Janet Mary Riley Papers

Janet Mary Riley was born in New Orleans in 1915. She earned her B.A., cum laude, from Loyola University New Orleans in 1936.  After a short time teaching in public schools, Riley earned her B.S. in Library Science from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  She returned to New Orleans as an assistant in the circulation department of the New Orleans Public Library and later as an assistant librarian at Loyola University. In 1943, during World War II, Riley left Loyola to serve as Post Librarian at Camp Plauche and LaGarde General Hospital, both in New Orleans. After the war, Riley returned to Loyola to work as a law librarian and, in an effort to become familiar with the language and literature of law, began taking courses at the law school.  This led to her work as a substitute law instructor.  In 1952, Riley graduated third in a class of 28 from Loyola Law School.  In 1956, she was hired as the first full-time female law professor in New Orleans and the seventh in the United States.  At the age of 43, in 1960, she earned an L.L.M. from the University of Virginia.  In 1971, after teaching for 15 years, she achieved the rank of Professor of Law.  Riley retired in 1986, but continued to teach seminars until 1997. During her tenure as a law professor, Riley wrote the first casebook on Louisiana community property law, Louisiana Community Property – Cases and Materials on Louisiana Property Law and Marriage, which was published in 1972.  The following year, the Louisiana State Law Institute appointed Riley to lead a committee to draft proposed revisions to the Louisiana Civil Code on matrimonial regimes, community property and all Louisiana legislation which unreasonably discriminated on the basis of sex.  Until then, Louisiana’s community property laws made the husband “head and master of the community” and thus granted him total control of his wife’s assets.  Riley’s proposed “equal management” approach to the community, which let either spouse manage the property of the marriage, was adopted by the Louisiana legislature in 1978 and formally incorporated into the Civil Code in 1980. In addition to her efforts on behalf of women, Riley worked to eliminate racial discrimination. She was a member of the Commission on Human Rights of the Catholic Committee of the South, which assisted in the implementation of the New Orleans Archbishop’s 1953 order forbidding any further racial segregation in Catholic Churches.  She was a member of the Community Relations Council, a bi-racial group in New Orleans, which worked toward the integration of playgrounds, restaurants and other public spaces. Riley was an attorney of record and wrote the Petitioners’ Brief in Lombard v. Louisiana, a pivotal sit-in case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 1960s.  In that case, four students, three of whom were black and one of whom was white, were arrested and convicted of trespassing after refusing to leave a New Orleans lunch counter reserved for whites only.  The state court upheld the convictions, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and held that the Louisiana decision enforced racial discrimination and therefore could not stand. Riley was a member of the Society of Our Lady of the Way, a secular organization of employed unmarried women that followed the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, taking vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, and striving to find a balance between worship of God and life in the world. In 2000, Riley received the Adjutor Hominum award, presented annually to an outstanding alumnus of Loyola whose life exemplifies moral character, service to humanity and unquestionable integrity.  Two years later, the Janet Mary Riley Distinguished Professorship was established.  In 2004, Riley received the St. Ives Award, presented annually to a Loyola Law School graduate who has volunteered services to the law school or the university, maintained the highest standards of the profession, and furthered the mission of the alumni association.  In 2005, Loyola Law School gave Riley an honorary doctorate.  She died in 2008 at the age of 92.

Note written by Levert, A. Lee