Lavinia Goodell

Rhoda Lavinia Goodell (May 2, 1839 – March 31, 1880) was the first woman licensed to practice law in Wisconsin and the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. In 1880, she also became the first to litigate (and win) an appeal to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. She was a strong proponent of women's suffrage, abolition, temperance, and prison reform. She was also the first woman to run for city attorney.

Early life Goodell was born in Utica, New York, to Clarissa and William Goodell. Her father was a prominent abolitionist and she shared his strong beliefs in abolition. In 1858, she wrote a letter to her sister Maria just before graduating from Brooklyn Heights Seminary where she expressed her desire to study law:I think the study of law would be pleasant, but the practice attended with many embarrassments. Indeed I fear it would be utterly unpracticable [sic] She stayed in New York during the Civil War and worked at her father's newspaper, The Principia, even filling in as editor-in-chief while her father was ill. She also worked at Harper's Bazaar as an assistant in the editorial room. However when her parents moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, she followed them in 1871. and she wrote to her cousin on June 18 that she was a member of the Wisconsin bar. Then, on March 22, 1877, the Wisconsin legislature enacted a law which prohibited courts from denying admission to the bar on the basis of sex. The bill had been drafted by Goodell and she worked with Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly John B. Cassoday for it to pass.

Goodell was admitted to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court on June 18, 1879. In 1880, Goodell argued and won her first case, Ingalls v. State, shortly before her death. Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, the State Court's Office, and several notable professors of women's studies brought Goodell's story to the Wisconsin Humanities Council for grant funding in 2012. The WHC first funded Diamond's research and writing of the play, and then with a second grant in 2014 funded the performance of the play throughout Wisconsin.