THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:
THIS POST IS DIRECTED TO ALL OF OUR WOMEN LAWYERS .....
Nearly fifty years ago on a famous episode of All in the Family* called "Gloria and the Riddle," (Season 3, Episode 4),
To watch the episode, click here
Gloria posed a riddle to Archie, Edith and Meathead.
The setup:
A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies immediately, but the son gets taken to the hospital for surgery. Once in the operating room, the surgeon takes one look at the boy and says: "I can’t operate on him. He’s my son."
The riddle: Who is the surgeon?
The answer might be obvious to us now, but on All in the Family most of the characters – particularly the men – had trouble figuring out that the surgeon was actually the boy’s mother.
Fast forward to 2022, and this week, Fourth DCA Judge Martha Warner made news with her Dissent in J.S. v. Department of Children and Families, and Guardian Ad Litem. 4D21-1923. (Credit: Daily Business Review).
The opinion centered around an attorney who had used the wrong pronoun when referencing one of Warner’s dissents in a motion for rehearing, calling her a “he” instead of a “she.” In her Dissent, Warner stated that it “reveals the tenacious grip that the male image has in the legal profession to the detriment of women who have joined the profession in droves since I began practicing 48 years ago.”
The Motion filed by attorney Thomas Butler stated: “Warner, J. opined he would hold that § 39.806(1)(f) is unconstitutional … ,” according to the dissent, which said “he” was repeated twice and was therefore unlikely to be a typo.
“It still is an issue that women are mistaken for court reporters or paralegals by both judges and lawyers,” Warner wrote. “No man would suffer that same misidentification, which relegates the woman to a less important role.” Werner went on to say: “We all need to be cognizant and remove from our thinking the male-centric image of lawyers and judges. It is not hard, but it requires raising one’s consciousness of the issue. ... “And it is somewhat of a surprise that it has persisted for so long. After all, the iconic figure holding the scales of justice is a lady.”
The Captain admits that he is a male and that he has therefore never experienced this problem as related to by Judge Warner; (we can all relate to being home-towned when us Mia-mah lawyers cross North of the Border into Broweird and other courts further to the North.
The DBR story went on to quote other female lawyers who have regularly been mistaken as "court reporters, administrative staff, or any other role in legal proceedings other than licensed advocates [which] is pervasive in legal culture to this day."
But we wanted to ask our female barristers about their experiences as described by Judge Warner. Please share your thoughts ... and experiences.
*All in the Family was a comedy TV show that ran from 1971-1979 and is still ranked to this day as one of the top ten TV Sitcoms of all time. (IMBD #4; Rolling Stone #5).
Captain4Justice@gmail.com