Lavinia Goodell

Her first significant case was representing temperance women who wanted to sue two men for the illegal sale of liquor. This case – along with an estate administration case – were appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1875. In order for Goodell to appear before the court, she needed to be admitted to the Supreme Court. She petitioned to be admitted in the summer of 1875 and she went to Madison on December 14 to argue before Chief Justice Edward G. Ryan. Ithamar Sloan represented her.[2] On February 16, 1876, her petition was denied.

In May, she wrote a reply to the ruling which denied her admission and submitted it to Wisconsin newspapers, Myra Bradwell's Chicago Legal News, and the Woman's Journal.[5] Then, on March 22, 1877, the Wisconsin legislature enacted a law which prohibited courts from denying admission to the bar on the basis of sex. The bill had been drafted by Goodell and she worked with Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly John B. Cassoday for it to pass.[2][6]

Goodell was admitted to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court on June 18, 1879. In 1880, Goodell argued and won her first case, Ingalls v. State, shortly before her death.[1]

Goodell's father was a well-known abolitionist and she began writing for his paper, The Principia, in late 1859.

Goodell was an active member of the women's rights movement and published many articles on these issues. In 1871, she wrote a series of four articles for the Woman's Journal on suffrage and later wrote a series of articles rebutting the position of the Christian Union that women should be subservient to their husbands.

She drafted a bill for the Wisconsin legislature which would have granted married women whose husbands were unable to support them the right to petition the court to take possession of his property. She convinced John B. Cassoday to introduce the bill but it was never passed.[1]

She corresponded with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony through her life and helped to circulate petitions for a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote. In 1878, Goodell signed the Susan B. Anthony amendment, which would become the nineteenth amendment in 1920.[1]

In November 1875, she was appointed to defend two criminal defendants and afterwards, she began to regularly visit the Janesville (Rock County) jail. She considered the prisoners to be her "boys" and allowed them to call her "mother".[2] She began a prison literacy program and wrote to her sister on New Years Day:

I believe I could run that jail so as to turn out every man better than he came in. Jails and prisons could just as well be made schools of virtue as vice if people chose to have it so, and would give a very little thought to the subject.[2]

She wrote articles for the Christian Union about prison reform where she advocated for prisoners to be given schooling and voluntary religious education and spoke about it at the 1879 American Women's Association Congress.[1]

She was an active public speaker about temperance. In 1875, she wrote a petition for the state legislature in favor of a prohibitory law. She attended a national temperance meeting in Chicago where she argued that temperance women should support women's suffrage because it would allow them to vote on the issue of temperance. This resolution was backed by Anna Dickinson and was passed.[2]