Stuck in a low-level U.S. State Department job where promotions for women were rare, Dorothy Toth one day walked to the closest law school one day, hoping to take one course to see if she liked law. The dean told her she’d have to enroll as a student, even if only part-time. She did and in 1964 emerged with a degree from American University’s Washington College of Law.
She clerked and practiced law in Virginia, moved to Atlanta in 1967, worked at Fisher & Phillips and then as an assistant attorney general under Georgia Attorney General Arthur Bolton. That’s how she wound up arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court—five times.
