* inform authorities that the international community will be closely monitoring progress on the judicial investigation into the killing of Digna Ochoa to ensure that the investigation is conducted in accordance with principles stipulated in international human rights standards, to ensure those responsible are brought to justice, and that comprehensive steps are taken to end attacks and harassment of human rights defenders in Mexico.
President of the Republic Vicente Fox Quesada Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos Residencia Oficial de "Los Pinos"Col. San Miguel ChapultepecMéxico D.F., C.P. 11850, MÉXICOFax: +52 5522 4117 (confirm on tel. 5522 7600) / 5516 9537
Attorney General of the Republic General Rafael Marcial Macedo de la ConchaProcurador General de la Republica Procuraduría General de la República Reforma Norte esq.Violeta 75Col. Guerrero, Delegación Cuauhtémoc México D.F., C.P. 06300, MEXICO Fax:(+52 5) 346 0983 / 626 4419 / 346 0906 / 626 4426 / 346 2776
Attorney General of the Federal District Mtro. Bernardo Bátiz VázquezProcurador General del Distrito FederalGabriel Hernández # 56, 5º piso, col. Doctores,México D.F. 06720, MÉXICO Faxes: (+52 5) 345 5529
By Tracy L. Prosser, Law Clerk to the Hon. J. Phil Gilbert, United District Court for the Southern District of Illinois
"Can girls be judges?" This question was not uttered decades or even centuries ago but within the past several months by the nine-year-old daughter of newly appointed appellate court Justice Melissa Chapman Rheinecker. The answer is "yes" and has been in the Fifth District of the Illinois Appellate Court since 1979 when the Honorable Dorothy Wilbourn Spomer was appointed the first woman appellate justice to serve in that district. Twenty-two years later, in September 2001, Justice Chapman became the second.
In the discussion with her daughter, Justice Chapman learned that her daughter believed that there were some jobs that women just couldn't do. Although "girls can be judges," Justice Chapman was abruptly reminded that perception is reality, and that if young girls believe that their opportunities are limited, they are. "If our society creates the impression of gender restrictions, those restrictions are real," she noted.
Perhaps it was Justice Spomer's and Justice Chapman's refusal to believe that they were limited by their gender that allowed them to be the remarkable women they are. Both women grew up in families with attorney fathers who encouraged them in their professional life and expected them to succeed in a field traditionally dominated by men. Both women exhibit a resolve to make their worth known in the legal profession undaunted by the obstacle of society's gender expectations. Both women achieved their success by hard work, perseverance and a willingness to "do what had to be done" without complaint or self-pity.
The district's first woman judge
Justice Spomer was born and raised in Cairo, Illinois. The daughter of Alexander County attorney and one-time Alexander County Judge Asa J. Wilbourn, she began her forays into the legal workplace as a small child when, on her way home from school, she would stop by her father's law office to play with the typewriter. As early as fourth grade, she knew that she wanted to become a lawyer.
From the fall of 1938 to the summer of 1943, Justice Spomer attended the University of Illinois year-round. She was on a yearly scholarship and wanted to get the most out of her award, so time off from studies was a forbidden luxury. She earned a B.S. from the university's commerce school and a J.D. from the law school.
In law school, Justice Spomer concentrated on her studies. Her extra-curricular activities were limited to her job in the law library and sharing household chores with the six other women she lived with in a pair of apartments. Although there were only four or five other women in her law school class, she didn't feel like very much of a ground-breaker for women's rights. "I just did what was necessary to become a lawyer," she said resolutely, apparently oblivious to the extraordinary role she and her classmates played for women attorneys in the decades to come.
While working in the law library at the University of Illinois, she met Wally Spomer, her future husband, a law student from the University of Nebraska, then in the military service. They had a couple of "Coke" dates, and he was transferred to Queens College to prepare to be a German interpreter. She finished law school and returned to Cairo. On his last leave, Wally Spomer visited Cairo to meet Justice Spomer's parents and asked her to marry him. Justice Spomer waited until the night before she and Wally Spomer were to elope to New Orleans to tell her father, who then asked, "Are you going to be a lawyer or a wife?" She answered, "Both!" They were married in 1944, and Wally Spomer left for World War II shortly thereafter. Justice Spomer remained at home to practice law with her father, determined to be a lawyer and a wife. After he was discharged from the military, Wally Spomer also got his law degree from the University of Illinois and practiced law in Cairo until his retirement.
At age 22, when Justice Spomer joined her father's law firm, she recalls the confidence she had, fresh from law school, that she must know so much more than her father. However, she also recalls with humility the short month it took to change her mind; she soon realized that she would never know as much about practicing law as he did.
An auspicious beginning
Her father gave her unparalleled opportunities. Her first assignment after being admitted to the bar was to argue before the Illinois Supreme Court. She spent countless hours preparing, reading the law until she could just about quote her supporting cases word for word. When she got up to argue, she poured herself a glass of water, shaking so much that she could hardly get the water in the glass. Her father later told her he saw her nervousness and was thinking, "What have I done to her?" She won the argument.
Seven years later, in 1950, Justice Spomer set out to become the County Judge of Alexander County. Unfortunately, her father didn't get to see her elected. He had a heart attack and passed away the night before the primary, in which Justice Spomer was running uncontested. Justice Spomer won the election and was reelected four times despite opposition. After that, by virtue of the Judicial Amendment in the State of Illinois, she became a Circuit Judge and was retained in office by large majorities until she retired in 1977.
In her twenty-seven years as a county or circuit judge, Justice Spomer saw Alexander County and its county seat of Cairo through times marked by radical legal and social changes and extreme racial tension. She was one of the defendants in a lawsuit that eventually was heard by the United States Supreme Court, O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488 (1974). In that case, nineteen Cairo residents alleged racially discriminatory bond-setting, sentencing and jury fee practices in criminal cases. The case was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. At times it was scary to be involved in such racial conflicts, Justice Spomer reflected, but always vigilant in her intolerance for racism, she continued to uphold her judicial duties with impartiality.
In 1979, her retirement was disturbed by a phone call from Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph H. Goldenhersh asking her if she would accept a one-year appointment to finish the term of retiring Fifth District Appellate Court Justice Peyton H. Kunce. Justice Spomer talked with her husband and three children about it, then accepted the appointment. She was happy to be asked to take the office and was happy that she was in a position where she could accept the appointment. Her family was supportive, and her husband even drove her to the Mount Vernon, Illinois, courthouse for her first appellate court session. For Justice Spomer, back to the bench meant back to the books. Her days as an appellate justice pre-dated computer-assisted legal research and were, therefore, filled with long visits to the Southern Illinois University law school library in Carbondale, Illinois, preparing for the cases she would hear.
As a woman appellate justice, Justice Spomer did feel like a ground-breaker. Despite being the first woman to serve on the Fifth District bench, she believed that her male colleagues respected her and developed a camaraderie with her. "Women belong on the appellate bench," she said. "It's important for them to share their point of view with their men colleagues." She considers the recognition of women as capable judges and lawyers as one of the most important changes in the law since she entered the field.
Justice Spomer did not run for election when her term was over and retired once again in 1980. This time it stuck. Now eighty years old, she still lives in Cairo, Illinois, where she cares for her husband and has coffee with her son, Circuit Court Judge Stephen Spomer, every morning she can.
When asked if she had to make sacrifices for her success, she admitted: "It was a man's world, and I just had to accept that fact. You just do what you have to do in order to do the job and do it well." She attributes her success to hard work and resolution to do what has to be done.
Twenty-two years later: a second woman takes the bench
Justice Chapman follows ably in Justice Spomer's judicial footsteps. She was born in Granite City, Illinois, also the daughter of an attorney, Morris B. Chapman. At one point in his career, her father took time off from his law practice to be a missionary. As a result, Justice Chapman spent a part of her youth in Guatemala, where she learned to speak Spanish fluently. As a child, Justice Chapman thought her father's practice of law was exciting one that she might want to try, too, because it seemed like it would afford her independence and autonomy over her life.
Despite early dreams of being a lawyer, Justice Chapman took a detour through the world of counseling. She began her college education at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, Mexico, but returned to the United States to complete her counseling studies at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. In 1974, she received her B.A. in psychology and Spanish, and in 1975 she received her M.A. in counselor education and began working as a counselor. She still toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer but thought she needed more maturity before tackling that goal. "I didn't have the gumption that Justice Spomer did," she admitted.
In 1974, she married Philip J. Rheinecker, a writer and editor. Five years later, in 1980, with her husband's strong support, she found the gumption to go to law school. She decided to go to St. Louis University School of Law even though it meant she would have a long-distance marriage for several years because her husband was in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Justice Chapman estimates that approximately one-fifth of her law school classmates were women, a huge growth from Justice Spomer's law school days, but she never took a course from a woman law school professor. Like Justice Spomer, Justice Chapman didn't feel like she was breaking any ground because of her gender in law school, but she does recall that some of the professors seemed to resent her presence in the class as if she were taking up a seat that should have been occupied by a man.
When she graduated in 1983, Justice Chapman went to work in her father's law firm, Morris B. Chapman and Associates, which focuses on personal injury lawsuits. Like Justice Spomer, Justice Chapman had extraordinary opportunities to learn the practice of law under her father's guidance. Research-oriented by nature, Justice Chapman credits her father for teaching her the realities of law practice beyond the books. She believes her father is an extremely talented litigator and has learned many of her lawyering skills from him, including never to take a position in the courtroom without law to back it up. Working with him, she was able quickly to enter the courtroom and learn from the real experience of litigating. Justice Chapman notes, however, that she has a different style of trying cases than her father and her other male cohorts. She believes that a litigation strategy that considers the difference in male and female viewpoints and approaches can make for a better outcome in the long run. Justice Chapman continued to practice with her father for eighteen years until she took the bench.
Justice Chapman believes that the time she spent in counseling has made her a better lawyer. In fact, she believes that her counseling experience complements her legal training by helping her understand the people involved in her cases. "I enjoy analyzing a case from an angle that includes the psychological perspective. I like to ask myself what jurors and witnesses are really thinking," she said. In addition, the time she lived abroad has also given her a broad life experience that allows her to have an open way of seeing things.
Previous appointments gave this justice a variety of perspectives on the law
In the eighteen years that Justice Chapman was in private practice, she had many accomplishments. For example, in 1997 she became the first woman on the Illinois Supreme Court's Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission Review Board. She relates with disappointment that she saw a decline in attorneys' civility toward each other during her tenure on the board and throughout her legal career. She believes that the prevailing approach in the legal field is becoming a "win at any cost" approach that is accompanied by a disregard for politeness and courtesy.
Justice Chapman also serves on the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions in Civil Cases, which drafts and edits Illinois pattern civil jury instructions, and was involved in starting "People's Court," a course through Southwestern Illinois College, formerly called Belleville Area College, at the Granite City, Illinois campus. That program aims to create a positive public awareness of the court system by walking course participants though a case and all of the practical steps involved in bringing the case to a final resolution.
Justice Chapman was elated to be appointed to the Fifth District bench earlier this year. She views her appointment as an opportunity to get back to the books after trial work and to be more analytical about the law, which she believes is in line with her nature as "bookish" person who likes to work independently. With awe, she recalls touring the Fifth District courthouse, a magnificent pre-Civil War building that includes living and working quarters for the justices. She describes the stately building in which Abraham Lincoln once argued a case as a very humbling place.
She looks forward to being the only woman currently on the Fifth District bench. She notes that in her eighteen years as a litigator, she did not have a single case in front of a female Illinois circuit court, appellate court or federal court judge. "It's time for a woman on the court--it's past time--and the court has been very supportive of me," she says. Like Justice Spomer, she believes that the appellate bench needs a woman's point of view, which can often be different from a man's point of view but which does not necessarily result in a different outcome. She looks forward to contributing one of the various points of view that makes for a healthy balance on the court.
In looking back on her career thus far, Justice Chapman wishes that she had had a woman attorney mentor, although she didn't really think about it in her early days of practicing law, when there were not many female attorney role models. She recalls that occasionally she sensed from her male colleagues that she was not welcome, and she would have appreciated learning of other women's experiences in similar situations. In response to sometimes unwelcoming attitudes, she learned to toughen up, to act like "one of the boys," and to pick her battles over the big issues. "I would like to see that change," she said, "so that female attorneys can be successful without having to act like male attorneys."
Justice Chapman attributes her success in large part to her ability to persevere. She describes herself as very goal-oriented, deciding what she wants and going after it. She offers very practical advice to other women attorneys: accept who you are and what you are and adjust the best way you can.
Being a successful professional and mom is a juggling act, Justice Chapman laments, with many problems springing from women's self-imposed expectations. "Women of my generation feel the need to be successful in a way that women of other generations don't," she noted. These women have more fulfilling careers, she believes, but expect more of themselves as well. "There will always be problems until society accepts and accommodates dual careers," she noted. In the meantime, she appreciates the support of her husband, who firmly believes that they can both succeed in their professions, and her two children, who are understanding when she cannot spend as much time with them as she would like to.
Women attorneys in Illinois, especially those within the Fifth District, can be proud of the contributions that Justice Spomer and Justice Chapman have made and continue to make to the integrity of the bench and to the legal profession. Take note and teach your children well that "girls can be judges."
By Sheila J. Simon, Assistant Professor for Lawyering Skills, Southern Illinois University School of Law
A few lucky attorneys learned about interviewing in law school, and a few more learned by watching more senior attorneys on the job. Continuing legal education (CLE) courses update us on changing laws, but when did you last receive a mailing about a seminar on client interview skills? Most attorneys learn to interview clients the hard way--by doing it.
Elaine Lawless's book, Women Escaping Violence: Empowerment Through Narrative (Missouri Press 2001) can serve as a quick CLE on the challenges of interviewing survivors of domestic violence. Lawless asserts that the act of telling and retelling a story is an important way for the victim to claim her role as a survivor.
Lawless is a professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a student of folklore. She prepared this book by speaking with women in domestic violence shelters in Missouri. She taped the conversations, and four stories are reprinted verbatim at the end of the book. The bulk of the book is an assessment of the importance of these stories to the women's lives.
As an attorney who has represented victims of domestic violence and prosecuted batterers, I began reading the book with confidence that I had done a good job. I worked hard at establishing a rapport with victims, and I tried to understand the pressures they felt. In a field where success cannot be easily measured by orders obtained or conviction percentages, I felt that I had done well.
After reading this book, however, I would add an extra item to my case closing evaluation checklist: Did I let the victim tell me what was important to her? An interview with a victim has to have a focus, whether it is obtaining an order of protection or prosecuting an abuser. And in an emergency situation, there is time to do only the essentials. But often we do have the time to hear what the victim wants to say. Looking back, I have missed opportunities for victims to tell me the whole story. Knowing that the more powerful evidence will be about the physical contact, I have cut short discussions of what victims sometimes call "mental abuse." I have frequently told a victim, "I understand that the insults hurt you, but the judge will want to know more about the physical violence." It could be that some of the storytelling is significant enough to the client that it should be included in a direct exam, even if the impact would be slim.
If you practice in the area of domestic violence and have the luxury of time to read a book, consider Women Escaping Violence. The result may be interviews that are a bit longer, and clients that are a bit stronger.
The Illinois Equal Justice Foundation: promoting access to justice for the people of Illinois
By Ruth Ann Schmitt, Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois, Chicago
We know that women with children bear the brunt of poverty's effects. We know that too many women face desperate economic and family problems and have no idea where to turn. We also know that in many cases, the law can be a powerful tool on their behalf, offering women protection from physical, emotional and economic abuse.
For the first time in history, the State of Illinois has committed general revenue funds to support legal aid programs and other not-for-profit initiatives that make our legal system accessible to Illinois residents with modest incomes. Many of these initiatives, which tackle issues such as domestic violence and consumer protection of the elderly, make critical differences in the lives of lower-income Illinois women every day.
The conduit for this state funding is the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, a twelve-member body appointed by the Illinois State and Chicago Bar Associations. Created pursuant to the Illinois Equal Justice Act, 30 ILCS 765/1 et. seq., the Foundation is both a model of cooperation between the two bar associations and a model of public/private collaboration.
The Act, which was passed with overwhelming legislative support in 1999, affirmed that "[e]qual justice is a basic right that is fundamental to democracy in this state, and the integrity of . . . this state's justice system depends on protecting and enforcing the rights of all people." Governor George Ryan echoed these sentiments in his annual budget message to the General Assembly and included $500,000 in funding for the Foundation in his FY 2001 budget for the Illinois Department of Human Services.
The Foundation's goals
Chaired by Michael A. Pope of McDermott Will & Emery in Chicago, the Foundation is a not-for-profit organization designed to increase access to legal information and assistance in Illinois by distributing funds to other worthy not-for-profit organizations throughout the state. The Foundation's grant-making goals are guided by the forward-thinking purposes set forth in the Illinois Equal Justice Act. These purposes envision a continuum of strategies to help people use the legal system appropriately, with an emphasis on solving problems in an expeditious and cost-effective manner. The specific strategies include:
* Legal information and self-help materials in courthouses, libraries, or on the Internet.
* Mediation services to help parties resolve disputes without litigation.
* Telephone "hotline" services for information, referral, and basic legal advice.
* Courthouse-based "help desks" to assist parties with specific legal problems; and
* Legal assistance to advise and represent low-income persons in cases that require the services of an attorney.
Working closely with the two bar associations, the directors of the Foundation approved their first grants in January 2001, distributing a total of $476,660 to not-for-profit legal aid programs, mediation centers and telephone hotlines throughout the state. (A complete list of grants appears below.)
The Foundation is extremely important for several reasons. First, it represents an acknowledgment by the State of Illinois that legal services to the poor, like other social services, are a societal responsibility. While lawyers can--and do--provide tremendous support for legal aid through donations and pro bono service, they cannot meet the needs alone.