BOSONE, REVA BECK

BOSONE, REVA BECK

Reva Beck Bosone was Utah’s first woman judge and the first woman elected to the House of Representatives from that state.

Bosone was born April 2, 1895, in American Fork, Utah, the only daughter among the four children of Christian M. Beck and Zilpha Chipman Beck. Her father was of Danish extraction, and her mother was a descendant of the 1847 Mormon pioneers and of the Mayflower pilgrims.

After attending elementary and high schools in American Fork, Bosone went to Westminster Junior College, in Salt Lake City, and in 1919 received her bachelor of arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She married Harold G. Cutler in 1920. They were divorced one year later. From 1920 to 1927 she taught in several Utah high schools.

Inspired by her mother’s admonition that a
country is no better than its laws, Bosone
decided that the best way to serve all the people
was to become a lawmaker. Bosone was one of
two women who entered the University of Utah
College of Law in 1927 to “read law.”While she
was studying law, Bosone married fellow law
school classmate Joseph P. Bosone in 1929. In
1930 she became the fourth woman to graduate
from the University of Utah law school. In the
same year she gave birth to a daughter and
opened her own law practice.
In 1931, after her husband graduated from
law school, the couple established the law firm of
Bosone and Bosone in Helper, Utah. In 1932
Bosone became a candidate for the state legislature.
After conducting a door-to-door campaign
with her two-year-old daughter in her arms, she
was elected to the Utah House of Representatives
from Carbon County. Bosone was reelected
in 1934 and in 1935 was elected majority leader.
She became the first woman member of the
influential Sifting (Rules) Committee, as well as
its chairman. As a member of a group known as
the “Progressive Bloc” Bosone played an integral
role in the passage of a minimum wage-andhour
law for women and children and of the
Utah child labor constitutional amendment.Her
efforts in these areas were aided by FRANCES
PERKINS, labor reformer and U.S. secretary of
labor, and from ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, wife of
President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.
After leaving the Utah Legislature in 1936,
Bosone returned to private practice for a short
time before being elected a Salt Lake City judge
in police and traffic court. In her judicial position,
to which she was reelected until 1948, she
instituted what were then extraordinary traffic
fines: $300 for drunken driving and $200 for
reckless driving.During her tenure on the bench
traffic cases more than tripled but only three
appeals from her judgments were sustained. At
the same time Bosone, theorizing that alcoholism
was an illness rather than a moral failing,
began to refer offenders to Alcoholics Anonymous
and to make efforts to institute a government
program for treating alcoholics.
Bosone, who divorced her husband in 1940,
remained active touring a number of states as
chair of a WORLD WAR II Civilian Advisory
Committee and serving on the Salt Lake County
Welfare Commission. In 1945 she was an “official
observer” at the founding conference of the
UNITED NATIONS in San Francisco.
In 1948 Bosone defeated incumbent William
A. Dawson and became the U.S. representative
from the Second Congressional District of Utah.
At the time there were eight other women in the
House of Representatives and one in the Senate.
While serving in the House, Bosone was the first
woman appointed to the Interior Committee. In
1950, Bosone was reelected after defeating Ivy
Baker Priest a Republican who later became the
second woman to hold the position of U. S.
Treasurer. After her reelection Bosone pushed
for legislation to remove Native Americans from
government guardianship and sponsored water
and soil conservation initiatives for the West.
Bosone ran for reelection in 1952 and in
1954 but was defeated both times by former
incumbent Dawson. The campaigns, conducted
in the nervous atmosphere of the COLD WAR,
were hard-fought with Bosone facing charges of
accepting kickbacks and being a Communist
sympathizer. After her loss in 1954 she returned
to private law practice until 1958, when she
became legal counsel for the Subcommittee of
Safety and Compensation of the House Committee on Education. In 1961 Postmaster General
J. Edward Day appointed her a judicial officer
and chairwoman of the Contract Board of
Appeals for the U.S. Post Office Department. In
this position, which she held until her retirement
in 1968, Bosone was authorized to make
final decisions for the department in OBSCENITY
cases and FRAUD cases.
Throughout her professional life Bosone
had a special interest in the problems of alcoholism
and juvenile delinquency. Her work in
these areas resulted in her being elected to Utah’s
Hall of Fame in 1943. In 1947 and 1948 she was
director of the Utah State Board for Education
on Alcoholism. Previously, during World War II,
she was an active member of the United War
Fund Committee of Utah and of the Veterans
Central Welfare Committee.
Bosone was a pioneer in the use of television
as a communication medium. In 1953 she moderated
a program called It’s a Woman’s World,
which received the Zenith Television Award for
excellence in local programming. Her long and
distinguished career was highlighted in a 1977
television documentary, Her Honor, the Judge.
Bosone received numerous recognitions and
awards for her contributions to the worlds of
law and politics. In 1965 her name was on the
list of possible nominees for the U.S. Supreme
Court. The University of California at Berkeley
conferred on her the Distinguished Service in
Government Award in 1970 and Westminster
College awarded her an honorary doctor of
humanities degree in 1973. Also in 1973 she
received an award for her efforts to raise the status
of women in Utah. In 1977 she received an
honorary doctorate from the University of Utah.
Bosone died in Vienna, Virginia, on July 21,
1983.

FURTHER READINGS
Drachman, Virginia G. 1998. Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers
in Modern American History. Cambridge: Harvard Univ.
Press.
Governor’s Office on Families. Available online at (accessed June 2, 2003).
Matthews, Glenna. 1992. The Rise of Public Woman: Woman’s
Power and Woman’s Place in the United States, 1630–
1970. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
National Education Association Journal. 1949. April.
Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Available
online at (accessed June 2,
2003).
Utah History to Go. Available online at (accessed on June 2, 2003).

CROSS-REFERENCES
Alcohol “Alcoholics Anonymous” (Sidebar); Perkins, Frances; Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor.