Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.
There were three of us women in my class section at Georgetown Law School, and we were actually living together. And the very first day of the class on real property, we were so eager we sat in the front row. It’s professor Stetson, who was the property professor. He looks down at the three of us and says: “You should know that the day they admitted women to this law school, I wore a black armband. And you needn’t worry. I’ll never call on any of you.” Well, we leave the class, and I’m jumping up and down in the air, saying, “Isn’t it wonderful? He’s not going to be calling on us.” My friend turned to me and said, “Why are you here? Are you kidding? We’re never going to get a chance.”
— Judge Ilana Diamond Rovner of the Seventh Circuit, in comments given to Mark Joseph Stern at Slate, on the sex discrimination she experienced when she was a student at Georgetown Law in the 1960s. “Some were terrific. Some were not,” Rovner said of her male classmates. “We were viewed as outsiders. We were asked: ‘Why are you taking the place of a man? Did you come here to find a husband?’” Rovner, the first woman appointed to the Seventh Circuit, has announced that upon confirmation of her successor, she will take senior status.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
