In correlation with the exhibition Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, join Holocaust Museum Houston for a book talk with the authors of Shortlisted, Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson.
In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court after centuries of male appointments, a watershed moment in the long struggle for gender equality. Yet few know about the remarkable women considered in the decades before her triumph.
Shortlisted tells the overlooked stories of nine extraordinary women—a cohort large enough to seat the entire Supreme Court—who appeared on presidential lists dating back to the 1930s. Florence Allen, the first female judge on the highest court in Ohio, was named repeatedly in those early years. Eight more followed, including Amalya Kearse, a federal appellate judge who was the first African American woman viewed as a potential Supreme Court nominee. Award-winning scholars Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson cleverly weave together long-forgotten materials from presidential libraries and private archives to reveal the professional and personal lives of these accomplished women.
In addition to filling a notable historical gap, the book exposes the harms of shortlisting―it reveals how adding qualified female candidates to a list but passing over them ultimately creates the appearance of diversity while preserving the status quo. This phenomenon often occurs with any pursuit of professional advancement, whether the judge in the courtroom, the CEO in the corner office, or the coach on the playing field. Women, and especially female minorities, while as qualified as others on the shortlist (if not more so), find themselves far less likely to be chosen. With the stories of these nine exemplary women as a framework, Shortlisted offers all women a valuable set of strategies for upending the injustices that still endure. It is a must-read for those seeking positions of power as well as for the powerful who select them in the legal profession and beyond.
Renee Knake Jefferson is the Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and a Professor of Law at the University of Houston. An author of four books and more than 20 academic articles, she frequently appears in the media including MSNBC, National Public Radio, and the Wall Street Journal.
Hannah Brenner Johnson is the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at California Western School of Law. Her research interests surround sexual violence perpetrated in institutions and closed systems, and gender inequality in the legal profession.
Special thanks to PNC Bank for generously supporting the Museum’s Notorious RBG Lecture and Film Series. The event will be hosted in person. Admission is free and open to the public, but registration is required.