Description:
This book tells the spectacular history of women lawyers at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). SDNY is a storied institution, the oldest federal prosecutor's office in the United States and its most renowned--and a critical player in New York City's high-stakes legal arena. But its history has been only sparsely written about, and this is the first book to share the riveting account of how SDNY's doors came to open to women lawyers. Remarkably, SDNY hired women lawyers far earlier than the Wall Street firms and other elite legal institutions. This book explores why that was. It begins in 1906 with Henry Stimson's hiring of Mary Grace Quackenbos, the very first woman to hold an Assistant title anywhere in the Department of Justice. It continues with the SDNY women lawyers who intrepidly entered the arena throughout the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II, and who overcame the strict social conformities of the 1950s, when women who entered the law were seen as social "deviants." It tells the previously untold full story of how women challenged the SDNY blockade of the 1960s that prevented them from serving as criminal prosecutors. And it culminates in the 1970s--when that blockade came down and the door to women's entry was irrevocably blown off the hinges. Those SDNY women of the 70s went on to transform the bench and bar. Throughout, this book dissects and examines the close connection between SDNY's hiring of women and its legacy of nonpartisan leadership, which is what drove SDNY's emergence as an important American institution in the twentieth century and beyond.
Published by the Feerick Center for Social Justice of Fordham Law SchoolBrief description: Lisa Zornberg is a partner at the law firm of Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello PC in New York City. She formerly served as Chief of the Criminal Division at the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief Counsel to the mayor of New York City.
Review Quotes: Lisa Zornberg's Entering the Arena provides a masterclass in blending meticulous research with sharp wit to tell the definitive history of women lawyers in the Southern District of New York--a history that, until now, had gone largely unreported. With her unique perspective as the third-ever female Criminal Division Chief at SDNY, Lisa shines a long-overdue spotlight on the women who shaped our country's most powerful U.S Attorneys' Office. The gripping stories of grit, determination and dedication of women AUSAs from Mary Grace Quackenbos to Pat Hynes and Shirah Neiman (and all of those in between) to "do the right thing for the right reasons"--an oft-repeated mantra of SDNY prosecutors--deepens and enriches our understanding of a federal prosecutor's office that has occupied an unrivaled place in our nation's legal history since its founding almost 100 years before the creation of the U.S. Department of Justice itself. A must read not only for lawyers but for anyone interested in women's history.---Tatiana Martins, Partner at Davis, Polk & Wardwell and former chief of SDNY Public Corruption Unit