Portrait of Justice Florence Ellinwood Allen

Allen was the third child of Clarence Emir and Corinne Tuckerman Allen, born on March 23, 1884 in Salt Lake City, Utah. At age 16, she entered Western Reserve University, now Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1904. After living in Germany for two years, Allen returned to the United States, where she accepted a position as a teacher at Laurel School in Cleveland. She also enrolled again at Western Reserve, where she graduated with a master’s degree in political science and constitutional law.

At the time, Western Reserve did not admit women to its law school, so Allen entered the University of Chicago Law Department in 1909. She was the only female in a class of 100 students. At the end of the term, she was second in her class. She supported herself by cataloging French and German legal treatises for the university library. At the end of the term in 1910, Allen moved to New York City where she assisted newly arrived immigrants for the New York League for Protection of Immigrants.

Florence Ellinwood Allen’s life and judicial service can be described in many “firsts.” She was the first woman assistant county prosecutor in the United States and the first woman elected to a judicial office in Ohio. Later, she became the first woman in the nation to be elected to a court of the last resort – the Supreme Court of Ohio – and the first woman appointed to a federal appeals court judgeship.