Fourteenth Amendment
to The U.S. Constitution:
“No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person
of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.”
Myra Colby Bradwell
•
Born in 1831 in Manchester, Vermont.
James
Bradwell
• In 1852 Myra married James B. Bradwell, an Englishman who had immigrated to
the United States and studied law in Memphis Tennessee.
• In 1854, the Bradwells moved to Chicago, where James opened a law office and
eventually became a judge of the Cook County Court.
• Myra began to study law to help her husband as his assistant. She later decided
to open a practice of her own.
• In 1868 Myra founded a weekly legal newspaper called the Chicago Legal News.
With Bradwell servicing as both editor and business manager, the Chicago Legal
News quickly became a success.
• In 1869, after passing the state bar examination, Bradwell applied to the Illinois
Supreme Court for admission to the bar. The court rejected her application on the
grounds that as a married woman she “would be bound neither by her express
contracts nor by those implied contracts which it is the policy of the law to create
between attorney and client.” She reapplied, but the court rejected her again, this
time because she was a woman, regardless of her marital status. The Court ruled,
"God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged
to men to make, apply and execute laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic
truth."
• She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1873 upheld the Illinois
decision, saying that it could not interfere with each state’s right to regulate the
granting of licenses within its borders.
Myra Colby
Bradwell
Bradwell v. The State of Illinois
(1873), U.S. Supreme Court
Main Point 1
(Majority Decision written by
Justice Miller):
Citizenship does not give one
the right, under the
fourteenth amendment, to
practice law in the courts of
a state.
“We agree with [counsel] that there
are privileges and immunities
belonging to citizens of the United
States, in that relation and
character, and that it is these and
these alone which a State is
forbidden to abridge. But the right to
admission to practice in the courts
of a State is not one of them. This
right in no sense depends on
citizenship of the United States.” p.
84.
Justice Samuel Freeman Miller
Myra Bradwell
Main Point 2 (Concurring Opinion by Justice Bradley): Men and women are
very different. Women are naturally timid and delicate and there are many
occupations for which they are unfit. Man is woman’s protector and
defender.
…[T]he civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide
difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man
is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper
timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for
many of the occupations of civil life. p. 85.
Main Point 3 (Concurring Opinion by Justice
Bradley): Women belong to the domestic sphere,
and should not adopt a career distinct and
independent from that of her husband.
The constitution of the family organization, which
is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in
the nature of things, indicates the domestic
sphere as that which properly belongs to the
domain and functions of womanhood. The
harmony, not to say identity, of interests and
views which belong, or should belong, to the
family institution is repugnant to the idea of a
woman adopting a distinct and independent
career from that of her husband. p. 85.
Justice Bradley
Main Point 4 (Concurring Opinion by Justice
Bradley): God has given women the role of
wives and mothers. This is a natural law to
which we must adapt, and not be persuaded
by exceptional cases.
The paramount destiny and mission of
woman are to fulfill the noble and benign
offices of wife and mother. This is the law of
the Creator. And the rules of civil
society must be adapted to the general
constitution of things, and cannot be based
upon exceptional cases. p. 85.
Historical Significance
•
In the 1875 case Minor V. Happersett, the Court ruled against women
suffrage in Missouri on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment does not
add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen, and that historically
“citizen” and “eligible voter” have not been synonymous.
•
About a hundred years later, the Court began employing the Fourteenth
Amendment as a way of overturning gender-discriminatory state laws. In
doing so, however, it would typically use the "equal protection" clause,
rather than the clause cited in Bradwell, "privileges and immunities."
•
In 1882, the Illinois legislature passed a law guaranteeing all persons,
regardless of sex, the right to select a profession as they wished. Although
Bradwell never reapplied for admission to the bar, the Illinois Supreme
Court informed her that her original application had been accepted. As a
result, she became the first woman member of the Illinois State Bar
Association; she was also the first woman member of the Illinois Press
Association. On March 28, 1892, she was admitted to practice before the
U.S. Supreme Court.
•
In addition to her efforts to win admission to the bar, Bradwell played a role
in the broader women's rights movement. She was active in the Illinois
Woman Suffrage Association and helped form the American Woman
Suffrage Association. She was also influential in the passage of laws by the
Illinois legislature that gave married women the right to keep wages they
earned and protected the rights of widows.
•
Bradwell died February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois.