by Christie Turner, MARGARET Fund Fellow, 
National Women's Law Center

This post is part of a series about the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

As NWLC Co-President Marcia Greenberger noted in her reflection on Monday, this week is a historic one for women--one in which we see only the third woman ever to sit before our Senators at a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. And Wednesday's testimony started to delve into that precise subject. 

As a recent law school graduate myself--and I attended a school that had a slightly larger percentage of women than men students--it was a bit hard for me to imagine that in our not-too-distant past women made up a small minority of law school students. And it was even harder to fathom that Justice Sandra O'Connor, graduating at the top of her class at Stanford Law, was repeatedly turned down from jobs and offered secretarial jobs instead. Sure we have made progress, but this confirmation process also reminds us that we cannot take it for granted nor assume that our work to achieve equality is complete. We still have, after all, only one female justice on the highest court in our nation. As Justice Ginsburg has recently noted, the image of an all male Court is not one that we want our nation, and particularly the next generation, to see: "Young women are going to think, 'Can I really aspire to that kind of post?'"

This issue came into direct focus on Wednesday. Senator Leahy got to the heart of Ginsburg's concerns by posing the question "How do you think it affects the confidence of young people to see only one woman on the Supreme Court today?" Sotomayor's response was balanced and inspiring. She reminded us that beyond the fact that having more women on the court inspires the confidence of the next generation, diversity makes us more confident in the system itself.  Our courts are legitimated when they reflect the plurality of society because "it's the confidence that Americans should have in our legal system, that they see themselves reflected in all facets of our legal system." 

Soon, I hope, other young women and I will have both more reason to feel confident in our legal system, as well as more reason to be inspired that we too can reach great heights when we see a picture of next term's Supreme Court.