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Articles and Stories by Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Back Story to the Writing of "Trailblazers: First-Ever Women Editors in Chief of a Law Review"

In April 2009, I was at the law school of my alma mater, Cornell University, to give a talk there at the invitation of Cynthia Bowman, a feminist and a professor at the law school. Before my talk, Cynthia took me on a tour of the law library, during which she showed me an exhibit under glass on a table about Mary Donlon Alger, who the exhibit stated had been the first woman editor in chief of a major law review (in the 1940s) in the U.S.

By coincidence, two weeks after this, my California friend, Lynn Ruth Miller, sent me an article from the Stanford Law Review about Brooksley Born, a prominent woman lawyer who had graduated from the Stanford Law School. In reading the article, I was surprised to see that it stated that Ms. Born was the first woman editor in chief of a major law review in the U.S.  I immediately contacted Cynthia and told her the exhibit on Mary Donlon Alger had gotten it wrong. She told me that the Stanford Law Review got it wrong and that Mary Donlon Alger had been the editor of the Cornell Law Review over forty years before Brooksley Born was editor of the Stanford Law Review. She passed this information on to Dean Stewart Schwab of the Cornell Law School, who wrote a letter about this to the Stanford Law Review.

Some months later, I asked Cynthia what response the Dean had received and she told me (to my astonishment that he had not received any response). I then wrote to the Stanford Law Review and also got no response. But I did not forget the matter.

About a year later, I was at a Cornell Club of Sarasota-Manatee and told this story. At my table, Linda Klineman, a Cornell alumna, told me that her roommate at Cornell was now at Stanford and perhaps she could help. I contacted the roommate, who directed me to a woman she knew at the law school. That woman spoke to someone at the Stanford Law Review, who told her that the Stanford Law Review had published a correction of its article but had been too busy to respond to the letters from Dean Schwab and me as they were in the midst of moving their offices.

All of that led to Professor Bowman's writing "Trailblazers: First-Ever Women Editors in Chief of a Law Review."