At the time of her matriculation to Harvard Law School in 1962, Roth was one of 25 women in a class of 700-plus men. Erwin Griswold, then the Dean of Harvard Law School, invited the women to his home for dinner, and told them they were taking the place of 25 men who would otherwise have a future in the law. Ultimately, Roth was one of 23 women to graduate with 545 men.[1]
Roth was one of the first ten women to join the Delaware bar.[1] She was in private practice in Wilmington, Delaware from 1965 to 1985, with the law firm of Richards, Layton & Finger.[2]
Roth's former law clerks include Chris Coons, United States Senator from Delaware; Lisa Monaco, United States Deputy Attorney General and former United States Homeland Security Advisor; Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Professor at Harvard Law School and Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Adam J. Levitin, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center; Ingrid Wuerth, Professor at Vanderbilt Law School; J. Travis Laster, Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery; Charles S. Crompton, Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court; Sharon Bradford Franklin, Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board; and Matthew Ahn, Visiting Professor at Cleveland State University College of Law; Seth Barrett Tillman, Associate Professor of Law at Maynooth University.[5] Howard Wasserman, writing in 2013, observed that at least twenty percent of Roth’s clerks to that point had entered academia, and suggested that she might be an
example of an “academic feeder judge.”[6]
Notable cases
On July 3, 2019, Roth ruled that Amazon is responsible for product deficiencies.[7]
Personal life
Roth's husband was William Roth, the late United States Senator from Delaware who sponsored legislation creating the Roth IRA. They had two children, Katharine K. Roth and William V. Roth III.[8] Her daughter Katherine died in 2014.[9]
