An introduction to Constitutional Law 100 Supreme Court cases everyone should know

Myra Bradwell

Myra Bradwell, an aspiring attorney and editor of a legal newspaper in Chicago, argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected the right of “admission to the bar of a State of a person who possesses the requisite learning and character.”

The vote in Bradwell v. Illinois was 8-1. The female attorney did not have a constitutional right to “exercise [her] trade.” Only Chief Justice Chase dissented.

Justice Miller wrote, the “right to admission to practice in the courts of a State is not a privilege or immunity” because it “in no sense depends on citizenship of the United States.”

Justices Field, Bradley and Swain contended in Slaughter-House that the Privileges or Immunities Clause did protect the right to pursue a lawful occupation. Therefore, their challenge was greater.

“The civil law, as well as nature herself,” Justice Bradley wrote, “has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman…. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.”

“A married woman is incapable, without her husband's consent, of making contracts which shall be binding on her or him. This very incapacity was one circumstance which the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed important in rendering a married woman incompetent fully to perform the duties and trusts that belong to the office of an attorney and counselor.”

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase: ‘‘I have always favored the enlargement of the sphere of women’s work and the payment of just compensation for it.’’

The day after Slaughter-House was handed down, the Supreme Court decided Bradwell v. Illinois, its second interpretation of the scope of the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Myra Bradwell was an aspiring attorney and editor of a legal newspaper in Chicago. She argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected the right of “admission to the bar of a State of a person who possesses the requisite learning and character.” She noted that the Clause applies to all “citizens of the United States,” not just to men.

In Slaughter-House, the Court divided 5-4 on whether the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right of a male butcher “to exercise [his] trade.” However, the vote in Bradwell v. Illinois was 8-1. The female attorney, the Court held, did not have a constitutional right to “exercise [her] trade.” Chief Justice Chase was the lone dissenter.

For the Slaughter-House majority, Bradwell was easy.