Harriet S. Shapiro, the primary feminine lawyer ever employed within the U.S. solicitor common’s workplace to current instances to the Supreme Court docket on behalf of the federal authorities, died on Feb. 1 in a hospice facility in Rockville, Md. She was 93.
The trigger was coronary heart failure, her son Alfred mentioned.
Ms. Shapiro joined the solicitor common’s workplace in 1972 and spent 29 years there.
Maybe what set her aside much more than being the workplace’s first feminine lawyer was her choice for writing briefs over making oral arguments earlier than the Supreme Court docket. And it was her beautiful written displays that made her a famend determine in Washington authorized circles.
“Harriet was a chic temporary author,” former Deputy Solicitor Common Kenneth S. Geller mentioned in an e-mail.
“Her briefs went for the jugular,” he added. “There have been no detours or distracting verbiage. I’m positive the justices appreciated that.”
For a lot of legal professionals, showing in particular person earlier than the nation’s highest courtroom is a profession spotlight; these within the solicitor common’s workplace do it routinely, and a few search to argue as many instances as attainable.
Not Ms. Shapiro.
“I by no means thought I used to be good at it,” she mentioned in a 2012 oral historical past interview for the Historic Society of the District of Columbia Circuit.
She didn’t just like the efficiency facet of oral displays and located the preparation overly annoying. Through the two weeks earlier than an argument, she mentioned, “there was slightly cloud over your head on a regular basis as you have been excited about what questions the courtroom may ask, how you may current arguments that might be persuasive, not too technical, however technical sufficient so that you simply hit the factors that you simply needed to hit.”
After a decade wherein she made solely about 15 oral arguments — a slightly low quantity for somebody in her place — she shifted her focus solely to the written phrase. It was within the briefs the place the proof was marshaled and the place, she believed, a case was gained or misplaced.
As she put it in 2012, “I write a lot better than I speak.”
Ms. Shapiro ended up writing lots of of briefs, attraction suggestions and petitions on a variety of points, together with constitutional questions of equal safety, statutory questions involving environmental and labor legal guidelines, and questions relating to patents.
“She didn’t see herself as an advocate; she was a researcher,” her son mentioned. “She preferred the puzzle of it. She preferred fixing the issue.”
Harriet Morse Sturtevant was born on Sept. 7, 1928, in New Bedford, Mass., and grew up in Southern California. Her father, Alfred Henry Sturtevant, was a geneticist and a professor of biology on the California Institute of Expertise. Her mom, Phoebe (Reed) Sturtevant, was a homemaker and a self-taught carpenter.
Harriet graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley School with a bachelor’s diploma in sociology in 1950. She labored for 2 years as a Social Safety claims examiner in Santa Rosa, Calif., earlier than returning east to attend Columbia Regulation Faculty.
Whereas girls made up 10 % of her 200-person class, she mentioned within the oral historical past that she by no means personally felt discriminated in opposition to. She didn’t take into account herself a feminist. Professors would often make sexist feedback, she mentioned, however her perspective was “It’s their drawback, not mine.”
On the finish of her second yr, she was named editor in chief of the Columbia Regulation Overview, the second lady within the historical past of that prestigious journal to run it. Working alongside a largely male editorial workers ready of management, she mentioned, taught her to claim herself. In 1954, she married a classmate, Howard Shapiro, one of many editors who labored below her on the regulation evaluation.
After they each graduated in 1955, they moved to Washington, the place they labored for the federal government, she on the Atomic Power Fee and he on the Justice Division.
In 1972, by which period Mr. Shapiro had develop into head of the appellate part of the division’s antitrust division, he discovered that Solicitor Common Erwin N. Griswold had been persuaded that it was time to rent a girl. Ms. Shapiro utilized for the job and received it.
She formally retired from the solicitor common’s workplace in 1992 however continued to work there on a part-time foundation till 2001.
Along with her son Alfred, she is survived by one other son, Charles; a granddaughter; and a brother, Alfred Henry Sturtevant III. Her husband died in 2019.
Supply: NY Times