From the handful who guided the movement and helped change antiquated laws, to the thousands who continued that work and challenged the profession. Join Veteran Feminists of America for a Salute to Feminist Lawyers: 1963-75. June 9, 2008 at the Harvard Club in New York City. Featuring a special tribute to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Honoree Profile: Barbara Babcock

Barbara Allen Babcock graduated from Yale Law School in 1963 and clerked for Judge Henry Edgerton on the DC Circuit, the first federal judge to hire a woman clerk.

After a few years with Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, Babcock joined the Legal Aid Agency, a pilot project designed to implement the Gideon decision guaranteeing the right to free counsel for the indigent accused. Under her leadership, the agency became the Public Defender Service, a model for the delivery of defense services.

In the early 70s Babcock taught the first courses on Women and the Law at Georgetown and at Yale. She became the first woman on the regular faculty at Stanford in 1972 and taught the first course in sex discrimination there, as well as starting a clinical program with Equal Rights Advocates, a women's law firm in San Francisco. She was co-author of an early text entitled Sex Discrimination and the Law: Causes and Remedies (with Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ann Freedman, and Susan Dellar Ross on the first edition).

On leave from Stanford, Babcock served in the Carter Administration as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division. In that capacity, she was in charge of identifying and aiding potential women federal judges. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the candidates she successfully promoted for a job on the DC Circuit. Babcock is currently the Judge John Crown Professor of Law, emerita, and teaches a seminar on women's legal history at Stanford.

She is writing the biography of the first woman lawyer on the Pacific Coast,Clara Foltz, who was also the founder of the public defender movement.

Her award-winning website has many articles about pioneer women lawyers by Babcock and her students.

Babcock credits the feminist movement with much of her success. Whenever she is asked how she feels about being chosen because she is a woman, she says: "It's far better than not getting the job because I'm a woman."

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