Lorna Elizabeth Lockwood (March 24, 1903 – September 23, 1977) was an American lawyer and judge who served as justice (and at times chief justice) of the

Arizona Supreme Court The Arizona Supreme Court is the state supreme court of the U.S. state of Arizona. Sitting in the Supreme Court building in downtown Phoenix, the court consists of a chief justice, a vice chief justice, and five associate justices. Each justi ...

. Born in what was then

Arizona Territory The Territory of Arizona, commonly known as the Arizona Territory, was a territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863, until February 14, 1912, when the remaining extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the ...

, Lockwood was the daughter of Alfred Collins Lockwood, who later served as chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. Lockwood attended the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

and the University of Arizona College of Law before entering private practice and serving several terms in the

Arizona House of Representatives The Arizona House of Representatives is the lower house of the Arizona Legislature, the state legislature (United States), state legislature of the U.S. state of Arizona. The upper house is the Arizona Senate, Senate. The House convenes in the le ...

. Lockwood spent a decade on the bench of the Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County, the first woman to serve in that role. In 1960, Lockwood was elected to the Arizona Supreme Court. She served as chief justice from 1965 to 1966 and 1970 to 1971, becoming the first female chief justice of a state supreme court in the United States. She retired from the court in 1975 and died two years later.

Early life and education

Lockwood was born on March 24, 1903, in Douglas,

, a mining town, to Daisy Maude Lincoln and Alfred Collins Lockwood.VanderMeer, p. 191. She was the grandniece of

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...

. Her father was an attorney and later chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. In 1913, the family moved to Tombstone and Lorna graduated from Tombstone High School in 1920. Lockwood received her B.A. in Spanish from the

in Tucson in 1923. Her father joined her in meeting with the dean of the law school, and she was permitted to attend some law courses as an undergraduate. She continued to earn her J.D. from the University of Arizona College of Law in 1925. Lockwood was the only woman in her law-school class and the second woman to ever attend the school. She was elected president of the student bar association.

Legal and judicial career

Lockwood passed the Arizona State Bar. As she could not find work as a lawyer at first, she worked as a clerk and secretary for her father and then at a large firm. In 1939, she established the firm Lockwood & Savage with Loretta Savage Whitney in 1939. The two practiced together until 1942, when Lockwood began practicing with her brother-in-law, Z. Simpson Cox, and her father, who had by that time lost his campaign for reelection to the Arizona Supreme Court. Lockwood became the president of the Democratic Women's Club. In 1929, she became a member of the Democratic State Committee executive council. In 1938, Lockwood was recruited by the Business and Professional Women's Club to run for the

. Lockwood won election and in 1940 won reelection.VanderMeer, p. 192. In 1942, Lockwood served as assistant to U.S. Representative John R. Murdock of Arizona. In 1944, Lockwood returned to Phoenix, Arizona, to assist the war effort as district price attorney for the Office of Price Administration. In 1945, she joined her father in a private firm.Ross, W. (2000, February). Lockwood, Lorna Elizabeth (1903-1977), state supreme court justice. ''American National Biography.'' Retrieved 2 Dec. 2023. In 1946, after the end of World War II, Lockwood was returned to the Arizona House of Representative and became chair of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the House Rules Committee.VanderMeer, p. 191. In 1947, Phoenix Mayor Ray Busey appointed Lockwood to the Charter Revision Committee, an important local post. In 1949, Lockwood left private practice to become assistant attorney general for Arizona, overseeing the state welfare department. In 1950, Lockwood was elected a judge for the Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County, the first woman to sit on the bench in that court. She served as the county's juvenile court judge from 1954 through 1957 before returning to the general county bench for the following three years. In 1960, Lockwood challenged an incumbent justice of the

. Lockwood campaigned around the state, traveling by airplane piloted by Virginia Hash, a fellow attorney. Lockwood was unanimously elected as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1965 to 1966 and again from 1970 to 1971. She was the first woman to become chief justice of a state supreme court. Lockwood wrote several important opinions, a number of which expanded women's legal rights and consumer protection. She believed that her most significant opinion was the 1973 ''Shirley v. Superior Court'', which upheld the right of a Native American who lived on a reservation to hold political office in his county. Phoenix-Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery-Lorna E

Phoenix-Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery-Lorna E

In 1965 and 1967, when vacancies occurred on the U.S. Supreme Court, Senator Carl Hayden recommended her nomination to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Lockwood would have become the first woman and the first Arizonan to serve on the Court, but she did not receive a nomination. (The first woman appointed to the Court later became then-Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, who was appointed in 1981).

Civic work

Lockwood held office in the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs. Lockwood founded the Arizona Big Brothers Big Sisters and Florence Crittenton’s Girls Ranch.

Death and legacy

Lockwood retired from the court in 1975. She died of complications of pneumonia on September 23, 1977, at Phoenix's Good Samaritan Hospital. The urn which holds her cremated remains is located in the Greenwood/Memory Lawn Mortuary & Cemetery south

columbarium A columbarium (; pl. columbaria), also called a cinerarium, is a structure for the reverential and usually public storage of funerary urns holding cremated remains of the dead. The term comes from the Latin ''columba'' (dove) and originally solel ...

, niche #113.VanderMeer, pp. 192–93. After Lockwood's death, a group of female lawyers created the Lorna Lockwood Traveling Trophy. The trophy was a Barbie in a judge's robe with a plaque with the names of Phoenix women who joined the judiciary. When Sandra Day O'Connor joined the Supreme Court, the trophy was retired and given to Justice O'Connor. Lockwood was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 1981. In 2012, Sonja White David published ''Lady Law,'' a biography of Lockwood. This book was an Arizona Historical Advisory Commission Centennial Legacy Project.Mesa author praised for lockwood book. (2013, Mar 29). ''Arizona Republic.''

Notes

References

* Philip R. VanderMeer, "Lockwood, Lorna C (1903–1977)." in ''Encyclopedia of Women in the American West'' (eds. Gordon Moris Bakken & Brenda Farrington: SAGE, 2003), pp. 190–93.

External links

Lorna Lockwood at Women's Legal History Biography Project
at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Lorna Elizabeth Lockwood: In Pursuit of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court Nomination

Lorna Lockwood
at Arizona Women's Heritage Trail {{DEFAULTSORT:Lockwood, Lorna 1903 births 1977 deaths Chief justices of the Arizona Supreme Court Members of the Arizona House of Representatives People from Douglas, Arizona Women chief justices of state supreme courts in the United States Women state legislators in Arizona 20th-century American judges 20th-century American women politicians Justices of the Arizona Supreme Court 20th-century American women judges 20th-century members of the Arizona State Legislature