Woman Triumphant: The story of her struggles for freedom, education and political rights. / Dedicated to all noble-minded women by an appreciative member of the other sex.

by Rudolf Cronau

WOMAN IN THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW.

When in the year of our Lord 1869 American papers reported that in Iowa a woman had been admitted to the bar, most readers were inclined to regard this “bit of news” as one of the many jokes, sprung occasionally upon credulous people in order to warn them what the “new woman” might be able to do. But in this case the “joke” turned out to be a fact. And if people had been somewhat better acquainted with their Bibles, they would have known that the woman lawyer of Iowa was only another confirmation of Rabbi Ben Akiba’s famous saying: “There is nothing new under the sun!”

Open your Bible and read in Chapter 4 of the Judges IV about Deborah, the Joan of Arc of the Hebrews. Of this most extraordinary woman recorded in Jewish history it is stated that she was a prophetess as well as a judge, “to whom the children of Israel came for judgment.”

The Greeks and Romans too had female lawyers. From writers of the classic past we know that Aspasia pleaded causes in the Athenian forum, and Amenia Sentia and Hortensia in the Roman forum. And Valerius Maximus (Hist. lib. VIII, Chapter 3) states that the right of Roman women to follow the profession of advocate was taken away in consequence of the obnoxious conduct of Caliphurnia, who, from “excess of boldness” and “by reason of making the tribunals resound with howlings uncommon in the forum,” was forbidden to plead. The law, made to meet the especial case of Caliphurnia, ultimately “under the influence of the anti-feministic tendencies” of the period, was converted into a general one. In its wording the law sets forth that the original reason for woman’s exclusion “rested solely on the doings of said person.”

The “howlings of Caliphurnia” furnished the legislators of all later periods with a welcome pretext to exclude women from practice of the law, and it was not till 1869 that a woman again obtained admission to the bar. This pioneer was Miss Arabella A. Mansfield of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, who was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869, under the statute providing only for admission of “white male citizens.”

The next female lawyer was Mrs. Belva Ann Lockwood, a graduate of the Law School of the National University at Washington, D. C. Having been admitted in 1873 to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, she applied in October, 1876, for admission as practitioner of the Supreme Court of the United States, but was rejected under the following decision: “By the uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but men are admitted to practice before it as attorneys and counselors. This is in accordance with immemorial usage in England, and the law and practice in all the States, until within a recent period; and the Court does not feel called upon to make a change until such a change is required by statute or a more extended practice in the highest courts of the States.”

BELVA A. LOCKWOOD.

But if the members of the Supreme Court had entertained the hope of scaring away women once and for all, they soon enough found that they were mistaken. Mrs. Lockwood drafted a bill and secured its passage in Congress, providing “that any woman who shall have been a member of the bar of the highest court of any State or Territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, for the space of three years, and shall have maintained a good standing before such court, and who shall be a person of good moral character, shall, on motion, and the production of such record, be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.” This bill was approved on February 15th, 1879. Since then Mrs. Lockwood as well as a number of other female lawyers have been admitted under this law to practice before the highest court of the United States.

A “Woman’s International Bar Association” was organized in 1888, for the purpose of establishing law schools for women and of promoting the interests of female lawyers as well as of securing better legal conditions for women.

According to the Census of 1910 there were 1010 woman lawyers in the United States.

“Having taken up the law,” so said Miss Edith J. Griswold, herself a counsellor-at-law, “woman will not rest until she stands on a level with man, and the end of the Twentieth Century will probably find an equilibrium in the United States Government that can only be obtained (as in the home government) by the equal balancing of the different propensities of male and female mind in the making and enforcing of laws. The prophecy that the time is coming when woman will govern seems ludicrous, and yet it is no more ludicrous than the present lopsided arrangement whereby man has the exclusive power of government. With the rapid advance of woman conditions are being manifested that require woman’s judgment, and to obtain true justice in matters relating to both sexes an equal number of men and women should compose both the court and the jury. By the end of the Twentieth Century, I believe, a woman’s judgment will carry as much weight as a man’s, and the opinions handed down from our higher courts will have to be concurred in by an equal number of male and female judges.”