TBA Law Blog

TBA Law Blog

Tennessee Women on the Bench: A History of Firsts

Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Mar 31, 2021

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Administrative Office of the Courts recently published a piece looking at the women who became Tennessee’s first female judges. The profile looks at Martha Craig Daughtrey, the state Supreme Court’s first female justice; Janice M. Holder, the Supreme Court’s first female chief justice; Supreme Court Justice Holly Kirby, the state’s first woman to serve on the Tennessee Court of Appeals; Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, the first woman to serve on a state trial court; Chancellor Sharon Bell, the first woman to serve on a state chancery court; Judge Kate M. Drake, the first county judge in the state; and Judge Camille Kelley, the first female judge in the state and the first female juvenile court judge. Thanks to these historic trailblazers, the Tennessee Judiciary is a changed institution. Today, women compose the majority of the Tennessee Supreme Court. At the trial court level, 25% of judges are women while 18 of the state’s 31 judicial districts have at least one woman judge.

In related news, U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Bernice Donald and judicial law clerk LaFonda Willis reflect on the rich legacy of Shelby County women judges in an opinion piece in today's Commercial Appeal. Read about Nancy B. Sorak, the first woman elected as a judge in Memphis; Julia Smith Gibbons, the first woman to be named a federal judge in the state; and Earnestine Hunt Dorse, the first woman elected to Memphis City Court.

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