Forty-five years ago, I had just graduated from law school and joined 22 male attorneys in a litigation boutique. It was a great job, and I got a lot of early experience in both federal and state courts. In those days, judges were not very enthusiastic to have women lawyers in their courtrooms, to put it mildly. The judges did not know how to relate to women in those positions or how to address them. I think it often was more awkward for the judges than it was for the women lawyers.
As co-counsel in a week-long state court trial during the early 1980’s, the judge referred to me only as “she” and “her” although he addressed the male lawyers as “Mr. So and So” or “Counsel.” On the first day of trial, after we concluded opening statements and were on recess, the court reporter came running up to me calling my name. Anticipating the worst, I was sure I had said something incomprehensible that she needed clarified, but that was not her purpose. She just wanted to meet me. I was the first woman lawyer ever to try a case there, and she was excited about it.
In federal court, I had occasion to be referred to as “little girl,” “woman” and “honey” by judges and, at one most memorable moment, I endured a lecture from the judge about my responsibility to act like a man in his courtroom — because, as the judge explained, he did not discriminate between genders. Oh, OK.
Yes, it was annoying, but it also was somewhat amusing and satisfying because I knew that I was being noticed as a woman lawyer and that I was throwing an unknown into the equation. I won my motions, I got rulings and settlements in my favor, and I prevailed in enough other ways to affirm my competence and to chalk up the rest of it to a profession that was not quite ready at the time for the likes of me or other women lawyers.
Flash forward now to a recent scene in a Colorado appellate court when a state prosecutor was asked a question by a female member of a three-judge panel and responded by addressing the judge as “honey.” The footage from the courtroom camera, which is included in the Above the Law report, shows the prosecutor so rattled that he barely could continue with his argument. At least it was clear that his error was not intentional. That is the good news.
The bad news, of course, is that it happened at all, and I am sure that most of you reading this are outraged. And I am outraged too, but I have to admit that I also am somewhat pleased. I am pleased because there are so many women judges today that an offense like this is even able to happen. In my experience, it was only the women attorneys who suffered being referred to as “honey,” but now we have advanced far enough to have women judges on benches throughout the country deciding cases litigated by male lawyers. And it is happening again.
What a wonderful reversal of power.