President Rodin, Dean Fitts, faculty, students and friends of the University of Pennsylvania. It is a great treat to be here today as you celebrate the 150th birthday of this Law School. I am particularly pleased because the Law School is even older than I am. 
This law school has not only a long, but an interesting history. The very first law professor here was one of the framers of our Constitution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court — no less than James Wilson. Fifteen young men attended his lectures and several attained high office in time. A former Penn Law School Dean, Owen Roberts, assumed his post here after his resignation from the United States Supreme Court bench in 1945, where he was known as “the vote in time who saved nine.” Another Dean, William Draper Lewis, became the first Director of the American Law Institute and began the work on the Restatement of the Common Law from that position. This university and its law school have played a very important role
in the progress of women in this country from the 19th Century right up
to today. Today you have as the University President a dynamic woman leader,
Judith Rodin. She is among only a handful of women who have served as
President of a major university in this country. She is opening many doors
to women in the field of education. The first woman law school graduate
in the United States attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Her name was Carrie Burnham. She applied to the law department in 1870
and was rejected. When she asked to purchase tickets to his lectures and
to study law, the dean of the department replied: “I do not know what
the Board of Trustees will do, but as for me, if they admit a woman I
will resign for I will neither lecture to [Negroes] nor women.” For the
next decade, she and her new husband, Damon Kilgore, fought a long and
hard battle in the legislature and in the courts in order to win an opportunity
for women to study and to practice law. In 1881, she was finally able
to purchase a ticket to attend lectures at the University of Pennsylvania,
and on June 17, 1883, Carrie Burnham Kilgore became its first woman graduate.
The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas was not impressed, however, with
Mrs. Kilgore’s law degree because the next year it denied Carrie Kilgore’s
motion to be admitted to its bar. Finally, in 1885, Carrie Kilgore convinced
the state legislature to change the laws governing bar admission, and
in 1886, she was admitted to practice before the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court.
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