National Women's History Month: Pennsylvania's 1st female judge appointed in Allegheny County

Debra Todd was recently sworn in as the first woman in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s history to serve as chief justice.

March is National Women’s History Month, here’s a look at the history of women in Pennsylvania’s judiciary, starting with their expanded role across the board in 2023.

Women make up 27% of current district court judges, 37% of common pleas court judges, and the majority of both Superior and Commonwealth Court judges.

Courtesy of Administrative Office of PA Courts

This infographic is a snapshot of women in the Pennsylvania judiciary as of February 2023.

Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer currently serves alongside six other women judges. She has served as a teaching fellow at Stanford University, an assistant professor as DePaul College of Law, as deputy and assistant solicitor in the Lehigh County solicitor’s office, and as counsel for ATX Telecommunications Services.

Here’s a timeline of women on the bench, both in Pennsylvania the the U.S., according to the U.S. Library of Congress and the Administrative Office of PA Courts.

1869

Arabella Mansfield is the first woman admitted to the bar in Iowa. Mansfield did not attend law school, but rather studied in her brother’s law office for two years before passing the bar examination. The same year, Ada H. Kepley became the first woman in the U.S. to graduate law school.

1870

Esther Morris is appointed justice of the peace in the Wyoming Territory, the first woman in the U.S. appointed to a judicial position. In 1895, at age 80, she was elected a delegate to the national suffrage convention in Cleveland.

1928

Genevieve Cline is the first woman to serve on a federal court, appointed by President Calvin Coolidge for a seat on the U.S. Customs Court, where she remained for a quarter-century.

1930

Sara M. Soffel becomes the first woman appointed as a judge in Pennsylvania, in Allegheny County. She was the one of the first women to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1916. She was admitted to the Allegheny County Bar on October 6, 1916, according to HistoricPittsburgh.org. In November 1941, Soffel was elected to the Common Pleas Court. She remained in that post until she retired from the bench in January 1962. She then returned to practicing law at Buchanan, Ingersoll, Rodewald, Kyle & Buerger, retiring in 1968.

1932

Judge Florence Allen, already serving a a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court, becomes the first woman to serve on a federal appeals court, appointed to the Sixth Circuit. In 1909, she was the only woman in a class of about 100 in the University of Chicago Law School. She continued her studies at and graduated from New York University, which welcomed women and awarded them degrees even before the turn of the century.

Courtesy of Administrative Office of PA Courts

Judge Anne X. Alpern was the first woman appointed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.

1961

Anne X. Alpern becomes the first female justice to serve on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. After attending the Pennsylvania College for Women, Alpern graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1927. She served as solicitor for the City of Pittsburgh from 1942-‘54, was elected a common pleas judge in 1953 and was appointed by Gov. David Lawrence as the state’s first female attorney general in 1959, where she served until 1961. According to the Pitt library digital collection’s “Guide to the Anne X. Alpern Papers, 1918-197,” early in 1961, Alpern was also offered a position as the head of the Federal Power Commission by President John F. Kennedy, but turned it down.

Tribune-Review

Judge Donetta Ambrose, pictured in 2008 at a naturalization oath ceremony.

1981

Donetta Ambrose becomes the first woman elected as a common pleas judge in Westmoreland County. Later, after former President Bill Clinton appointed Ambrose to be a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Western Pennsylvania, she became the first woman to serve as chief judge in Pittsburgh. Ambrose graduated from Duquesne University in 1967 and its law school in 1970. There were only four women in her class. After graduation, she completed a two-year clerkship with Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Louis Manderino and then joined the state attorney general’s office working on civil rights litigation for a couple of years. Ambrose, an Arnold native who lived in New Kensington and Lower Burrell before moving to Oakmont, retired from the bench in 2022.

2022-23

Debra Todd becomes the first woman to serve as chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, leading the court in the wake of Chief Justice Max Baer’s death in September 2022 before being formally installed in January.

AP

Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington on Oct. 7. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

2023

Female justices Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson make up 44% of the U.S. Supreme Court.