Adams, Annette (1877–1956)
Adams, Annette (1877–1956)
American lawyer and jurist. Born on March 12, 1877; died in Sacramento, California, in 1956; graduated from the State Normal School, Chico, California, 1897; graduated from the University of California-Berkeley, 1904, earned J.D., 1912; taught at Alturas High School in California from 1907–10.
When Annette Adams earned her J.D. degree in 1912 from the University of California at Berkeley, she was the only woman in her class. Two years later, after becoming active in the Democratic Party, she was named federal prosecutor for the Northern District of California, the first woman to hold the post. In 1918, she was named special U.S. attorney in San Francisco and was then promoted to assistant attorney general in Washington, D.C. (June 1920), where her position involved overseeing prosecution of violators of prohibition's Volstead Act under A. Mitchell Palmer. Adams returned to private practice in 1921, until Franklin Roosevelt asked her to serve as assistant special counsel under California Supreme Court Judge John Preston to handle prosecution in U.S. v. Standard Oil. In November 1944, she was elected to a 12-year term as jurist on the California Third District Court of Appeals. Annette Adams was the first woman in that Western state to hold such a high-ranking judicial position.