A Black woman on the High Court is a good start. But representation has limits.

The history of Black women and the law is, until relatively recently, "a history of impressive firsts," according to Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a professor of law and history at Harvard.

There's Charlotte Ray, the first Black woman lawyer and a graduate of Howard law school. There's Jane Bolin, the first Black woman judge in the United States. There's Pauli Murray, who coined the term Jane Crow, and whose legal arguments laid the groundwork for desegregating public schools and extending the rights of women and LGQTB people. Murray was the first Black person to earn a JSD from Yale Law, and the first Black person perceived as a woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest.

Then there's Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge, and the subject of Brown-Nagin's most recent book, .