Ruth Ida Abrams (December 26, 1930 – September 12, 2019) was the first female justice of the

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously fu ...

, where she served from 1978 to 2000, and the first female

appellate In law, an appeal is the process in which Legal case, cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of cla ...

justice in

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. Justice Abrams was a graduate of

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

's Class of 1953. She went on to graduate from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

as one of approximately a dozen women in the Class of 1956. She was an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County (MA), where she helped prosecute

Albert DeSalvo Albert Henry DeSalvo (September 3, 1931 – November 25, 1973) was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the " Boston Strangler", a serial killer who ...

, the "Boston Strangler" and also served with the State Attorney General's Office. Justice Abrams also served as special counsel to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and as a Superior Court Judge before then-Governor Michael Dukakis appointed her to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1978, the first woman on the Court. It would be another 19 years before another woman was appointed a justice to the SJC. Serving with distinction, she retired from the court at the age of 70. Among her notable decisions on the court were ones protecting the rights of pregnant women against discrimination in disability insurance, strengthening the rights of divorced women, and a pioneering grant of visitation rights after a breakup to a lesbian who had helped raise her partner’s son. Abrams was born into a Jewish family with a strong legal tradition. Abrams is the daughter of Samuel Abrams, an attorney and

graduate who had the unique distinction of being the first man in America to be graduated from Harvard Law and have both a daughter and a son (George S. Abrams) who also were graduated from the law school. Her other sister was also a lawyer, she had an uncle who was a lawyer who had a son and son-in-law who were lawyers too. Justice Abrams was noted for being a mentor to countless women attorneys, many of whom followed her to the bench. Margaret Marshall, the next female justice of the SJC and later its first female chief justice, cited her for encouraging her to apply for a judgeship. In 1994, when rent control in Massachusetts was repealed, Abrams was living in a rent controlled apartment.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abrams, Ruth 1930 births 2019 deaths 20th-century American Jews Lawyers from Newton, Massachusetts Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Radcliffe College alumni Harvard Law School alumni 20th-century Massachusetts state court judges 20th-century American women judges Massachusetts Superior Court justices

See also

References