Cornelia G. Kennedy of Detroit was the first woman to serve as a clerk at the prestigious United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and the first woman in the nation to serve as chief judge of a federal district court. Three presidents shortlisted her for the United States Supreme Court, according to an obituary by Douglas Martin in the New York Times.
Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor called her “a most impressive model for me.”
Judge Kennedy died May 12 in Grosse Pointe Woods.
In 1970, she became the first woman named to the federal district bench in Detroit, rising to chief judge in 1977. She was the first woman to be director of the Detroit Bar Association (now the Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association); the first woman to head the National Conference of Federal Trial Judges, which she helped found; and the only woman appointed to a federal judgeship by President Richard M. Nixon.
The Times also writes her nomination to the federal appeals court in 1979 marked the first time a nominee became the focus of political warfare that has since become a hallmark of federal judicial appointments.
