Rosemary Barkett

Rosemary Barkett (née Barakat; born August 29, 1939) is a Mexican-American judge of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal located in The Hague, Netherlands since 2013.

Previously, she served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Prior to her nomination for that post, she was chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

Born in Mexico to parents who were emigrants from Syria, she is recognized as the first woman, Arab American, and Hispanic judge (of Syrian descent) on the Florida Supreme Court.

Born Rosemary Barakat in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico, Barkett was the daughter of Syrian immigrants from Zaidal Assad and Mariam Barakat.

Barkett's parents had seven children who survived to adulthood.

In January 1946, when Barkett was six, her entire family immigrated to Miami, Florida.

As a native Mexican by birth, Barakat spoke only Spanish until she moved to Miami.

Upon arriving in Miami, the family changed the spelling of its surname to Barkett.

Barkett became a United States citizen in 1958 at the age of 18.

At age 17, Barkett joined the Sisters of St. Joseph, becoming a nun.

While in the Order, she received an Associate of Arts degree from Saint Joseph College of Florida.

From 1960 to 1968, she taught elementary school and junior high school classes in Tampa, Jacksonville and St. Augustine.

Barkett left the convent in 1967, the same year that she received her Bachelor of Science degree from Spring Hill College, summa cum laude.

She went on to law school at the University of Florida in 1970, where she was the first woman to win the Miller Memorial award for outstanding senior graduate.

After nearly a decade in private practice, Barkett was appointed as a state circuit court judge in 1979 by Governor Bob Graham.

She advanced to higher judicial offices, as the Chief Judge of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida and as an Appellate Judge on the Fourth District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida in 1984.

The following year she was appointed by Governor Graham to the Florida Supreme Court, the first woman to serve in this position.

Years later, in 1990, she told the Orlando Sentinel that the convent was "like a sorority, without the parties."

In 1992 she was chosen by her colleagues to become the state's first woman chief justice.

As Florida's first female Supreme Court Justice, her appointment highlighted a number of gender-bias issues within the institution.

Prior to her appointment, the floor where justices' chambers were located in the Supreme Court Building had only two restrooms, one marked "Justices," the other marked "Ladies."

In addition to that change, her tenure ended the use of the title "Mr. Justice."

Barkett was to be called "Madam Justice Barkett," which she felt was inappropriate because she was not married and "did not qualify for the other definition of Madam."

Instead she requested to be addressed simply as "Justice Barkett."

The other justices followed suit and dropped "Mr."

from their titles.

To remain on the state Supreme Court, Barkett survived a rancorous merit retention election in 1992, receiving a favorable vote of 61 percent.

During that battle, organizations such as the National Rifle Association of America and Florida Right to Life developed negative advertising campaigns.

On September 24, 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Barkett to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (which reviews cases from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia).

The seat had been vacated by Judge Paul Hitch Roney.

Barkett's nomination was hotly contested by newspaper columnists and such conservative politicians as Orrin Hatch, who was, at the time, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In a 1994 New York Times op-ed, Anna Quindlen described how Barkett was Borked by such senators as Strom Thurmond, who "spelled out the gory details of every murder case in which the Chief Justice had voted to overturn death sentences."

Barkett was eventually confirmed by the Democratic-controlled United States Senate by a 61–37 vote.

She received her commission on April 15, 1994.

Between 1994 and 1996, a wide range of conservative politicians made explicit use of Barkett in political attack ads that tried to connect her with their political opponents.

For example, in a Tennessee senate race, Bill Frist upset the incumbent Jim Sasser after emphasizing that Sasser had voted to confirm Barkett for the seat on the Court of Appeals.

In a California Senate race, Michael Huffington took out full-page newspaper ads outlining ways in which Barkett was a liberal activist judge, and linking Barkett with his opponent in that race, Dianne Feinstein, who had also voted for Barkett's confirmation.

As described in The New York Times, the left-leaning magazine Mother Jones, and a 2014 book, The Biblical Truth About America's Death Penalty, much of the focus was on Barkett's supposedly being soft on crime.

The opposition focused on her being against the death penalty, though she had affirmed the death penalty 275 times while on the state supreme court.