Ladies of Legend: The First Generation of American Women Attorneys

Abstract

Ladies of Legend: The First Generation of American Women Attorneys1 JILL NORGREN In 1893, Chicago attorney Ellen Martin sent an invitation to her sisters in law to at­ tend a first ever Congress of Women Lawyers, a convention to be held in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair. Her announcement went out to “All women in the United States and elsewhere who have been admitted to the bar of a court of record or graduated from a law school.” Martin and Fredrika Perry, her law partner, had chronicled the rise of the woman lawyer in an 1887 article titled “Admission of Women to the Bar.”2 Thanks to their survey and the 1890 national census, Martin knew there were more than 200 female attor­ neys in the United States—what we may think of as the first generation of U.S. women lawyers.3 Speculating that many of them would come to a meeting that coincided with the World’s Fair, Martin made the argument that her sisters needed to form a professional as­ sociation for the purpose of learning from each other and binding themselves more closely together. Three dozen women of this first generation—including three members of the U.S. Supreme Court bar—answered the call, meeting for three warm August days in the shadow ofthe dazzling new Ferris wheel called “the wonder of two continents.”4 During the official program, several of the older women reminisced about their early struggle against discrimination, but most of the speakers es­ chewed the opportunity to discuss personal 72 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY The first ever Congress of Women Lawyers convened in 1893 in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair. experience, talking instead about contempo­ rary legal and political issues.5 Lawyer and Republican party activist .1. Ellen Foster spoke about naturalization and election laws. Mary Ellen Lease, the fiery Kansas Populist some­ times dubbed “Yellin’ Mary,” used a lawyer’s perspective to analyze political movements. California attorney Clara Foltz chose not to present her proposal for an office of pub­ lic defender, instead delivering a new, eso­ teric talk titled “Evolution of the Law.” For­ mer presidential candidate (1884 and 1888) Belva Lockwood, deeply involved in the in­ ternational peace movement, unsurprisingly used the time allotted to her to present the case for a permanent international court of arbitration. These and other talks reflected the intel­ lectual prowess of this first generation, barely a quarter of a century after they had battled, cajoled, petitioned, and litigated their way into the profession of law. LADIES OF LEGEND 73 MYRA BRADWELL In 1865, at the conclusion of the American Civil War, the idea ofequal rights filled the air. In the optimistic decade that followed, a small group of women imagined that they might act on their aspirations to become lawyers. It was a radical ambition. Law was an all-male pro­ fession and most Americans believed that any woman who did not need to work outside her home or farm ought not to. Nevertheless, the thought of equality was addicting, and these women marched forward, reading law with fa­ thers and brothers, knocking on law-school doors, and petitioning county, state, and fed­ eral courts for bar privileges. Where these women lived and which lawschool deans andjudges they encountered mat­ tered. Columbia University Law School re­ fused to admitwomen in 1868 (and until 1927), while within two years ofthat date Washington University in St. Louis, Union College (later Northwestern), and the University ofMichigan permitted female law students to matriculate. In progressive counties and states, judges ac­ cepted motions to admit women attorneys to the bar. Elsewhere, however, courts declined to extend bar privileges to women, using the dodges ofthe common law, statutes employing the pronoun “he,” woman’s proper place, and God’s intentions. When Myra Bradwell chal­ lenged her exclusion from the practice of law, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bradley, in a concurring opinion, rejected her claim of Fourteenth Amendment rights, declaring it “the law of the Creator” that woman’s destiny should be limited to the “noble and benign offices of wife and mother.”6 In 1875, two years after the Bradwell decision, Wisconsin...