On February 11

On this day in ...
... 1847 (165 years ago today), Ada Harriet Miser was born in Somerset, Ohio. The family eventually moved to St. Louis, and in 1867, she married a lawyer whose practice was in Effingham, a town in south. Ada H. Kepley (right) 1st worked as her husband's legal assistant; then, with his encouragement, she journeyed 200 miles north to study in Chicago, at what today is known as Northwestern University School of Law (coincidentally, also this 'Grrl's law alma mater). In 1870, she became the 1st woman in the United States to receive a law degree (she'd also later earn a Ph.D. at an Effingham college). Faced with a legal bar to practicing law (the same one that an IntLawGrrls foremother, Myra Bradwell, eventually would overturn), Kepley became active in temperance and women's suffrage movements, running as the Prohibition Party's candidate for state Attorney General in 1861. (credit for circa 1893 photo) Following the death of her husband in 1906, she tried to support herself by writing and farming. One result was her autobiography, A Farm Philosopher: A Love Story (1912). She "died a charity case" in 1925.

(Prior February 11 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Guest Blogger: Afra Afsharipour

It's a great pleasure to welcome my colleague, Afra Afsharipour (left), as today's guest blogger.

An Acting Professor of Law here at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, Afra's scholarship and teaching focus on the areas of comparative corporate law, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, mergers and acquisitions, and securities regulation. She posted on these issues here, during a recent guest stint at The Conglomerate Blog: Business, Law, Economics & Society. In her IntLawGrrls guest post below, Afra discusses her forthcoming article on the role of law in encouraging the expansion of Indian multinationals and their acquisition of companies in developed countries.
Before entering academia, she was an associate in the corporate department of Davis Polk & Wardwell, advising clients on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, and corporate governance and compliance. She also served as a law clerk to Judge Rosemary Barkett, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Afra earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was an articles editor of the Columbia Law Review and a submissions editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and her her B.A. degree magna cum laude from Cornell University, where she studied government, international relations and women's studies. She was a Board Member for the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation from 2000 to 2008.

At California-Davis, Afra serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Comparative Law, as a member of the Faculty Council of our California International Law Center at King Hall, and as advisor the March 2010 Business Law Journal symposium on "Technology Transactions in a Post-Economic Crisis Economy."

Dedicating her post to Myra Bradwell (below right), Afra writes:

I became interested in her when I was a student at Columbia Law. The Columbia Law Women's Association held an annual dinner (which continues to this day) in honor of Myra Bradwell. There are many books and articles about Bradwell's courageous activism and fight to be admitted to the Illinois bar. Her struggle to win the right to be a lawyer, as well as her activism on behalf of women's rights generally, helped lay the foundation for 20th century women's rights activists. Personally, the Myra Bradwell dinner that I attended really inspired me during my first year of law school, so much so that I became heavily involved with both the Columbia Law Women's Association (serving as President in my second year) as well as the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.

Bradwell joins other foremothers in IntLawGrrls' list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

On April 15

On this day in ...
... 1873 (135 years ago today), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Bradwell v. Illinois that Illinois had not violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by refusing to admit Myra Bradwell to the state bar for the reason that she was a married woman. (Bradwell, left, had read law with her husband, Judge James Bradwell, and had passed the bar examination). Justice Joseph P. Bradley elaborated:

The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign office of wife and mother.

The state relented long afterward, so that in 1892 Bradwell became the first woman lawyer in Illinois.
... 1923 (85 years ago today), insulin became available for general use to treat persons afflicted with diabetes. The utility of insulin, a natural hormone that aids humans' metabolism for carbohydrates, had been discovered a year earlier by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in the laboratory at right at Canada's University of Toronto. As one with generations of ancestors who've endured diabetes, I mark this anniversary with special gratitude.

Puzzler Solved

Answers to Pedestal Puzzler above:
(a) Who said it?
(1) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley.
(2) Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
(b) What century?
(1) Bradley wrote in the 19th century -- concurring in the Court's 1873 endorsement, in Bradwell v. Illinois, of a state's refusal to admit a qualified woman applicant, Myra Bradwell, to the bar.
(2) Qaddafi echoed him in the 21st century -- just two days ago, at a press conference called to prove "that Libya's form of government was the truest democracy."
'Nuff said.