Dates

• Existence: 1914 - 1991

Biography

Jean Lagerquist Lewis was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1914. At age 12, she decided that she wanted to become a lawyer. She earned a law degree from Northwestern College of Law in 1938 and passed the Oregon bar exam in 1939. She opened a private practice law firm in Portland later that year. In June 1940, she and Hank Lewis were married before he was deployed overseas during World War II. They later had one child. From 1943 to 1945, she worked the staff of the U.S. Treasury General Counsel in Washington, D.C. She returned to Portland in 1946 and reopened her law office. She was a Democrat and served in the Oregon House of Representatives from 1954 to 1956, and in the Oregon Senate from 1957 to 1961. She also managed Wayne Morse’s 1956 campaign for the U.S. Senate. She became the first woman Circuit Court judge in Oregon when Governor Mark O. Hatfield appointed her to the Multnomah County Circuit Court in 1961. She served on the court until her retirement in 1978. She died in 1991.

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