International Women's Day: the women who have shaped law

Mar 08, 2018

Written By Becky Kells, Editor, AllAboutLaw

Historically, many women have challenged the law, whether by defying odds and becoming legal professionals, or by publically calling for updates to archaic and oppressive legislation. Events of the past year, in particular the #MeToo campaign, reflect the ongoing struggle for women to be safe and accepted in their workplaces. This International Women’s Day, we take a look at just a few of the women who have shaped the legal sector as we know it today.

Penelope Warne
Penelope Warne, the first Senior Partner at CMS, started off her legal career as the only female trainee in her intake. Her influence as a partner within CMS has helped to expand the firm as far afield as Brazil, Mexico and Dubai, as well as managing the growth and consolidation of CMS in Scotland. In 1993, she introduced the CMS name to Aberdeen, recognising that the Scottish city had potential as an energy hub due to its proximity to the North Sea. Warne added a degree in Scots law to her existing credentials, and since then has been at the forefront of the firm’s expansion into Scotland, taking the firm from a single office in Aberdeen to the largest Scottish law firm following its merger with Dundas & Wilson. Last year, she brought Olswang and Nabarro into the CMS fold, in the largest merger in the British legal sector.

At undergraduate and trainee level, the percentage of females entering the legal sector looks much more positive than it has done previously. Focus has switched to the partner and senior partner levels of top firms: while it becomes increasingly easier for women to gain university places and training contracts, the number of women making it to the top spots is disproportionately low.

With this in mind, Penelope Warne – who has always championed diversity and inclusion at CMS – is an inspiration to young female lawyers, and a refreshing thorn in the side of pessimistic partner level statistics. Her career, along with those of the burgeoning group of senior-level female solicitors, demonstrates that change is afoot at the top.

Brenda Hale, Baroness of Richmond
Brenda Hale, Baroness of Richmond is the first woman to preside over the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, as well as the first woman to be admitted to it. Before that, she was the only woman to be appointed a Law Lord within the House of Lords in 2004. Since then, Hale has tirelessly used her position in the senior judiciary to champion the rights of women and to advocate for their prominence in law. Baroness Hale has also enjoyed a rich academic career – when she became a judge at the high court of justice in 1994, she was the first to do so from a background of academic and public service.

Baroness Hale has tirelessly drawn attention to the lack of diversity at the top of the judiciary, using her own experience as an example. Much of Hale’s earlier work is focused on women’s rights – in 1984 she co-authored the first survey of women’s working rights: "Women and the Law?" which unearthed key information about the role of women within working society. When she became a law lord in 2003, she created a coat of arms, with the motto Omina Feminae Aequissimae: “Women are equal to everything", and has called for all judges to be "committed to the principle of equality for all".

In a speech in 2013, Hale said: “In modern Britain’, declared my brother Sumption in his Bar Council Law Reform Lecture last November, ‘the fastest way to make enemies is to deliver a public lecture about judicial diversity.’ so, I must have made a lot of enemies since I first started delivering lectures about it around the turn of the century.” In the same speech, Hale spoke the “uncomfortable truth” that there are "so few women and BME judges, especially in the higher judiciary".

Doreen Lawrence, Baroness of Clarendon
Doreen Lawrence found herself embroiled in the corruption and prejudice of an unforgiving justice system in 1993, when her son, Stephen, was murdered in a racist attack. Baroness Lawrence and her ex-husband, Neville, questioned the conduct of the police who investigated Stephen’s murder, identifying racist behaviour patterns and lapses in professionalism. Prior to her son's murder, Baroness Lawrence never intended to challenge the British justice system – indeed, as a grieving mother, she should never have had to – yet her campaign for a judicial inquiry would eventually bring about results, with the Metropolitan Police deemed “institutionally racist" in a judicial inquiry.

Baroness Lawrence’s work in bringing about police reform has been recognised across the country, in particular when she was appointed OBE in 2003 and Life Peer in 2013. She founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, continuing to campaign on behalf of her son and also to end race crime, whilst working with the Home Office and the Police Service as well as serving as a leading figure in a number of human rights charities.

Baroness Lawrence was failed by the Metropolitan Police, and refused to accept that anyone else should be discriminated against by a service that should be in place to protect them. Her role as a campaigner and challenger to institutionalised racism has allowed for the law to function with more transparency, and for entrenched racism to be exposed and combatted.

Dame Rose Heilbron
Dame Rose Heilbron entered the legal sector at a time when it was dominated by men and governed by sexist ideals. She was educated at Liverpool University, where she achieved a first-class degree, and won a scholarship to Gray’s Inn – the first woman to do so. She would be revered in Liverpool, her hometown, where she successfully defended some of the most notorious criminals of the city, including the gangster George Kelly – in representing Kelly, Dame Heilbron became the first woman to lead a murder case. At 34 years old, Dame Heilbron was appointed to the King’s council, defying those critics who attributed her success as a barrister to the absence of male lawyers due to war.

It was perhaps impossible for a woman to exist in such a male-dominated field, and not become drawn to advancing the rights of women in professions around the world. Dame Heilbron was a member of Soroptimist International, a group devoted to bringing peace to the lives of women and girls worldwide.

Later in her career, Dame Heilbron would rise to prominence in the judiciary, becoming the first female to be appointed a recorder, the first female judge at the Old Bailey and the first woman to act as treasurer of Grays Inn. Her position as a woman within the law sometimes marked her out for unjust criticism – Kelly reportedly said that he wouldn’t be defended by “a Judy” – yet her successful and vibrant career would go on to transform the minds of a misogynistic post-war society.

Gina Miller
Gina Miller, born Gina Nadira Singh in former British Guiana, has lived a varied life. She has lived in both extreme poverty and extreme wealth, in Guiana and in the UK, and has made waves in politics, law, and the City alike. Following her successful legal challenge to the triggering of article 50, Miller was named the most influential black person in the UK. After much vilification by hard Brexit supporters – there was a stage when Miller could not leave her house or take public transport – the legal justice and recognition of her influence are a double success. Miller is not herself a lawyer, coming from a background in investment, but she has consistently fought for transparency in the sectors of which she is a part. She made waves in the legal world following Britain’s vote to leave the EU in 2016.

With a background that isn’t overtly legal or political, Gina Miller was perhaps not the most obvious person to challenge Brexit – but that’s exactly what made her such an effective person to do so. Along with the team she engaged at Mishcon De Reya, Miller argued that the government did not have the legal power to invoke article 50 without first putting the decision to Parliament.

Miller publicised her view that the UK should remain in the EU and take a holistic approach to improving it, but following her legal challenge, she removed her political stance from the argument. Far from attempting to halt Brexit, Miller made it clear that she wanted to combat the lack of transparency in the government, and to challenge the governments archaic use of the royal prerogative in bypassing parliament. Her intentions, she consistently argued, were not rooted in politics, but in law.

In January 2017, the court ruled that the government’s attempt to bypass parliament and trigger article 50 was unlawful. "This case was about process, not politics?", Miller told the press following the ruling. Swiftly, and unjustly, the case would shift away from both, and become solely about Miller. The aftermath of the legal ruling was one peppered with rape and death threats, and online and offline abuse aimed at Miller and her family. In the press, she was called a "foreign-born immigrant", and focus was often placed on a brief modelling stint she completed to fund her studies. Miller had funded the legal challenge herself, but its success came at a much greater expense – her safety. Yet she remained resilient and committed to the cause: “all this has proved, more than anything, is that I have to do this”, she told the Guardian.

Blog