Blogs Gil Troy When Nixon Floated—Then Gaslit—the First Female Supreme Court Candidate
Mar 26, 2017When Nixon Floated—Then Gaslit—the First Female Supreme Court Candidate
If he survives this ugly nomination fight where partisanship trumps ideology and qualifications—yet again—Judge Neil Gorsuch won’t be joining his daddy’s and granddaddy’s Supreme Court. America’s most exclusive fraternity used to be such a boys’ club that even when a Republican president floated the name of an impressive woman jurist, his trial balloon popped. Tellingly, in 1971, the American Bar Association advisory committee deemed Mildred Lillie, the first serious female Supreme Court possibility, “unqualified.”
That Richard Nixon tried to be the pioneering president to first name a woman to the highest court in the land appears to be another Nixon anomaly. The Red-baiting, liberal-hating, enemies-list-making Nixon also signed off on the Environmental Protection Agency, Affirmative Action, and an ever-expanding federal budget—while visiting Soviet Russia and Communist China.
Was he a closet feminist too?...
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of