Chicanx Latinx Law Review

Luminarias are the country’s first Latina solo practitioners, law firm associates and partners, corporate counsel, prosecutors and public defenders, legal aid and civil rights attorneys, law professors, federal, state, and local judges, and the first Presidential Appointments requiring U.S. Senate confirmation (PAS) who are Article III judges, U.S. Ambassadors, U.S. Attorneys, and high-level appointees to U.S. Agencies, commissions, and boards. These are “las primeras–the firsts” in their respective fields across all segments of the legal profession. Few Luminarias, such as our first Latina Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, federal judges, state Supreme Court Justices, U.S. Ambassadors, and U.S. Attorneys are well known within the legal profession and beyond. Most, however, are not nationally renowned. Many Luminarias have passed without their contributions being documented or recognized beyond their families and local communities, to the extent they were known. Being collectively unrecorded through the decades does not diminish their successes; to the contrary. The contributions of Luminarias irradiate through the ages because they were the first and succeeded during segregation and at the dawn of integration. Only when viewed through the lens of history does this properly contextualize the significance of their accomplishments.