a LL.B. degree in June 1913.
Between 1910 and 1920, she worked tirelessly for women’s suffrage with such well-known suffragists as Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriet Taylor Upton, and Maud Wood.
In 1914, after gaining admittance to the Ohio Bar, Ms. Allen established her own law office in Cleveland. She also volunteered at the Cleveland Legal Aid Society. As a young attorney, she successfully argued before the Ohio Supreme Court, persuading them to uphold laws granting women the right to vote in municipal elections in three Cleveland suburbs, before passage of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment.
Florence Allen was a charter member of the Cleveland Woman’s City Club and active in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). With her friend Marie Wing, the executive secretary of the YWCA, she established the Cleveland Business Women’s Club. This group would become part of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPW) when it was organized in 1919.
In 1919, Attorney Allen was appointed Assistant Prosecutor for Cuyahoga County, the first woman in the country to hold such a position.
The Women’s Suffrage Party urged Florence Allen to run Common Pleas Court Judge in Cuyahoga County in 1920, as soon as the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. She was the first woman elected to a judgeship in the United States thus becoming the first woman to sit on a court of general jurisdiction. She was also the first woman in the world to sentence a man to death.
Two years later, Judge Allen ran for the Supreme Court of Ohio as an independent. Her platform was clear and concise: “I believe in law enforcement, justice for all, business methods applied to the courts, efficient work by public servants, respect for law, order and the courts. Politics should have no place in the administration of justice.”
Defeating both the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 1922 election, Judge Allen became the first woman to sit on a state supreme court. She took up her duties on the Ohio Supreme Court in January 1923, the first woman to sit on a court of last resort and was re-elected in 1928.
When a vacancy occurred in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1933 , she expressed her interest. The Sixth Circuit included Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her nomination to the Senate and she was confirmed unanimously. The President signed the appointment, making it official on March 23, 1934, her fiftieth birthday. She served on the court for the next 25 years.
In 1937, Judge Allen ruled in the most important case of her career, the Tennessee Electric Power Company v. The Tennessee Valley Authority. This was considered a monumental victory for Roosevelt’s New Deal economic recovery initiative. Other cases before the Circuit Court involved wheat crop controls, unionization, unfair labor practices, minimum wages, patents, and housing desegregation, to name but a few. Judge Allen also issued the first federal court ruling calling for desegregation in public housing a year after the U. S. Supreme Court declared racially segregated educational facilities unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
From 1934 to 1959, Florence Allen was the nation’s highest ranking female jurist. Although thirteen vacancies occurred during that time, she easily met the template of qualifications in all aspects except for one — her sex. She remained the highest-ranking jurist until the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the United State Supreme Court in 1981.
Judge Allen reached agreement for the publication of two books, one on the United States Constitution and the other an autobiography. This Constitution of Ours was published in 1940, at a price of two dollars. It would be 25 years before the autobiography became a reality.
In 1958, Judge Allen became the first woman to serve as Chief Judge of a Circuit Court of Appeals. Federal judges are appointed for life. They become Senior Judges when they retire and are free to participate or not in cases that they wish and are needed. Judge Allen took senior status in 1959, continuing her work on a few cases but soon dropping out of the judicial scene.
In 1965, Judge Allen retired from the Circuit Court of Appeals. She spent more time at the Briar Patch, her home in Waite Hill, Ohio enjoying the fields and woods, as well as her dogs. Allen thought that her papers should be the property of the women of Ohio who had contributed so much to who she was. After her death, they were given to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. Her friends insisted that she complete her autobiography and so To Do Justly was published in 1965.
She died in 1966 after a fall at her home at the age of 82. She is buried in Waite Hill Cemetery in Ohio where a simple stone bears the inscription “Florence Ellinwood Allen, Jurist, 1884-1966.”
U. S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart perhaps best summed up the life of Judge Allen as follows: “In our awe at her unprecedented accomplishments as a woman, it is important not to forget her very great accomplishments as a lawyer and a judge.”
The Women’s Suffrage Party urged Florence Allen to run Common Pleas Court Judge in Cuyahoga County in 1920, as soon as the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. She was the first woman elected to a judgeship in the United States thus becoming the first woman to sit on a court of general jurisdiction. She was also the first woman in the world to sentence a man to death.
Two years later, Judge Allen ran for the Supreme Court of Ohio as an independent. Her platform was clear and concise: “I believe in law enforcement, justice for all, business methods applied to the courts, efficient work by public servants, respect for law, order and the courts. Politics should have no place in the administration of justice.”
Defeating both the Democratic and Republican candidates in the 1922 election, Judge Allen became the first woman to sit on a state supreme court. She took up her duties on the Ohio Supreme Court in January 1923, the first woman to sit on a court of last resort and was re-elected in 1928.
When a vacancy occurred in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1933 , she expressed her interest. The Sixth Circuit included Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her nomination to the Senate and she was confirmed unanimously. The President signed the appointment, making it official on March 23, 1934, her fiftieth birthday. She served on the court for the next 25 years.
In 1937, Judge Allen ruled in the most important case of her career, the Tennessee Electric Power Company v. The Tennessee Valley Authority. This was considered a monumental victory for Roosevelt’s New Deal economic recovery initiative. Other cases before the Circuit Court involved wheat crop controls, unionization, unfair labor practices, minimum wages, patents, and housing desegregation, to name but a few. Judge Allen also issued the first federal court ruling calling for desegregation in public housing a year after the U. S. Supreme Court declared racially segregated educational facilities unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
From 1934 to 1959, Florence Allen was the nation’s highest ranking female jurist. Although thirteen vacancies occurred during that time, she easily met the template of qualifications in all aspects except for one — her sex. She remained the highest-ranking jurist until the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the United State Supreme Court in 1981.
Judge Allen reached agreement for the publication of two books, one on the United States Constitution and the other an autobiography. This Constitution of Ours was published in 1940, at a price of two dollars. It would be 25 years before the autobiography became a reality.
In 1958, Judge Allen became the first woman to serve as Chief Judge of a Circuit Court of Appeals. Federal judges are appointed for life. They become Senior Judges when they retire and are free to participate or not in cases that they wish and are needed. Judge Allen took senior status in 1959, continuing her work on a few cases but soon dropping out of the judicial scene.
In 1965, Judge Allen retired from the Circuit Court of Appeals. She spent more time at the Briar Patch, her home in Waite Hill, Ohio enjoying the fields and woods, as well as her dogs. Allen thought that her papers should be the property of the women of Ohio who had contributed so much to who she was. After her death, they were given to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. Her friends insisted that she complete her autobiography and so To Do Justly was published in 1965.
She died in 1966 after a fall at her home at the age of 82. She is buried in Waite Hill Cemetery in Ohio where a simple stone bears the inscription “Florence Ellinwood Allen, Jurist, 1884-1966.”
U. S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart perhaps best summed up the life of Judge Allen as follows: “In our awe at her unprecedented accomplishments as a woman, it is important not to forget her very great accomplishments as a lawyer and a judge.”