Albert Wyndham, Paris
MME. SUZANNE GRINBERG
Celebrated woman lawyer of Paris who pleads cases before the Conseil de la Guerre. The privilege thus accorded the French women lawyers marks an epoch in history. It is the first time in the world that women have conducted cases before a military tribunal.
In each country like this, where the opposing professional lines begin to show a weakened resistance, surely, sometimes silently, but irresistibly and inevitably, the new woman movement is taking possession. Next to medicine the legal profession, one may say, is at present the scene of active operations. The woman movement in law, as in medicine, began for all the world in the United States. It was in 1872 that one Mrs. Myra Bradwell of Chicago knocked at the tight shut doors of the legal profession in the State of Illinois. Of course her request was refused. Public opinion blushed that a woman should be guilty of such effrontery, and the learned judges of the court rebuked the ambitious lady with their finding that: “The natural and proper timidity which belongs to the female sex unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. And the harmony of interests which belong to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband.” Syracuse University, which gave to the world the first woman physician, also graduated Belva A. Lockwood, who in 1879 was the first woman to be permitted to practise law before the Supreme Court of the United States. Every State but Virginia has now admitted women to the practice of law. There are something over 1000 women lawyers in the United States. Their way in and their way up has been attended with the same difficulties that women encountered just about a generation ahead of them in the medical profession. The University of Michigan was one of the first institutions to admit women to its law school on the same terms as men. The Women’s Law class at New York University was started in the nineties. Many law colleges, as Boston, Buffalo and Cornell, have since opened their doors. It was in 1915 that Harvard University announced the Cambridge Law School, the first graduate law school in America exclusively for women, and the only graduate law school open to them in the East.
But opportunities for professional advancement for women in law have been exceedingly limited. It is on the judge’s bench, in every land, that their masculine colleagues have most stubbornly refused to move up and make room. So it is noteworthy that Georgiana P. Bullock was in 1916 made a Judge of the Woman’s Court in Los Angeles, the first tribunal of its kind in the world. A few women have been allowed a place as judges in the children’s courts. Catherine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago, who some years ago as justice of the peace was the first woman anywhere in the world to have arrived at any judicial office, scored another victory in December, 1917, when she was made a master in chancery, the first woman to receive such an appointment. Litta Belle Hibben, deputy district attorney in Los Angeles in 1915, and Annette Abbot Adams, assistant United States district attorney in San Francisco in the same year, were the first women to arrive at these appointments. Helen P. McCormick, in 1917 assistant district attorney in New York, is the first woman in the more conservative East to become a public prosecutor. There is a reason for this advance. Could a woman really be accepted as an expert in the interpretation of laws, so long as she was permitted no share in making them? With the pressure of the woman movement at the gates of government resulting in enfranchisement, that handicap of civic inferiority is being removed.
Like this even in the United States farthest from the war zone, the rear guard of the women’s lines in the legal profession are moving. At the front “over there,” every country reports distinct progress. Even a deputation of Austrian women have been to their department of state to demand admission to the legal profession. In October, 1917, on a petition from the German Association of Women Lawyers, the Prussian Ministry of Justice made the first appointment of women in the Central Berlin law courts, three women having legally qualified there as law clerks. In Russia directly after the revolution one of the first reforms secured by the Minister of Justice was the admission of women lawyers to the privilege of conducting cases in court on equal terms with the men of the profession. The Italian Parliament in 1917 passed a bill granting to women in that country the right to practise law.
Specially significant is the legal situation in England, the land where Chrystabel Pankhurst, denied the opportunity to practise law, became instead a smashing suffragette. Now, see the vacant places in the London law courts where day by day women clerks are appearing with all of the duties, though not yet the recognition, as solicitors. And the English Parliament at last is considering a bill which shall permit women to be admitted to this branch of the legal profession in England. This bill really should be known as Nancy Nettlefold’s bill. The year that Nancy Nettlefold arrived at her twenty-first birthday and was presented at court, Cambridge University announced in June, 1912, that she had taken the law tripos, her place being between the first and second man in the first class honours list. And she at the time determined to make the winning of the legal profession her contribution to the woman’s cause. With four other English women, who have also passed brilliant law examinations, she has financed and worked indefatigably in the campaign to that end. To-day they have that conservative organ of public opinion, the London Times, urging in favour of their case: “Many prejudices against women have been shattered in this war. And there is no stronger theoretical case against the woman lawyer as such than against the woman doctor.” The bill permitting women to enter the Law Society has passed a second reading in the House of Lords, Lord Buckmaster, its sponsor, declaring: “The true sphere of a woman’s work ought to be measured by the world’s need for her services and by her capacity to perform that work.”
And the world’s need presses steadily, inexorably day by day. France had called 1500 men lawyers to the colours when the War Office sent a brief notice to the bar association of Paris: “On account of the absence of so many men at the front,” read the summons, “women lawyers are wanted in the Ministry of War.” Women have been in the legal profession in France since 1900. There are 52 women lawyers in Paris. But their practice has been limited largely to women clients. Madame Miropolsky has made a reputation as a divorce lawyer. Madame Maria Verone is the prominent barrister of the Children’s Court. A year ago I heard Avocat Suzanne Grinberg plead a case before a tribunal which up to 1914 had never listened to a woman’s voice.
