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“To Do Justly”: The Integration of Women into the American Judiciary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2002

Barbara Palmer
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University

Extract

In 1869, the state of Iowa admitted Arabella Mansfield to the Bar, making her the first woman to receive a license to practice law in the United States (Epstein 1993, 49). That same year, Myra Bradwell applied for an attorney's license in the state of Illinois. When the state refused her, she appealed her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied her claim by an eight-to-one vote (Bradwell v. Illinois 83 U.S. 130 [1873]). In his concurring opinion, Justic Joseph Bradley argues that, “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” (83 U.S. 130 [1873]). Ironically, shortly before the Supreme Court announced its decision, another woman in Illinois, Adah Kepley, attained a license to practice law. The judge who granted this license believed that her admission to the Bar was “proper and in accord with the spirit of the age” (Berkson 1982, 288).See Bowman (1998/99) for a list of biographies of these early women lawyers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2001 by the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

* This essay grew out of a paper presented at the Women and Politics Conference, cosponsored by the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission, American University, and the Women and Politics section of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2000. The author wishes to thank her undergraduate research assistant, Elizabeth Myers, for her assistance in the collection of the data used in this essay.