Oral History Interview with Stephanie Kulp Seymour

Oral History Interview

with

Stephanie Kulp Seymour

Interview Conducted by Juliana Nykolaiszyn May 24, 2011

Inductees of the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame Oral History Project

Interview History

Interviewer: Juliana Nykolaiszyn Transcriber: Adam Evans Editors: Miranda Mackey, Latasha Wilson, Juliana Nykolaiszyn

The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Project Detail

The oral histories collected as a result of the Inductees of the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame Oral History Project preserves the voices and experiences of extraordinary Oklahoma women who serve as pioneers in their fields, made significant contributions to the State of Oklahoma, or have championed other women, women’s issues, or served as public policy advocates for the issues important to women.

This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on June 18, 2007.

Legal Status

Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Stephanie Kulp Seymour is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on May 24, 2011.

Inductees of the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame Oral History Project

About Stephanie Kulp Seymour…

Judge Stephanie Kulp Seymour was born in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1940. She grew up going on extensive family vacations where she learned a lot about the world. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1962, where she graduated magna cum laude, and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She was one of twenty-three women of 550 students to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1965. At this time, only 3 percent of law school graduates in the United States were women.

After working in private practice in Boston, Houston, and Tulsa for fourteen years, in 1979 she was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to fill a new seat on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. She served as Chief Judge of the Tenth Circuit from 1994 to 2000, and in 2005 she assumed senior status. She was the first female judge to serve on the Tenth Circuit and the first to serve as Chief Judge. She was also the first woman to serve as chair of the US Judicial Conference. She was inducted in the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005.

Seymour enjoys her position as senior judge, as well as traveling and spending time with her husband, Tom, four children, Bart, Bria, Sara, and Anna, and their families.

Inductees of the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame Oral History Project

Stephanie Kulp Seymour

Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Juliana Nykolaiszyn May 24, 2011 Tulsa, Oklahoma

Nykolaiszyn My name is Juliana Nykolaiszyn with the Oklahoma State University Library. Today is Tuesday, May 24, 2011, and I’m in Tulsa, Oklahoma, interviewing the Honorable Stephanie Seymour. This interview is being conducted as part of the inductees of the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame Oral History Project. Judge Seymour was inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005. Thank you for joining us today.

Seymour You’re very welcome.

Nykolaiszyn Let’s begin by learning a little bit more about you. Could you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and give us a little insight into your early life?

Seymour I grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan, a town of about 30,000 back then, sort of halfway between Detroit and Chicago on the lower part of Michigan. I am one of four children, second oldest. I have an older brother, a younger brother, and younger sister. Neither of my parents went to college. My mother had a nursing degree. She was a nurse. My father, well, he was an interesting character. His father was a lawyer and a judge, but he broke his ankle ice skating when he was in the ninth grade. So, he was out of school recovering from that. And then the summer after that, he contracted polio, which really knocked him flat. He had a leg brace on. He never went back to school. So, he did a lot of goofing around, running around the country until he married my mom, at which time he was working for a bank. He saved some money, bought some land at the end of the war. He couldn’t be in the war because he was disabled, basically, and started getting into the businesses of having houses built for returning service people. So, he made a good living.

One thing I did in my childhood that is so memorable to me is that we traveled all over the country, mostly in the wintertime, mostly going south. But this is with four kids, and up until I was about in eighth grade.

I was in every state except three by the time I went to college—by car. I was basically homeschooled in the car for the three months we would take off in the wintertime. So, that was an adventure, one that I really appreciate more now that I’m older than I did when I was younger, but we had a great time.

Nykolaiszyn Do you have a lot of memories of visiting the different states?

Seymour I do. I do. I remember seeing the Grand Canyon, Florida, Fort Lauderdale when there were no high rises on the beach. I mean, there was just nothing on the beach, just acres and acres of beautiful sand. I remember New Orleans, that was a wild place. I remember getting stung by a sting ray in water off of Texas. Just things like that. Getting up really early, we would travel early because there was no air conditioning and quit early, tried to find a motel with a swimming pool, which we’d all jump in. Yes, I remember a lot of places and things, and we always did museums. One year we spent a month in Florida, and then went all the way up the East Coast and did Savannah, Georgia, did Washington D.C. and all the monuments and museums, New York City, Boston, and then up—by that time it was spring—into Montreal and Toronto and Canada and came across the bridge to Detroit. Another year we went across New Orleans, across Texas, up, spent a month in LA, and then came back through the Grand Canyon and all of that. It was great.

Nykolaiszyn Did you have a favorite place?

Seymour Oh, gosh. I don’t think so.

Nykolaiszyn Well, what a good adventure to have as a…

Seymour It was a great adventure and made me want to—my father was extremely well read—well, both of my parents were. But he encouraged all of us to get as much education as we could. I grew up thinking I could do anything I wanted to do.

Nykolaiszyn So, when you settled back down for school—I take it in Michigan?

Seymour No.

Nykolaiszyn No?

Seymour No, I went to public high schools, and my father wanted somebody in the family to go to an Ivy League school, and women were not admitted in those days to places like Harvard and Yale. So, I went to Smith College. Back then, there were seven women’s colleges, all women, known as the Seven Sisters. I went to Smith, and I loved it. It was the

first time I was among all these terrific, smart women from all over the country. It was great.

Nykolaiszyn But before Smith, where were you going then?

Seymour I was going to public school in Michigan, in Battle Creek.

Nykolaiszyn So, when you were going through high school, were you gravitating toward any special subjects?

Seymour I was always interested in English and literature, and I thought I was pretty good in math until I took it in college. Got disabused of that notion, but primarily, not really sciences, although I took basic courses.

Nykolaiszyn Did you do anything special in high school for fun?

Seymour I was a cheerleader, and so I did all the sports events. I also swam. I dived. I was a diver. That was the only thing girls could do. They didn’t have basketball or anything for girls back then.

Nykolaiszyn So, it seems your parents fostered this education…

Seymour Yes, both of them.

Nykolaiszyn And so when you were in high school getting ready to attend Smith, what were you thinking about what you wanted to be when you got older?

Seymour I had no idea. And Smith is a liberal arts college, so you didn’t have to pick a major until entering junior year. So, it was basically—in fact, we were required to take courses in everything, including language and science and math, at least one year worth of everything. I’d taken Latin in high school, which was I think was the only thing offered, and I took French in college. And we continued to travel. My father took all of us to Europe when I was seventeen, the summer I graduated from high school. We went by boat because he didn’t like to fly, which is why we drove all over the place. He bought an English Ford, which we brought back with us. It was made by Ford, but made in England. We traveled all over Europe that summer.

Nykolaiszyn Not too bad.

Seymour No, it was great. I continued to do that. Got a great education at Smith and really learned. There, they fostered the notion that women could do whatever they wanted to do, even though women really weren’t doing all that much back then.

Nykolaiszyn [Were there any] instructors at Smith that really made an impact on your life?

Seymour Yes. The first place I found out that, even though I’d gone to public school, there were a lot of girls there who had been to boarding school. At first, it was a big shock, but I discovered by the end of one year that I could compete with them. I had a lot of professors that were just terrific. It was constant learning experience, but the fellow that made the biggest impact, I guess, was a—I was a political science major. My junior year, I took a political science, a Constitutional law, course, and that’s what got me interested in going to law school.

Nykolaiszyn Going back to your siblings, are you the oldest, the youngest?

Seymour No, I’m second oldest. My mother had a whole—had us all, and when my youngest sister was born, my brother was six. He’s about seventeen months older than I am, and then my next brother is about three years younger, and my sister is five years younger than I am. My mother was Italian, so we had a lot of cousins. I have thirty-two first cousins on my mother’s side.

Nykolaiszyn Big family get-togethers.

Seymour Yes, mostly in Bessemer, Michigan, which was in the upper peninsula, which was fun.

Nykolaiszyn So, holidays were probably pretty lively.

Seymour Holidays were great. I come from a very close family, and we had a great, raucous time together because we did all this traveling.

Nykolaiszyn Did your brothers and sisters also go to college?

Seymour Yes, my brother went to the University of Michigan, which is probably why I didn’t. He went to law school there, and my younger brother went to—he was the goof-off in the family, probably the smartest of us from an IQ standpoint. He got sent off to Culver Military School when he was in high school because he was goofing off. He talked my father into letting him come back his senior year, and then he went to the University of Michigan where he goofed off some more. So, he dropped out and joined the Army. They sent him to language school in Monterey. He took—he had his choice of Russian and French, as I recall. He became an expert in French, and then they sent him to Vietnam where I think he did intelligence stuff. He came back, went to Harvard Business School, finished college at Georgetown. Actually, Bill Clinton was a classmate when he went to Georgetown. He’s lived all over the world,

married a Swedish girl. Has done bank-related computer stuff. I couldn’t tell you exactly. He’s landed in Colorado. My younger sister was a teacher.

Nykolaiszyn Getting back to your Smith years, you’re now kind of inspired to go into the legal profession?

Seymour Yes.

Nykolaiszyn So, you’re probably trying to look at graduate schools?

Seymour Yes.

Nykolaiszyn What was your thought process? What schools were you looking at applying to?

Seymour I applied to Michigan, Harvard, and Yale. I got into them all, and I picked Harvard. I was one of twenty-three women, as it turned out, in a class of about 580 when we started. So, that was a whole new life. I went from an all-women’s college to an almost all-male environment for law school, which it was a lot of fun. I was very comfortable in my shoes by then because—I just learned that. When you go to an all- women’s college, it’s all about competing with each other and getting a good education. So, I had classmates in law school who asked me how come I was there taking the place of a guy. And I would say, “Well, how come you’re here taking the place of a woman?” I really enjoyed law school. I have more of an intellectual interest in the law. So, I loved my courses, did moot court, got on the winning moot court team, but the teams had eight, and I was the brief writer. I was not the oralist. So, I had a good time in law school.

Nykolaiszyn In the typical classroom at Harvard, where would you sit?

Seymour We had assigned seats.

Nykolaiszyn Really?

Seymour Yes, because in our classes, we were divided into four sections, I think. So, our classes were pretty big, but it was all Socratic Method. The teacher called on you, so you had to know where you were sitting.

Nykolaiszyn So, you spent a lot of time studying? Or did it just come really easy to you?

Seymour No, law is not—it’s like a foreign subject when you first start, most of it. You just have to learn it.

Nykolaiszyn As you’re nearing the end of law school, what are you hoping for in terms of a career?

Seymour When I entered law school it was with the notion of getting a law degree and going to work for the government in Washington, DC. I had done a research project in the summertime when I was a junior, working for the—I had a Ford Foundation Grant, but working with—actually, it was the New York City government in connection with the public housing program. I just had an interest in going to DC and working for the government, but I met this guy from Oklahoma and got married and moved back here. I got my first summer job because the lawyer here, who ended up being my early mentor, wrote my husband and wanted to know if he wanted a summer job, and he already had one. So, he said, “No, but my wife does.” (Laughter)

That’s how I got my first job. There were not very many women in Oklahoma, lawyers, at the time. There were a few older ones, which I hadn’t really known. I think when I came back here these women were in their sixties. There was a period of time when women went to law school and became doctors and then it sort of slacked off. In the ’50s, really, was a time when women stayed home for the most part and didn’t do a lot of extended educational work. So, women lawyers, there was nobody here my age. There were a couple people a few years older and then there were these two older women, and that was about it.

Nykolaiszyn What part of the state were you in?

Seymour I was in Tulsa. I started in Tulsa and then my husband got transferred to Houston. He worked for an off-shore drilling company here in a combination legal/business position, so I lived in Houston. I worked for Baker Botts, which is now a huge firm, had about a hundred lawyers then. But when I interviewed at Harvard for a summer job after my second year, there was a possibility that my husband would be sent to Houston because there was an office there. So, the way it worked back then was these firms came, and this partner spoke to the group who showed up, and then if you wanted an interview, you signed up. I went up to him afterwards and I said, “Does your firm hire women?” This was before the Civil Rights Act passed in ’64. He thought about it for a minute and he said no.

I said, “Does your firm have anything against hiring women?” And he said, “No, but I do.” So, I said, “Okay, well, I guess I won’t sign up for an interview.” And that was that.

That was the firm I went to work for. Because I had a baby at the end of

my first year here, and I was off in the summertime. My mentor had a Princeton roommate at this firm. He called him up and said that I was moving to Houston, and they should hire me. So, this guy, a different person, cold-called me (I had no idea that my mentor had contacted him) and said that they heard that I was moving to Houston, and they were interested in interviewing me. My first child was about three months old at the time and I said, “I really do want to go back to work, but I don’t think I’m interested in working more than three days a week.” Then there was this silence then he said, “I had them all talked into considering a woman” (they didn’t have any) “but they’ll never hire a part-time lawyer.” I said, “Okay. Thank you, bye.”

So, I moved to Houston in September, got a call from this fellow just before Thanksgiving. They were obviously desperate. Somebody had left their labor law department suddenly, and they needed a body. I had a little labor law experience, and so he said, “Will you come in for an interview?” I said, “Sure, three days a week?” He said, “Yes, they’ll consider that.” So, I went in and interviewed. Some hiring partner—I can still see him—who really couldn’t look me in the eye. He sat with his chair kind of sideways behind his desk, fiddling with the cord on the venetian blind behind him, and he made it very plain that they were desperate or they wouldn’t be hiring anybody part-time. And this was absolutely no commitment for anything long term. This was a big experiment, but they were willing to hire me.

So, I said, “And what will the pay be?” And he told me, and I said, “I’m not working for that. I’m not working for a penny less than three-fifths of what my Harvard classmate” (whom I’d called, and who was working there) “is making.” Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, “Oh, okay. We need you to start next week.” I said, “I can’t start next week. My parents are coming for a month over Christmas. I can’t start until the first of January.” Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. “Oh, okay.” So, I got hired to start in January and found out sometime in mid-December that I was unexpectedly pregnant with my second child. (Laughs) So, I had to decide if I was going to go to work. And I thought, “Well, he said no commitments, big experiment,” so I just went to work and didn’t tell them.

I was about five months along when I told the very nice partner in the little labor law department that I was going to have to take off because I was having a baby in August. He started laughing and he said, “I can hardly wait to go tell old John McCormick” (who was this crusty old hiring guy) “that our lady labor lawyer is going to be going into labor in August.” (Laughter) So, I took off for a year. I quit. There was no maternity leave back then. And I quit a week or so before my daughter was born. My first two kids are thirteen months apart, which is not something I would recommend. I was off for a year. They called me and

wanted me to come back and I said, “Three days a week?” And they said, “Yes.” And I said, “Do I get a raise?” And they said, “Yes.” So, I went back to work, hired a nanny, and then my husband got transferred to Singapore, where we moved that December. So, that was Baker Botts first experience with a woman.

Nykolaiszyn That’s interesting that you were bold enough to negotiate.

Seymour I didn’t have anything to lose. I just had the attitude that, “I’m not working for less than you pay a guy, period.” By that time, the Civil Rights Law had passed, which was putting the pressure on them to start hiring and be reasonable about it.

Nykolaiszyn So, the family packed up and moved to Singapore.

Seymour Family packed up and moved to Singapore, where I lived for a year. Then—let me see. It was about a year. For all kinds of reasons, my husband and I separated at the end of the year. He left his job and stayed over there, and I came back here. I had come back for Christmas vacation, and so I had these two little kids and went to work for a different firm. The firm that I’d worked for had kind of split up. And the guys that I worked with, including my mentor and a couple other people that I worked closely with, were all in different law firms. So, I went to work for one of those firms.

Nykolaiszyn Was it tough trying to raise your young family and working?

Seymour Yes, of course, but it was really interesting because there still weren’t very many women here. And the more senior lawyers didn’t really know what to do with me. (Laughter) Because they really thought I should be at home, taking care of my kids. So, I worked normal work hours. I’m pretty efficient. I brown-bagged it. Brought my lunch, didn’t work on Saturdays, took work home if I needed to. I was working full-time, but it worked out well. And then a year or so later, I remarried my current, wonderful spouse, and we are facing our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary in June.

He was in that firm when they made me a partner. I was the eighth lawyer—was that? Yes. And I was made a partner. Well, I had another baby. Yes, it was after Sara was born, and I was working four days a week after that, after a six month maternity leave. And there was no maternity leave. I just quit each time, and they hired me back. I was working four days a week when they made me partner. And one of the big discussions, I found out afterwards, was, “Oh, my gosh. Is Tom Seymour going to have two votes because his wife is a partner in this little law firm?” But at our first partnership meeting, my husband made a

motion that died for lack of a second. And they decided, well, maybe he wasn’t going to have—maybe he didn’t have my vote in his back pocket. (Laughter) So, I worked four days a week for them, had another baby three years after Sara was born, so I have four children. And the firm was very accommodating.

Nykolaiszyn So, you’re practicing, raising your family, what happens next?

Seymour Oh, the years go by. Tom and I married in ’72, and then I had two more children. We’re doing soccer games. And then Jimmy Carter set up merit nominating commissions for choosing Federal Court of Appeals judges. No president had ever done that before, and no president has done that since. The Justice Department, there was a committee for the Tenth Circuit, which consists of six states, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. There was a committee for the Tenth Circuit, which consisted of eleven people from the six states. Six of them were lawyers, five of them were laypeople, and there were several women in the group. I didn’t really find all this out until I went through the process, but the caseload was increasing and the court was given a new position, and it was designated to Oklahoma, which had one at that point. I was just thinking, as I said, I was the eighth lawyer in my firm, this was the eighth judge on the Tenth Circuit, this position.

So, I applied, and it was designated here. President Carter did this because he was looking for women and minorities. And before Carter, there had been two women, ever, on the Courts of Appeals in the U.S. One that I’d never even heard about, who was appointed to the Sixth Circuit, and she was from Michigan, I think, by FDR. And there was a sitting judge on the Ninth Circuit, Shirley Hufstedler, appointed by Johnson. So, my husband encouraged me to apply, and I did.

Nykolaiszyn Was it a tough process?

Seymour Tougher than I realized when I heard this story afterwards. It was an interesting process, I mean, you did an application, and you put down your qualifications, and you had to list cases you’d worked on and judges you’d worked for, lawyers you’d worked with. Then the commission was charged with sending three to five names to the president. I had an interview and got on that list. I think there were four of us as I recall. There was one other woman who applied, who did not get on the list. She was a trial judge, and she ended up on the Oklahoma Supreme Court after that. The story that I was told, after the fact, by—it was actually first told by a friend of mine. She was a friend of this woman on the committee, a woman from Colorado. She was not a lawyer. I was told this by my friend and then subsequently, by this woman herself.

The chairman was a seventy-year-old trial lawyer from Wyoming, who wore his cowboy boots in the interview. I remember that. And apparently, the same committee had proposed judges for Kansas and Utah and had no women applicants. So, the chairman called a first meeting, and he’d never done this before, according to this woman. He said, “Well, we have thirty-five applicants, and we’re going to have to winnow it down. So, let’s go around the table and everybody will throw out somebody who’s obviously not qualified.” He said, “I’ll start.” He threw my name out. She was sitting halfway around the table, thank goodness. She said, “I was stunned because I thought you were pretty well qualified. So, I said, ‘Why’d you do that?’ And he said, ‘Because she has four children and couldn’t possibly handle the job.’” She said, “Then I was really stunned.”

It was going around the table and when it got to her, fortunately for me she was a very smart lady, she threw out the name of a sitting justice on the Oklahoma Supreme Court, who as it turned out, was the chairman’s favorite candidate. Then he was stunned and he said, “You can’t do that. He’s obviously well qualified.” She said, “No, he’s got five children and couldn’t possibly handle the job.” So, they had the discussion about whether that was a disqualifying factor, put both of our names back in the pot, and he and I both ended up on the list of names that were sent to President Carter. So, but for her quick thinking, I would have been in—I was in file thirteen until she got me dragged back out. (Laughter)

Nykolaiszyn And then from that list, Carter makes his decision?

Seymour Yes, and I was the only female. That’s the reason I got the job. I was young. I was thirty-nine, which was really young. There have been some younger ones since then, but I think at the time, that was—well, and I was one of three, as it turned out. I was one of eleven women that Carter nominated. There were a couple of African Americans. Harry Edwards on the DC Circuit was one of them. Mary Schroeder was one of the women from the Ninth Circuit, and the three of us were all born in 1940. We were all thirty-nine, as it turned out.

Nykolaiszyn How did you receive notification?

Seymour I got a call from—oh, well, then there was the whole ABA [American Bar Association] process. Do you want to hear this story? It’s another, “You can’t handle the job because you have children” story. Each circuit has a representative to the ABA committee, which assesses lawyers for the American Bar Association. The one here was another older trial attorney, and he had a favorite on the list who was not me. I was called by somebody in the Justice Department and told that my name had been

forwarded to the FBI and the ABA, which is the way they do it before you get officially nominated. The FBI did a check, and I got all kinds of feedback from people they called, and they were done really early.

I was informed by the Justice Department, I think, in January of the year I turned thirty-nine. So, I guess I was thirty-eight when I had my interview and nothing happened. Nothing happened with the ABA. There was deafening silence. I had listed all these lawyers I’d worked with, judges I’d worked with, nobody—I had no feedback. So, I didn’t know what was going on. Then one day this guy called me in September, the [ABA Committee] representative, and said, “I’m going to be in Tulsa this afternoon. I want to come interview you.” I said, “Okay.” He came and interviewed me, and all he asked me about was my family. He didn’t ask me anything about how I would handle the job or what I thought. It was a very short interview. Then he leaked to the press that he was proposing to rate me unqualified for insufficient trial experience. That was what he said.

So, it turned out that the Justice Department, the attorney general had appointed two women to sort of mentor the women going through the process. One of them was Barbara Babcock, who was subsequently a professor. She was working in the Justice Department. She was subsequently a law professor at Stanford. I don’t remember the name of the younger one, but the younger one called me and said that the Justice Department had done their own background check. Because of the length of time, they were concerned, and they had called my references. The ABA contacted them and said that they were proposing to rate me unqualified. Carter wanted to withdraw the name, and they said, “No. She’s perfectly qualified for the job.”

By that time, as soon as he leaked to the press, I got hold of the ABA rules for the process. They’re supposed to inform you if they think you’re not qualified, in the interview, and tell you why and give you a chance to respond. Well, they hadn’t followed their own rules, and I immediately wrote a letter to the head of the ABA, the head of this ABA committee, the attorney general, the nearby world, saying that the ABA did not follow the process. (Laughter) So, when the ABA went to the Justice Department, the Justice Department said, “Nope, we did our own background check. You didn’t follow your process. We’re objecting.” So, they appointed another guy who had been chairman of the ABA committee previously, who then did his own background check. I started getting calls from lawyers who were contacted. He came out to interview me, and I passed. They rated me qualified.

Nykolaiszyn Was that a concern, your trial experience?

Seymour Yes. I had not had a lot. I really hadn’t, but you don’t need a lot to be an appellate judge because you need to be familiar with—I had taken depositions, and I had argued motions, and I had sat through trials, but I had never tried my own case. Most of my firm, most of my work was defense-oriented. I had won a lot of great summary judgment motions. But I really did not have a lot of trial experience.

Nykolaiszyn So, you’re in the post, a new judge, what is a typical day like in those early years?

Seymour Really crazy because I didn’t have an office, I had temporary space here. You’re really behind in the law clerk hiring process. I hired a woman here who lived in Tulsa, who’d gone to the University of Tulsa, and she ended up staying with me for twenty-something years. She was my first hire. Then I got two fellows who, one graduated in the middle of the year from the NYU Masters in Tax Program, and then I got a fellow from Michigan. They were my first law clerks. And then Joan, my secretary, came with me from the law firm. So, she’s been with me for— she’s worked for me for probably thirty-four years now. She’s fabulous. We didn’t have computers back then, and I pretty much was in the dark. I got confirmed at the end of October and I sat on the court for the November term. They gave me a couple of days of cases and an en banc.

Nykolaiszyn What’s that?

Seymour That’s when—we sit in panels of three. We had eight judges back there, and you sit in panels of three. And the senior judges helped out back then, so they sat. So, a case gets en banced if the losing party petitions the whole court and claims that the panel opinion is contrary to other circuit opinions or is wrong for this, that, or the other reason. And then somebody has to poll the court. That’s the process. If nobody polls the court, the en banc court, for a vote, and that would be either the dissenter on the panel, most likely. Sometimes it’s somebody off the panel who is interested in the issue. And then the active judges vote, and if a majority of active judges vote to rehear it, there is a rehearing en banc, and the whole court sits for oral argument and then for the opinion.

Nykolaiszyn So, are you hearing cases the whole year or just certain times?

Seymour The circuits, I discovered early on, all operate differently. We are one of the few circuits that come together for a term of court, all of the judges, the same week, and we have those weeks every other month. We hear six cases a day, which is sort of like final exams when you first start, but you get used to the process. We sat five days. We sat every day when I first went on the court. Now, the active judges tend to sit four days and I sit two, which I get to spread out. That’s because we have oral argument

only in about 35 percent of the cases, 30 percent. Maybe not even that these days, the rest are on what we call on the briefs, submitted on the briefs. All the cases have briefs. Fifty pages a side, plus a twenty-five page reply brief, is what’s allowed. They can be less than that. It often is, but sometimes not. And sometimes you have amicus briefs, and sometimes they’ll come in and a stack for one case, it’ll be like this because of motions and all kinds of stuff. (Gestures)

The panel will hear the cases, three judges will hear the cases that are assigned that they’ve read the briefs in, and then they have a conference afterwards and tentatively say which way they think the case will come out based on the briefs and the oral argument. And then the Chief of the panel, which is the most senior active judge on the panel, assigns the cases for writing purposes. Then you go back home, and that’s where you write them. And you get the record in the cases assigned to you. Plus, then you have all these cases on the briefs that just—you’re on separate panels for those, and they get sent to your chambers. And those are done without oral argument.

Nykolaiszyn And are you hearing cases in Denver?

Seymour Yes, that’s the seat of the court.

Nykolaiszyn So, you have lots of traveling?

Seymour Yes, but only every other [month for a] week. I do, and at the beginning, that was—I was leaving my husband here with children ages two to twelve.

Nykolaiszyn Fun times. (Laughs)

Seymour Fun times, but he likes to cook, and it was great for all of them. I have a great family.

Nykolaiszyn Any challenges during those early years?

Seymour I loved the job because it’s very academic. It’s reading and writing and asking questions about what you’re reading, and then talking to your colleagues about a particular case. Of course, it was challenging. I had not done criminal law and 20 percent of our cases are criminal cases. They were then, still are, so that’s a learning curve. But they tend ultimately to be the easier of our cases because of reoccurring issues. So, after a year, I was comfortable doing that. But every day is a new day. We have a broad range of cases in federal court. Every law that Congress passes can become something in a lawsuit.

We also have what’s called diversity jurisdiction, which means we get state law cases if one of the parties is from Oklahoma or one of the other six states and the other party is a non-resident. The non-resident is entitled to—or even the resident, if they’re suing a non-resident, are entitled to file it in federal court. Where if a local resident sues somebody from another state in state court, then the person from the other state is entitled to file a motion to remove to federal court. That’s from the notion of not getting home towned. So, we’ll have actual state law questions in those cases.

Nykolaiszyn So, you really have to keep up with everything.

Seymour It’s on-the-job training on every new area of the law you get. For a period of time we’ll get a series of cases, like when Penn Square went bankrupt, we got a whole series of these cases. In the early-’80s, when we had energy problems, we had a whole slew of energy-related cases. Then we got a whole slew of sentencing issues, criminal sentencing, when the Congress passed a Sentencing Reform Act and set sentencing guidelines. So, you tend to get those, but otherwise you’ll get an environmental case or an Indian law case and then when you get subsequent Indian law cases, you have gained some familiarity with the area, but it could be on a totally different issue. So, it’s a fascinating job.

Nykolaiszyn And eventually, you became the Chief Judge?

Seymour Chief, yes. Not by popular acclaim. It’s because the Chief Judge in a circuit is the senior most active judge, which means you haven’t taken senior status. The next senior most active—so, when my senior takes senior status or retires, that’s when I… Monroe McKay, who was a Carter appointee from Utah, was the Chief before me, and he quit early. He quit when he turned sixty-five and took senior status. If he had stayed his full seven years, which is the term, I would’ve become the Chief Judge when I was fifty-eight and served my seven years and been able to take senior status. As it was, I became Chief before I turned fifty- eight. I don’t remember how old I was, but it was in 1994—well, fifty- four. I served from then until 2000. Then I was followed by Deanell Tacha, a Reagan-appointed woman in Kansas. So, our court had fourteen years of feminine reign, and we shaped them up.

Nykolaiszyn How is the job different when you’re Chief Judge?

Seymour You get a lot of administrative work that’s annoying. As Judge McKay said when I got sworn in as Chief, that he was handing me the reins of power that, unfortunately, weren’t attached to anything, which is true because you have no power over your colleagues, in a sense. They’re independent judges. What you have is a lot of administrative stuff and

judicial misconduct complaints. The Chief Judge has to decide and sit on every one of those. There are a lot of wacky ones, pro se prisoners and all kinds of stuff. So, that was annoying, and I didn’t like that part of the job. But you sit on the Judicial Conference of the United States as the representative of your circuit, and that body is a policy-making arm for the federal courts and consists of the Chief Justice of the United States, who chairs it, the Chief Judge of each circuit, and then a district court judge representative from each circuit.

In our circuit, the district judges pick their own representatives. And when I first went to my first meeting, I was seriously considering quitting being Chief because it’s all this—you have to cut back on your legal stuff because it takes up so much time. I seriously thought about quitting until I went to my first judicial conference. And I think out of this body of—there were twelve circuits, so that’s twenty-four, plus the Chief, plus the federal circuit, and court of claims—there were maybe about twenty-eight or twenty-nine voting members. And in the first batch, there were two other women besides me. So, I decided I owed it to women in the federal judiciary to stay on as Chief, so there would be a female representative to the judicial conference. I really enjoyed that part of it.

When Rehnquist became Chief Justice, he was a very, very good administrator, and he opened up the committee system. Before that it was all good ol’ boys. The committees would get appointed, judges would be put on, the Chief Justice picks the judges for each of the committees, which are broad, and they do have power over rules, recommending federal rules, evidentiary rules, and all kinds of other things, the budget, the judiciary budget. And before Rehnquist, each of these committees was composed of guys, and the chair would stay in for years and get reappointed.

Rehnquist totally opened it up. He sent out questionnaires to ask people, judges, what they were interested being on and set a rule that you can’t be on a committee more than six years, two three-year terms, even if you’re chair. I had actually been appointed to a committee by Chief Justice Burger, the Defender Services Committee, before Rehnquist became Chief Justice. Then he appointed me chair of that committee. That committee governs all of the federal defenders—indigent defense, the federal defender offices and the panel attorneys—and was really an interesting, fun thing to be doing. When you sit on the Judicial Conference, you vote on proposals from the committees coming out, and so you get involved in all of the really interesting policy decisions for the federal courts. That was fun.

Nykolaiszyn Just right up your alley.

Seymour Right up my alley. Administrative stuff was…

Nykolaiszyn Not so much. (Laughter)

Seymour I’m talking judges fighting over whether they get parking spots, all kinds of stuff. Space and facilities for the whole circuit and misconduct complaints, not just against judges on my court, but against a federal district judge, a federal bankruptcy judge, or a federal magistrate judge. And there are a lot of those judges in the circuit. It’s just a constant— mostly annoyance.

Nykolaiszyn So, you were happy when your time as Chief Judge…

Seymour I was very happy when my—and employee disputes and all kinds of stuff.

Nykolaiszyn You left the Chief Judgeship in 2000.

Seymour 2000.

Nykolaiszyn And then you assumed senior status in 2005.

Seymour Yes, on my birthday.

Nykolaiszyn Really?

Seymour When I turned sixty-five, yes. That’s when you’re eligible.

Nykolaiszyn Wow. What’s the difference now in your role?

Seymour I don’t sit en banc. I don’t get to vote on en bancs. I can poll the court if I’m on the panel. If I’m on a panel and the case gets en banced, then I can sit as a senior judge. But otherwise, senior judges don’t participate in the en banc process, which is just fine with me. I am perfectly comfortable letting my colleagues make those decisions. I had people telling me—George W. Bush was president when I took senior status. I had people telling me I should wait until a democrat got in, but I don’t believe in that. I think the system works fine the way it is. It’s gotten much too politicized. I think people who are good, who are proposed by either president, who are nominated, should be confirmed by the Senate, unless they’ve got problems with their abilities. But I don’t think they should be picked apart for their—really for the president’s political views, because we’re not supposed to have any. And in most cases, it makes absolutely no difference when you’re deciding an environmental case or a corporate case or energy law case.

Nykolaiszyn Politics shouldn’t even come into play.

Seymour No. And they really don’t come into play. So, I gave up my seat and was replaced by a republican who is a super terrific judge. Deanell, my republican colleague and friend since ’85, just took senior status in January, and then she’s retiring to go be [the law school] dean at Pepperdine. She told me, she says, “I’m following your lead.” And she gave up—she’s a conservative-republican, and she gave up her seat because the system really works. I have great colleagues. We do not decide cases because of our political views. We just don’t.

Nykolaiszyn So, looking back on your career, [what has been the] best part about serving on the bench?

Seymour It’s just the world’s greatest job if you like the law, which I do. It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s different every day. I get to hire law clerks from all over the place, and I hire clerks who are smart, and we have an overabundance of applications from smart law clerks. So, I tend to hire people that I want to spend a year with because I work in a very small, cloistered environment. I like my job. I like my colleagues. I love going to court and doing oral argument. I get great cases on all kinds of fun issues, including constitutional ones.

Nykolaiszyn Do you have time to mentor?

Seymour I don’t get much opportunity to mentor, other than my law clerks. I’ve had a couple of interns, or externs, from the University of Tulsa over the years, but we really don’t have the space to put somebody, so that makes it difficult. And when you’re working full time in this job, it’s a heck of a lot of work. In fact, after I took senior status, ever since then, I’ve wondered how I did this job full-time. But my husband and I are traveling a lot, so that’s fun.

Nykolaiszyn So, are you looking at retirement soon?

Seymour No. No. I like doing what I’m doing. My husband is finally slowing down, but we have nine terrific grandkids. Our kids are scattered all over the country, and so we visit them a lot. They visit us, and we spend the summers in the mountains of Colorado, which I love. And I can do work from there because of laptops and FedEx.

Nykolaiszyn And this is a lifetime appointment?

Seymour This is a lifetime appointment. I can die with my boots on if I want to. In fact, a fellow judge from—we have district judges sit with us, senior

district judges, especially, but also new. After a district judge is appointed and has worked for a year, we have them come up and sit with us just so we get to know them, and they get to know how we operate. The first time I ever sat, Judge Brown, Wes Brown, from Kansas, had taken senior status, so he was a senior judge thirty-one years ago. He is still sitting. He is a hundred and three.

Nykolaiszyn Oh, wow.

Seymour Yes.

Nykolaiszyn Wow!

Seymour Terrifically neat man.

Nykolaiszyn Still sharp as a tack and…?

Seymour Still sharp as a tack. I went to his 100th birthday party. There was an article about him in the paper recently. But he still takes cases.

Nykolaiszyn We interview a fair amount of older folks, and I’ve only seen a couple still really, really sharp at [that age].

Seymour That’s become a huge problem because the Federal Judiciary has really changed, and so judges tend to be hanging on longer, and you have some health issues. A number of judges are quitting because of the pay these days. We have not had a pay raise since 1989.

Nykolaiszyn Wow.

Seymour We’ve had some COLA’s [Cost of Living Adjustment], but Congress— they set up a commission that said we get paid the same as Congress, and they don’t want us to get ahead. So, when they don’t give themselves a COLA, they take ours away. So, we’ve gotten kind of behind, and that’s become an issue. But aging is an issue, and we had— and I was on it—a judicial health and wellness committee created to make recommendations, because you don’t want these judges to have misconduct complaints filed against them because they’re falling asleep on the bench or whatever. You want it to be raised as a health issue and deal with it as a health issue, and so that’s what…

Nykolaiszyn And I guess there are things in place to…

Seymour Well, there weren’t.

Nykolaiszyn Oh.

Seymour Yes, there weren’t, but there will be, in process.

Nykolaiszyn Good. That’s good. You’ve had a strong educational background at Smith and Harvard. Can you describe some of the places where—we don’t always learn it in the classroom—where you learned the background you needed for your career?

Seymour I learned a lot in my travels. We traveled to the south when I was in one of these early travel days, when it was a very segregated place. I learned—both my parents are very—I went to totally integrated schools in Battle Creek. There was one high school. Integrated teams, integrated cheerleading squad. So, going south was like a foreign country back then. Seeing signs that there are no black people allowed, that kind of thing. So, that became part of my education. Traveling all over the world and seeing different cultures really expanded my horizons, I think. That was part of my education. That was a big part of my education. So, I tend to pick up probably a broader view of things than I otherwise might have.

I’m an adopted Oklahoman. When I first came here, it was also like a foreign country. But I was coming from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, of course, there was no liquor by the drink, which meant there were no good restaurants. It was just a real change for me, but Tulsa is a great place. It’s been a great place to raise kids and, as you know, things have changed over time in that regard, and we now have some great restaurants. A lot of interesting people have moved to Oklahoma. The energy business has brought a lot of people from other places here. It was a great place to raise kids. It was a great place for me to be able to have a career because the work—people here don’t work like they work in New York and California. If I’d gone to work for a big firm in New York, I would have had a much more difficult time having four kids and taking those maternity leaves and coming back and working part time. I probably couldn’t have done it.

Nykolaiszyn Well it’s probably also a good statement to your work ethic when you were working, before maternity leave, because they obviously wanted you to come back.

Seymour Yes, they did. No, this was a great environment. We bought an older home near Philbrook when nobody was buying in that part of town, and that’s where we raised our kids. They went to Lee Elementary School, which was in between there and my office downtown and then here. So, it was easy to take off for school conferences and all that kind of stuff. It’s just been a great place to have this kind of job and have a family.

Nykolaiszyn We’ve talked about some instances in your career that were a little bit of a stumbling block. Are there any that come to mind that we haven’t spoken about?

Seymour Oh, just odd comments from people from time to time. One of the partners in the firm I ended up working almost ten years for before I became a judge wanted me to go by my first initial and my middle name and my last name, so clients wouldn’t know I was female. Although, they found out if they showed up in the office. I got comments from guys from time to time about what I was doing, but nothing horrible. I tend to sort of laugh off those kinds of things. When I went to court here, I was treated very favorably. There was a trial judge, the only federal district judge here for years, liked women. He liked me, and it was always “Gentlemen and Mrs. Seymour” in the courtroom.

One time, I was in a conference with other lawyers. We were having a pretrial conference in his conference room down the hall here. We took a break, his career law clerk (we called her Judge Marilyn), would run these things. It was a big bank case, as I recall. We took a break to go to the bathroom and make phone calls. I had been to the bathroom and I was coming back down the hall and the judge came out of his chambers and he threw his arms around me to give me a hug. I was looking over his shoulder when the lawyer from Oklahoma City on the other side came around the bend and went… (Gestures) (Laughter) So, it kind of worked both ways.

When I went on the court, there was one lovable Irish judge from Colorado, who was senior and getting a little irascible, let’s say. On a case, if you disagreed with him, he’d take after you personally. It could be nasty. So, when I was on a panel with him and another judge, if the other judge wanted to raise some disagreement after the fact, he’d call me and have me call Judge Doyle because Judge Doyle was this Irish Catholic gentleman, and he didn’t believe in treating women like that. So, he was always very nice to me even though he would ream out my colleagues. So, we called it hiding behind my skirt. It hasn’t always been a disadvantage to be female.

Nykolaiszyn Sure. You were a trailblazer for many others, I’m sure.

Seymour Only because I came first and there were so few, literally. When I graduated from law school in 1965, only 3 percent of the law school graduates in the country were women. By the mid-’70s, it had gotten close to 50 percent. Certainly by ’80, it had changed that rapidly. So, I was just the beginning of a huge tide of women starting to go to law school. But when I first came here, the other thing about it is I couldn’t get—I was separated from my husband, I was back here with two little

kids. I went to get a Sears Credit Card. I had filed for divorce, and they wouldn’t give me a card in my name. It had to be in my husband’s name. I said, “He’s in Indonesia. We’re getting divorced.” “We don’t care.” “If you’re married, it has to be in your husband’s name.”

So, all of that was… Then the Fair Credit Act got passed and all of that was changing, really, in the ’70s when I was practicing here. So, my firm, if we ever got an employment discrimination case, an employment issue against any of our clients, I was the one that would get it just because they figured—I don’t know what they figured. But I was on top of those things, shall we say, since…

Nykolaiszyn Right place, right time.

Seymour Right place, right time, absolutely. And a president who was interested in—I’m sure he was getting kicked by Rosalyn—was interested in putting women on the bench. I didn’t have political contacts here. I wouldn’t have gotten my job but for that. It was totally right place, right time, and I was young. A lot of my career has been right place, right time.

Nykolaiszyn Career highlights, looking back?

Seymour Oh, gosh. Hard to say. Being the first woman in a lot of things is fun. It really was. And talking to younger women coming along. It was interesting because somewhere after this great surge of women, women began to think they couldn’t have families, couldn’t see how they could do both. So, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to women about that. I think women should start their own law firms if they’re in firms that are not family friendly. You just have to because I think people should have a balanced life. Women should not turn into workaholic guys in their careers. And I don’t think workaholic guys, family men, should be workaholics either. I think that’s changed some. I know my daughters, I have a son and three daughters, and I can tell you that my daughters’ husbands would not get away with putting everything on their wives to handle. Times have just changed, and it’s been fun to watch that. It’s been fun to see. When I first became a judge, there were hardly any women in the courtroom, and that’s changed drastically. Lots of women, in the criminal cases, lots of women assistants and U.S. Attorneys and federal defenders and panel members and lawyers for corporations and just a lot of women. It’s been a really fun thing to watch.

One case that always pops into my mind is Brown vs. Board of Education, which I sat on in the early ’90s. Looking through my briefs for oral argument, Brown vs. Board of Education, and I’m thinking, “How can this be?” It was the daughter, Linda Brown-Smith, who was

the little girl in that case, filed on behalf of her daughter, claiming that the Topeka public schools were never integrated, and the case had never been closed. It came back from the Supreme Court, and I don’t know, they made a few changes in the school system, I guess. The district court never gave up jurisdiction in the case. I don’t know why. She just reopened the original case on behalf of her daughter and had been through federal district court. She lost, came up here on appeal, and we reversed and said—they threw her out on summary judgment, saying there weren’t sufficient facts to raise a claim. And we reversed and said, “Yes, there are.” They ended up settling and creating the magnet school program in Topeka. But imagine my surprise. I just had a lot of interesting cases. I got an award from the Federal Bar Association a few years ago, a civil rights award, which pleased me. I liked that.

Nykolaiszyn Now, you were inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005. What does this honor mean to you?

Seymour It meant a lot. I was surprised and very pleased because, as I say, I’m happy to be an Oklahoman now, and I’m happy that women were being recognized. And when I looked at the women who had been given this award, there are a lot of great women in this state and a lot of them were pioneers just because they were getting into areas that women hadn’t previously been accepted in. It’s a nice group to be among, and I think it’s really neat that Oklahoma does that.

Nykolaiszyn As a transplanted Oklahoman, what does Oklahoma mean to you?

Seymour It’s totally different as a state than the one I grew up in and other ones that I visit on the West Coast and the East Coast, but people here are extraordinarily nice and friendly. My law clerks come from all over, and they invariably comment about how nice people are here. And it’s very noticeable now when I leave and go someplace else like New York City. In fact, my daughter, my oldest daughter who lived in New Jersey, married a guy in college who was from New Jersey, they lived there for a while and came back here where they lived and worked for about four years. She said the first time she went to work out, she came home and she said, “Oh, my God, I love this place.” She said, “I went to reach for the weights and a guy got there first and handed them to me.” She said, “If I’d been in New Jersey and I’d gone to reach for the weights and I’d got there first, the guy would have snatched them out of my hands.” I think that’s a perfect description of the difference in people’s attitudes here. It’s just a great place to live.

Nykolaiszyn If you could tell Oklahomans anything, impart some wisdom, what would you tell them?

Seymour I would tell them to broaden their perspective because if you grow up here and you never travel to the other states, you have a totally different perspective than if you go someplace else to visit, to live. You just do. People come from all over and, of course, we have people here who come—a lot of people come in with the petroleum degrees who come from the Middle East or Asia, and you can learn a lot from them. I’ve just learned traveling around that people are basically people wherever you go. They’re all interested in their families, their children getting ahead and having a good job and having a decent life. It doesn’t make any difference if they were born in rural Africa or New York City or Timbuktu. You don’t really sense that unless you go to those places and learn that even though their culture may be very different, they are basically—people are people.

Nykolaiszyn Of course, many people look at you now as a role model for everything that you’ve accomplished. How important is that?

Seymour It’s been nice to be a role model. As I said, it sort of, I feel like an accidental role model. But it’s nice to think that I may have influenced younger women to do something that they might not otherwise have done, like apply for a judgeship, take a chance on something, realizing they can have a career and have a family, anything in that regard. It’s been very nice. It’s been fun to be a—I have all these great stories about stuff I went through. I took exams, I took four-hour final exams in an old building in Harvard Law School that had no women’s bathrooms, for example. I mean, times have changed. I think a lot of women don’t realize how lucky they are. How different it was in a pretty recent past.

Nykolaiszyn Would you like to make mention of anybody who has played an important role in your life?

Seymour Yes, my dad and my husband, both of them. My father encouraged me to do—he did, even though he hadn’t gone to college. He encouraged all his kids to get the best education that they could possibly get. My husband has been so supportive of me in everything that I have done, which is really nice considering he came out of a different era, as I did. And he still is, it’s great.

Nykolaiszyn Family is still a big part of your life right now.

Seymour Family is an enormous part of my life. Love those grandbabies. Well, I enjoy my kids. We talk on the phone all the time. It’s fun to watch kids grow up, become their own person.

Nykolaiszyn Well before I ask my last question, is there anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t asked you about today?

Seymour Good grief, I don’t think so.

Nykolaiszyn Well, when history is written about you, what would you like for it to say?

Seymour I would like it to say that I was known for respecting every human being as a human being and respecting other people’s views, even though they are directly contrary to mine. I think that’s missing a lot in our society today. But it’s what this country was founded on, and I think it’s important. It means a lot to me to have an open mind about things.

Nykolaiszyn Well, Judge Seymour, thank you so much for taking time out to meet with us today.

Seymour You’re welcome.

Nykolaiszyn I really appreciate it.

------End of interview ------