TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

ExecutiveEditor’sPageDavid A. FurlowFive Centuries ofEvolving Women’s Rightsin TexasTHIS ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL chronicles the evolution of women’s rights in Texas overfive centuries, from the expansion of the sixteenth century Spanish Empire into Texas tocutting-edge conferences in twenty-first century America. We begin in media res, as the Journal’sGeneral Editor, Lynne Liberato, describes the vote she cast on November 7, 1972 in favor ofthe Texas Equal Rights Amendment. Lynne’s vote would have appalled Queen Victoria, whoplaced her faith in religion, tradition, and monarchy rather than in women’s rights. As Victoriawrote to Sir Theodore Martin in March 1870, suffragettes such as Katharine Russell, ViscountessAmberley, Lynne’s nineteenth century counterpart, threatened imperial social order:The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write or join in checkingthis mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights” with all its attendant horrors, on which her poorfeeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. Lady Amberley oughtto get a good whipping. 1Luckily for Lynne, Queen Victoria did not order her whipped for casting an impertinent vote.Departing President Marie Yeates then reviews the accomplishments of her 2014–15 year of leading theSociety. Excerpts from Society historian James Haley’s book The Texas Supreme Court: A Narrative History,1836–1986 (edited by Journal Managing Editor Marilyn Duncan) show that Society President Yeates carriedon a tradition of female leadership that dates back to Queen Isabella of Spain. In both Spain and New Spain,women lived under a Castilian system of law, arising out of Visigothic custom, in which a married couple sharedpost-marital community property while each spouse separately retained property acquired before the marriage.Republic of Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hemphill strengthened Castilian, Spanish, and Mexicantraditions of spousally-shared community property in response to a violent, war-torn frontier society. In oneopinion, he asked:Do not the women sustain the frontier with their toils, if not with their arms? Are theynot subjected to the same, and to infinitely worse horrors from the hostilities of the savage foe?Do they not prepare the warrior for battle, rouse all the fires of his soul, and stimulate him to themost daring achievements? Do they not nerve his heart with the courage which prefers death todisgraceful flight, and inspire him with the resolution to return victorious or return no more ...?1Letter, Queen Victoria to Sir Theodore Martin, circa 1870, in Roger Fulford, ed., Votes for Women: The Story of a Struggle (London:Faber & Faber, 1958), 65.15