Madam Chief Justice

Jean Hoefer Toal of South Carolina

W. Lewis Burke, Joan P. Assey, W. Lewis Burke, Joan P. Assey

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781611176926
• eBook ISBN: 9781611176933
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Biographies
• Index: Law

The story of South Carolina's first female Chief Justice, with contributions by Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, legal scholars, family members, and more.
As a lawyer, legislator, and judge, Jean Hoefer Toal is one of the most accomplished women in South Carolina history. In this volume, contributors—including two United States Supreme Court Justices, federal and state judges, state leaders, historians, legal scholars, leading attorneys, family, and friends—provide analysis, perspective, and biographical information about the life and career of this dynamic leader and her role in shaping South Carolina.
Growing up during the 1950s and '60s, Jean Hoefer was a youthful witness to the civil rights movement in the state and nation. Observing the state's premier civil rights lawyer, Matthew J. Perry Jr., in court encouraged her to attend law school, where she met her husband, Bill Toal. When she was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1968, fewer than one hundred women had been admitted in the state's history. From then on she was both a leader and a role model.
She excelled in trial and appellate work and won major victories on behalf of Native Americans and women. In 1975, she was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, and despite her age and gender quickly became one of the most respected members of that body. During her years in the House, Toal promoted major legislation on issues including constitutional law, criminal law, utilities regulation, local government, state appropriations, workers compensation, and freedom of information. In 1988, she was sworn in as the first female justice on the Supreme Court of South Carolina, and twelve years later she was elected Chief Justice, becoming the first woman ever to hold the highest position in the state's judiciary. As Chief Justice, Toal modernized not only her court, but also the state's judicial system.
As a child, she loved roller skating in the lobby of the post office—a historic building that now serves as the Supreme Court of South Carolina. From a child in Columbia to Madam Chief Justice, her story comes full circle in this compelling account of her life and influence.
Contributors include: Joseph F. Anderson, Jr. * Joan P. Assey * Jay Bender * C. Mitchell Brown * W. Lewis Burke Jr. * M. Elizabeth (Liz) Crum * Tina Cundari * Cameron McGowan Currie * Walter B. Edgar * Jean Toal Eisen * Robert L. Felix * Richard Mark Gergel * Ruth Bader Ginsburg * Elizabeth Van Doren Gray * Sue Erwin Harper * Jessica Childers Harrington * Kaye G. Hearn * Blake Hewitt * I.S. Leevy Johnson * John W. Kittredge * Lilla Toal Mandsager * Mary Campbell McQueen * James E. Moore * Sandra Day O'Connor * Richard W. Riley * Bakari T. Sellers * Robert J. Sheheen * Amelia Waring Walker * Bradish J. Waring

Index

Abbeville County School District v. State, 112–20, 128–30, 162, 181

Abbeville County School District v. State (1999) (Abbeville I), 112–13, 114, 116, 119n7

Abbeville County School District v. State (2014) (Abbeville II), 113–20, 128–30, 162, 181

abortion, 20

A. C. Moore Elementary School, 137

A. C. Moore PTA, 140

Adger Road, 143

Administrative Procedures Act of 1977, 59–61, 72n91, 73n100

adverse possession, 34, 35–36, 45n6

African Americans in the legal profession in South Carolina, 23, 30n151

African Methodist Episcopal Church, 93

Against the Tide (Keyserling), 51

Agnes Scott College, 12, 178

Aice, Michael, 81

Aice v. State, 81

Aiken County, 54

Alabama, 10

Alice Mills, 13, 41

Allendale County, 123

Allendale County School District, 112, 116

American Bar Association, 155

American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, 24, 30n156

American Bar Foundation, 149

American Civil Liberties Union, 2

American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Southern Regional Office, 2

American Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project, 2, 159n32

American South, 144

Amtrak derailment, 43

Anderson, Joseph Fletcher, Jr., 19, 89, 92–93, 95n23, 178

Anderson, Ralph K., 56

Anderson, Ross, 90

Anderson County, 20

Appellate Case Management System (C-Track), 133, 134

arbitration, 84

Ariail, Robert, 94

“Argument of an Appeal, The” (Davis), 76–77

Arlington County Fair, 142

Arrants, J. Clator, 47

Assey, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Assey Funderburk), 141

Assey, James, Jr., 141, 142

Assey, Jim, 138–39, 142

Assey, Joan, 126–27, 139, 141, 142, 146

Assi, Jusef, 141

Athens, Georgia, 141

Atlanta, 9, 12

Atlanta Braves baseball, 141, 146

Attorney Inform...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• “It’s a Girl”
• You Don’t Start Out as Chief Justice
• Into the Twentieth Century as a Lawyer Legislator
• A New Associate Justice
• An Unrelenting Judicial Warrior in South Carolina’s Video Poker Wars
• Toal on Torts (1987–2014)
• Abbeville County School District v. State: Changing South Carolina
• Bringing the Courts into the Twenty-First Century
• Family, Friends, and Community
• The Sisterhood of the Ladder: The Impact of Chief Justice Toal on the Rise in Participation of Women in the Legal Profession in South Carolina
• Personal Reflections
• All Hail the Chief!: Quintessential South Carolinian
• Contributors
• Index