Judge Miriam Wolff: A Lifetime of Navigating Uncharted Waters

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Judge Miriam Wolff, JD ’40, when she was the Port Director of San Francisco (Courtesy Judge Miriam Wolff)

If you thought your first days at Stanford Law School were intimidating, just imagine how the Honorable Miriam Wolff, JD ’40 (BA ’37), must have felt. One of only eight women in an entering class of 86 students, she was confronted at the outset with the then-traditional law school greeting, given by Professor George Osborne: “Shake hands with the man on your right. Shake hands with the man on your left. Only one of you will be here next year.” Other less determined individuals might have questioned their decision to enroll. But Wolff had no doubts and would not be deterred. “I knew when I finished sixth grade that I wanted to be a lawyer,” she recalls. Wolff, who had just turned 20 when she received the hand-shaking instructions, entered law school as a Stanford senior in 1936. Her first impressions? “It was incredibly time-consuming; I was completely immersed.” And although many of her close friends “flunked out,” Wolff not only survived but thrived. Anticipating what would become the popular JD/MBA program, she even took extra credits at the Graduate School of Business.

“There were no other first-year women there,” she says. “I got straight A’s and finished at the top of the classes I took. And unlike the law school, the business school had a placement service and offered to find me a job.”

But Wolff never wavered from her goal of practicing law. Fulfilling Osborne’s original prophecy, Wolff graduated along with just 25 others. She planned to interview with San Francisco law firms once she passed the bar, but while Wolff was in San Francisco for the exam, she received the devastating news that her father had cancer, and she needed to return home to Los Angeles immediately.

“It was a very difficult time, both personally and professionally,” Wolff says. “The Depression was technically over, but not for young lawyers. The only way I could earn a living in Los Angeles was by helping older lawyers, doing filing and interviewing. They basically exploited us.”

Wolff, however, saw a way out when she passed a bulletin board announcing the exam for junior counsel for the State of California.

“I was always really good at exams,” she says. “I placed first.”

This eventually earned Wolff a job in Sacramento with the Department of Employment, where she expressed a preference for trial work.

“Even though I didn’t want to be a trial lawyer, I knew it was important to be comfortable going to court so that I wouldn’t make decisions based on trying to avoid it,” she recalls.

Wolff got exactly what she wanted, and for a year and a half she traveled throughout the state, by train and bus, trying two to three cases per week and also appearing before the California Supreme Court and the California Court of Appeal.

“I had a blast,” she says. “And I got the biggest judgment—against an oil company—that the department had ever recovered.”

A job offer from the Court of Appeal brought Wolff back to San Francisco, where she worked as the court’s chief researcher. But Wolff, it seems, never met a test she didn’t like. She took the exam for the State Attorney General’s Office and after a little more than a year at the court, she became a deputy AG in San Francisco.

From 1945 to 1968, Wolff’s practice in the AG’s office covered the spectrum from criminal to business to tax to administrative and environmental matters. But her emphasis was on admiralty law. Thus it was that in 1968, Wolff, still under the aegis of the AG’s office, moved to the Ferry Building and became chief counsel for the Port of San Francisco, which was then run by the state.

In that role, Wolff oversaw the port’s leases, contracts, labor negotiations, railroad, and police department. Though she enjoyed the work, in 1970 she was ready for a change. When the board of the port asked her to become the port director, she agreed—becoming the world’s first female port director.

“It was the perfect job for me,” says Wolff. “It was just the right combination of law and business.”

Being port director also allowed Wolff to right the wrongs that she saw being perpetrated by some of the port’s tenants.

“The World Trade Club, which was located in the Ferry Building, didn’t allow women in the dining room at lunch,” Wolff explains. “So to entertain guests, I joined the Stock Exchange Club, which was not in the building.”

But at some point, Wolff had had enough. She called San Francisco magnate Cyril Magnin, who was president of the port’s board, and told him that the port had been threatened with a lawsuit if the tenants didn’t stop discriminating against women, and that something had to be done.

“Cyril agreed, so I told the World Trade Club that it would lose its lease if the policy wasn’t changed. I was one of the first two women admitted.

Wolff also witnessed racial discrimination, particularly among the restaurant owners in Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the most prosperous rental areas in the world at the time. 

“I called all the tenants of Fisherman’s Wharf and explained to them that their leases had clauses that prevented discrimination. The threat of losing their restaurants—some of which had been in families for generations—was a very powerful motivator,” Wolff says.

By 1975, Wolff had upgraded the port facilities and made peace with the unions. Labor and management relations were excellent, and the railroad had been sold. She was ready for her next move, this time with an appointment to the municipal court bench in Santa Clara County. “The county had never had a woman judge before,” says Wolff.

The majority of her cases were criminal. But unlike most judges, Wolff’s practice experience was civil, so she volunteered to handle those cases as well. Her background negotiating for the port proved invaluable.

“It turned out that I was really good at settling cases,” she says, “even the criminal ones.”

Wolff “retired” in 1986 but continued to accept judicial assignments for another 10 years. As her legal career concluded, Wolff saw an opportunity to catch up on some of the activities she had missed out on in college.

“Artistic endeavors always had been a high priority for me, but I never had a chance to pursue them,” she says.

She began auditing art classes and taking continuing studies courses in art at Stanford. And for many years she volunteered at the Cantor Arts Center, where she gave guided tours.

These days, Wolff has slowed down a bit. She’s considering renting her home in Los Altos Hills and in the midst of downsizing—which she describes as “just a terrible task”—she reflects on what it was like to be one of the early women leaders in the Bay Area legal community.

“I started out being very aware that there was prejudice against women,” says Wolff. “My approach was just to accept it, unless it was affecting a third person; then I would try to do something about it if I could.”

But like many women JDs in her generation, Wolff recognized that to succeed, she would have to be thick-skinned.

“People have prejudices, and if you can convert them, that’s great. But prejudice exists. I tried not to let it affect me. My attitude is if it’s really going to upset you, maybe you should try doing something else. But continue working on removing prejudice wherever you can.”  SL

1 Response to Judge Miriam Wolff: A Lifetime of Navigating Uncharted Waters
  1. I am grateful to have known her. She is a remarkable person.

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