A recent article in Phoenix Woman, “Legal Minds: Queens of the Court,” included 10 women with ties to the College of Law, either as alumni, directing a program or serving as the law school’s namesake.

Writer Jessica Parsons notes that, for the first time in Arizona, a number of women are simultaneously holding some of the highest-ranking positions in the state’s judicial system. At the top of the list is Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch (Class of 1979), an attorney for 31 years and a justice for eight.

“While the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court occurred many years ago, in 1981, only in recent history has the legal profession truly embraced women in leadership roles,” Berch said.

Justice O’Connor, for whom the law school was renamed in 2006, is listed in a sidebar to the article entitled, “A Piece of History. Legal ‘Firsts’ for Women.” Following a storied career in politics and the law, the justice was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, in 2009.

Sarah Buel

The article profiles Sarah M. Buel, the Faculty Director of the College of Law’s new Diane Halle Center for Family Justice. Buel, a former welfare mother and victim of domestic violence, worked full time and went to school at night to obtain her undergraduate degree, then graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School.

The center “epitomizes the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to bring all the pieces together to help victims,” she said, “so they don’t have to go to 32 different agencies around the city hauling three children with no car and no money.”

Other attorneys profiled in the article: Helen Perry Grimwood, the Grimwood Law Firm (Class of 1980), Barbara Rodriguez Mundell, Former Presiding Judge, Maricopa County Superior Court (Class of 1981), Mary Ellen Simonson, Lewis and Roca (Class of 1983), Rosa Mroz, Probate Court Presiding Judge, Maricopa County Superior Court (Class of 1993), Jordan Rose, Rose Law Group (Class of 1996), Carolyn Oberholtzer, Rose Law Group (Class of 2002), and Lauren Elrod, Rose Law Group, (Class of 2004).

To read the full article, click here.