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77 Judicature 144 (1993-1994)
Moral Authority and Gender Difference: Georgia Bullock and the Los Angeles Women's Court

handle is hein.journals/judica77 and id is 158 raw text is: Moral authority and gender difference: Georgia Bullock and the Los Angeles Women's Court California' first woman judge achieved her public position by identifying herself with the nurturing, cooperative values attributed tofeministjurisprudence. by Beverly Blair Cook ....... T he first woman to exercise moral authority from a judi- cial position in California was Georgia Bullock, who be- gan her long service in 1914 as the woman judge in Los Angeles.1 Her original assignment was to a court seg- regated on the basis of gender. She broke the state judiciary's male mo- nopoly with the understanding that she would serve as a model of Victo- rian ideals of womanhood for female misdemeanants. By claiming the vir- tues associated with the feminine cul- ture, however, Bullock trapped herself in a small public space. The qualifica- tions for higher judgeships, where the new scientific authority was exercised, were associated with masculine charac- teristics.2 The political rhetoric she employed to keep and improve her public position reflected conflicting theories of public and private spheres, of gender difference, and of the proper basis of public authority. Segregation of the sexes was a neces- sary condition for the exercise of moral authority by women at the turn of the century. The cultural beliefs in the purity of women and in their vul- nerability to the sexual demands of the stronger sex provided acceptable reasons for setting aside public spaces where acculturated women could pro- vide protection and guidance to weak and resourceless women. In such sepa- rate places, women had opportunities to exercise authority,3 but the selection of a specific woman for an authorita- tive public role has always been in men's hands. The sphere of female moral author- ity grew slowly from the private arenas of home and female clubs to the public Georgia Bullock, circa 1910 arenas of schools, bureaus, and courts. Women first challenged male hege- mony in the home, where the female role expanded from moral influence to authority as the mother of citizens of the new republic.4 Outside the home, female moral authority developed in single-sex organizations. Before and af- ter the Civil War, women established missionary societies to convert hea- then women and formed rescue mis- sions to offer a moral environment to female outcasts.5 In suffrage and prohi- bition associations, women practiced leadership in their own national hierar- chies. The constituencies of female au- thorities-whether schoolteachers, settlement workers, professors in women's colleges, rural school superintendents, 1. See Cook, Georgia Phillips Bullock, in AMERICAN NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY (forthcoming Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1994). 2. The meanings of moral authority and scien- tific authority adopted here are working defini- tions only. Moral authority rests upon cultural or religious standards of goodness and justice and requires discretionary application; scientific au- thority rests upon technical standards of effi- ciency and predictability and requires consistent application (until the theory and rule are re- vised). Individuals with a legitimate claim to exer- cise authority reveal qualities that fit the respec- tive standards, wisdom for moral authority and reason for scientific authority. The traditional au- thority to sentence was in the moral realm; under the new guidelines the judge's choice is in the scientific realm. Where the psychological theorists recognize two kinds of morality, this approach recognizes two kinds of authority. The phrase moral efficiency used by urban vice societies is an oxymoron within this conceptualization. 3. Freedman, Separation as Strategy: Female Insti- tution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930, 5 FEMINIST STUDIES 512-529 (Fall 1979). 4. Kerber, The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment-An American Perspective, 28 AM. Q. 187-205 (Summer 1976). 5. Pascoe, RELATIONS OF RESCUE: THE SEARCH FOR FEMALE MORAL AUTHORITY IN THE AMERICAN WEST, 1874-1939 (Oxford University Press, 1990); Cott, THE BONDS OF WOMANHOOD: WOMEN'S SPHERE IN NEW ENGLAND, 1780-1835 (Yale University Press, 1977); Welter, DIMITY CONVICTIONS: THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 83-102 (University of Georgia Press, 1976); Dunn, Saints and Sisters: Con- gregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period, in James, (ed.), WOMEN IN AMERICAN RELI- GION (Philadelphia, 1980). 144 Judicature Volume 77, Number 3 November-December1993

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