Now Phyllis Beck and Alice Beck Dubow have another connection: The first mother-daughter judges in the 231-year history of the commonwealth.

Two generations of judicial estrogen in the Keystone State? Hear she, hear she, Billy Penn.

Pioneering jurist Beck, 80, is retired from the bench but works four days a week as general counsel for the Barnes Foundation. Dubow, 48, was just elected to Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

"The older I get, the more I look like her," says Dubow, who "shops" in Beck's Wynnewood closet once a year. "I certainly dress like her and have her demeanor."

Naturally, when Dubow decided to become a judge, her mother raised no objection. In fact, she ran her campaign.

"She clearly was 'the mother,' and very protective of Alice," says Dave Glancey, former head of the city's Democratic Party. "At the same time, she was emotionally invested in winning."

The emotion even expressed itself in Dubow's choice of garment at her emotional swearing-in ceremony July 30 - her mother's judicial robe. (Dubow managed not to cry, winning a bet with her husband and kids.)

"If I had to imagine the most perfect adult relationship between a child and mother, this is the one," says local lawyer David Fineman, an adviser for Dubow's campaign.

The Hon. Alice Dubow still wears Mom's robes every day in Family Court. "I feel her monogram on my back," she says. "Her voice is always in my head."

It is an impressive voice. The first woman to sit on the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Beck stepped down after 24 years in December 2005. In addition to her work at the Barnes, she is chair of the Independence Foundation.

"My mother never pushed me to become a judge," says Dubow, formerly deputy general counsel at Drexel. "To a certain extent, I liked the power and authority. It doesn't really matter that I will never be as much of a legend as she is."

In the legal community, Beck's opinions were considered "the gold standard," Superior Court Judge Susan Gantman says.

"Judge Beck is a very clear thinker and an outstanding writer," Gantman, 56, explains. "She took cases where legal issues were undefined and defined them in a practical way. . . . Her rulings were rarely overturned."

In 1990's Gruber v. Gruber, for example, Beck set standards by which lower courts could rule on custody cases in which the custodial parent wants to move to another state.

To Dubow, Beck's professional accomplishments are secondary. "My mother's genius is her close relationship with all her children."

Roy, 55, is an epidemiologist in Tampa, Fla. Judy, 53, and Dan, 51, followed the path of patriarch Aaron Beck, 86, trailblazing founder of cognitive therapy and professor of psychiatry at Penn.

Judy is director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research in Bala Cynwyd; Dan's a cognitive therapist in Boston.

As youngsters, the Beck quartet was given only two pieces of motherly advice: Don't smoke cigarettes and don't get married before age 25.

To this day, none is a slave to the demon tobacco. As for No. 2, all three married sibs tied the knot early. Bucking the odds, their unions are still intact.