Myra Bradwell and the Profession of Law: Case Documents JOHN A. LUPTON Most attorneys—certainly most women attorneys—know the story ofMyra Bradwell, who applied to become a lawyer in Illinois only to be rebuffed by both the Illinois supreme court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite her fame in her attempt to become licensed as an attorney specifically and for progressive Victorian women generally, there are only a few biographies of her and a handful ofarticles regarding her plight.1 This documentary edition is a new perspective on Myra Bradwell’s attempt to become a lawyer—not through an interpretive framework, but through the lens of the case documents.2 By examining transcriptions of the original case documents with interspersed editorial narrative, researchers and historians can place Bradwell in the context ofher times and better interpret her role in attempting to break gender barriers. Myra Colby was bom in Manchester, Vermont on February 12, 1831, the youngest of five children born to Eban and Abigail Colby. Soon after, the family movedto Portage, New York. In 1843, the family moved to Schaumburg, Illinois in Cook County. Myra moved to Wisconsin to live with a married sis ter to attend a finishing school. She finished her schooling at the Elgin Female Seminary in 1851.3 While at Elgin, Myra metJames Bradwell. The Colby family did not like Bradwell due to the fact that he had worked menial jobs while studying law. James had claimed that he could earn a living as a journeyman in seventeen different trades. James and Myra escaped to Chicago, where they eloped in May 1852.4 The newlywed couple moved to Mem phis, Tennessee, and James began teaching at a private school. James continued to study law and became licensed to practice in Ten nessee in 1852. James was under way in a promising career, but the constant reminder of slavery weighed heavily on the abolition ist couple. In 1854, the Bradwells returned to Illinois, settling in Chicago. From 1854 to 1862, they had four children: Myra in 1854, Thomas in 1856, Bessie in 1858, and James in 1862. Only Thomas and Bessie survived into adulthood.5 MYRA BRADWELL AND THE PROFESSION OF LAW 237 Upon his return to Illinois, James resumed studying law to become licensed in Illinois, which occurred in 1855. He formed a partner ship with his brother-in-law, Frank Colby, who four years earlier had chased Bradwell with his shotgun for courting his sister.6 After James became a lawyer in Illinois, Myra began reading law with him. She had no intention of becoming a lawyer but only stud ied with him in order to assist him in his cho sen career. In the 1850s, reading law with an established attorney was the principal method of obtaining a legal education. Myra stopped reading law when the Civil War broke out in 1861. She raised money to assist with sick and wounded soldiers with Soldiers’ Fairs in 1863 and 1867 and with the Northwestern Sanitary Fair in 1865.7 In the meantime, James won election as a Cook County judge in 1861 and gained reelection in 1865. He served as a probatejudge, and, during the Civil War, held that a slave marMyra Bradwell originally learned the law by reading it alongside her husband, James, as he studied to be an attorney. She did not decide to get her law license until many years later. riage was valid after emancipation, securing inheritance rights for many former slaves.8 After the 1867 Soldiers Fair, Myra re sumed reading law with her husband. Dur ing this second stage of legal education, she was determined to obtain her law license.9 In 1868, she founded the Chicago Legal News, a weekly newspaper devoted to conveying news important to the legal profession in a timely manner.10 Bradwell realized that too much time elapsed between the passage of laws and their publication and between the pronouncement of opinions and their pub lication. Her venture into legal publishing and her attempt to become a lawyer, accord ing to the American Law Review, was the “first serious attempt by a woman to share in the labors of the law...