CHICAGO – Senator Clinton was honored yesterday with an award from a women’s legal group she led almost 20 years ago, telling a roomful of lawyers that they must make their voices heard as lawmakers debate issues of equality.

Recent national polls have shown that the former first lady is a leading contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. But she stayed clear of politics and focused mostly on the legal profession in her speech to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.

“I sometimes worry today that the voices of those who are on the front lines fighting the battles – making sure that equal justice under the law is not just a slogan but a reality – are not as loud as they should be, not as vigorous in standing up to power as they need to be,” Mrs. Clinton said.

The New York senator was honored and served as the keynote speaker at an awards ceremony held by the commission. When the ABA created the group in 1987, Mrs. Clinton – who graduated from Yale Law School in 1973 – was asked to be its first chairwoman and helped produce a report on the obstacles that women faced in the legal profession.

She said the commission discovered widespread “blatant” and “attitudinal” discrimination. “We were, I think it’s fair to say, shocked by what we heard,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It was an overwhelming challenge.”

The ABA is holding its annual convention in Chicago, and about 1,400 people listened to the speech given by Mrs. Clinton, a native of the nearby suburb of Park Ridge.

“There are very different and even opposing views about what our Constitution means in today’s world, what legal structures are best suited for us to continue to offer opportunity and provide fairness and a level playing field. And your voices are absolutely essential in the debates we are having,” she said.

Earlier in the convention, Supreme Court Justice Stevens steered the debate over President Bush’s nominee to capital punishment, sharply condemning the country’s death penalty system. The court has been closely divided in death row cases, with Justice O’Connor often in the middle.

President Bush’s choice to replace her, Judge John Roberts, 50, showed little sympathy for prisoner appeals as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration, but later did free legal work for a death row inmate.

In a February 1983 memo while serving in the Reagan White House, Judge Roberts suggested that the high court could cut its caseload by “abdicating the role of fourth or fifth guesser in death penalty cases.”

Justice Stevens underscored the matter’s prominence at the court, noting evidence of “serious flaws.” His remarks provide the first sign of internal dismay over the retirement of Justice O’Connor.