The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday renamed the State Law Library in honor of Lavinia Goodell, the first woman to practice law in Wisconsin.
Goodell, a Janesville resident, was admitted to the bar in Rock County in 1874 and became the first woman to argue and win a case before the state Supreme Court.
Three of Wisconsin’s six female Supreme Court justices attended the renaming ceremony to celebrate Goodell’s legacy.
“She was indeed a force to be reckoned with,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said. “The work of Lavinia’s legacy is ongoing. History is unfolding.”
Walsh Bradley noted that the renaming marked the first time a state-owned building in Wisconsin has been named after a woman.
“Just knowing that she had the fortitude to be the trailblazer that she was makes me very proud,” said Goodell’s great-grandniece, Rachel Frost Starkey. “When they said this was the first building in the state of Wisconsin to be named after a woman, that blew my mind. It touched me very deeply.”
Goodell, the daughter of a New York abolitionist, began her career working at newspapers and writing for Harper’s Bazar before following her aging parents to Wisconsin in the early 1870s.