Los Angeles
County
Biographies
ROSALIND
GOODRICH BATES
Possessing
an analytical, well trained mind and the capacity for sustained effort,
Rosalind Goodrich Bates has advanced far in the field of professional service
since entering upon the practice of law in Los Angeles and is accounted one of
California’s outstanding women, and appears frequently before various clubs of
Los Angeles County as a speaker on legal questions. Her grandfather, Briggs Goodrich, attained
distinction in the legal profession and at one time was attorney general of
Arizona.
Rosalind
Goodrich was married in 1914 to Dr. Ernest Southerland Bates, and two sons were
born to them: Roland Goodrich, a senior
at the University of California in Los Angeles; and Vernon Southerland, who is
attending the University of Mexico.
Liberally
educated, Mrs. Bates received the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of
Arts from the University of Oregon at Eugene and that of Doctor of
Jurisprudence from Southwestern University at Los Angeles. Here she has continuously followed her
profession since her admission to the California bar, handling much important
litigation, and maintains an office on the fourth floor of the H W. Hellman
Building. She is attorney for the
Southern California Stewards and Caterers Association, the Los Angeles Income
Properties, the Women’s Hotel Association and the women’s auxiliary of the
Hotel Greeters of America.
Mrs.
Bates has been called to high offices in the various organizations with which
she is connected. She is vice president
of the Los Angeles Lawyers Club, also of Iota Tau Tau,
an international scholarship sorority, and of Zeta Kappa Psi; editor of the
magazine published by the National Women Lawyers Association; and a past
president of the Women’s Advertising Club and the Business & Professional
Women’s Republican Club. She was
executive secretary for southern California of Governor Young’s first campaign
and manager of the 1927 campaign of the Los Angeles Bar Association. This was the only campaign in which one
hundred per cent of the bar candidates were elected. To the success of the campaigns of Judge
Myron Westover and Judge Samuel Blake for the superior bench of California she
also contributed materially. In 1934 she
was honored with the presidency of the Southern California Council of the
National Association of Women Lawyers, in which capacity she is now acting, and
in addition is secretary of the state bar committee on the judges bills.
Mrs. Bates is chiefly interested in
the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, and served as volunteer public
defender in the night court in 1933. She
secured the first pardon signed by the late Governor James Rolph,
Jr., in behalf of William Dyer, a Los Angeles newsboy, who served two and a
half years for a crime afterward confessed by others.
Mrs. Bates is a member of the
American Bar Association and secretary of the Los Angeles Bar Association
publicity committee.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: California of the South
Vol. V, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 339-340,
Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPHIES