“This day the question was moved in court whether or noe, Mr. Leon. Calvert (remayning his Lp’s sole attorney within this Province before his death, and then dying) the said Mr. Calvert’s administrator was to be received for his Lp’s Attorney within this Province untill such time as his Lordship had made a new substitution, or that some other remayning uppon the present Commission were arrived into the Province. The Governor demanding Mr. Brent’s opinion upon the same Quere. Hee answered that he did conceive that the administrator ought to be looked uppon as attorney both for recovering of rights into the estate and paying of dew debts out of the estate and taking care for the estate’s preservation: But not further, untill his Lordship shall substitute some other as aforesaid. And thereuppon the Governor concurred. It was ordered that the administrator of Mr. Leon Calvert aforesaid should be received as his Lp’s Attorney to the intents above.” (Archives of Maryland, vol. iv. p. 358.)
The provincial court records show that Mistress Brent not only frequently appeared in court as his lordship’s attorney, in which capacity she continued to act for some years, but also in prosecuting and defending causes as attorney for her brother, Capt. Giles Brent, and in regard to her personal affairs, and as executrix of Leonard Calvert’s estate (the record calls her “administrator”; she was appointed by the testator to execute his will). There is no record of any objection being made to her practicing as attorney on account of her sex. At that time the provincial court at St. Mary’s “was the chief judicial body in the Province, being not only a court of first instance for all matters civil, criminal, and testamentary for the city and county of St. Mary’s, but having also appellate jurisdiction over the county courts. It was composed of the Governor as presiding judge, and one or more of the members of the council as associate judges.” (Archives of Maryland, vol. iv. preface.)
Unmindful of the words “but not further” in the opinion, Mistress Brent asked for voice and vote in the General Assembly on account of her position as his lordship’s attorney. This request was denied. Whether her sex entered into the denial is a question without solution. The Assembly proceedings for January 21, 1648, make mention of the fact in these words:
“Came Mistress Margarett Brent and requested to have vote in the howse for herselfe and voyce allso, for that att the last court, 3d Jan., it was ordered that the said Mistress Brent was to be looked uppon and received as his Lp’s Attorney. The Govr denyed that the said Mistress Brent should have any vote in the howse. And the said Mistress Brent protested against all proceedings in this present Assembly, unlesse shee may be present and have vote as aforesaid.” (Archives of Maryland, vol. i. p. 215.)
The first woman since the days of Mistress Brent to ask for and obtain admission to the bar of this country was Arabella A. Mansfield of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. She studied in a law office and was admitted to the Iowa bar in June, 1869, under a statute providing only for admission of “white male citizens.” The examining committee in its report, which is of record, said:
“Your committee have examined the provisions of section 2700 of chapter 114, of the Revision of 1860, concerning the qualifications of attorneys and counselors in this State [section 2700 provided for the admission of “white male persons.” Ed.], but in considering the section in connection with division 3 of section 29, chapter 3 of the Revision, on construction of statutes [section 29 provided that “words importing the masculine gender only may be extended to females.” Ed.], we feel justified in recommending to the court that construction which we deem authorized, not only by the language of the law itself, but by the demands and necessities of the present time and occasion. Your committee take unusual pleasure in recommending the admission of Mrs. Mansfield, not only because she is the first lady who has applied for this authority in this State, but because in her examination she has given the very best rebuke possible to the imputation that ladies cannot qualify for the practice of law.”
At the time of Mrs. Mansfield’s debut into the profession without opposition, Myra Bradwell, of Chicago, having studied law under the instruction of her husband, ex-Judge James B. Bradwell, was unsuccessfully knocking at the door of the Supreme Court of Illinois for admission. To give an understanding of the case, and line of argument used in denying her application, we extract from the opinion of the Court, delivered by Mr. Justice Lawrence, the following:
“Mrs. Myra Bradwell applied for a license as an attorney at law, presenting the ordinary certificates of character and qualifications. The license was refused, and it was stated, as a sufficient reason, that under the decisions of this court, the applicant, as a married woman, would be bound neither by her express contracts, nor by those implied contracts, which it is the policy of the law to create between attorney and client.
“Since the announcement of our decision, the applicant has filed a printed argument, in which her right to a license is earnestly and ably maintained. Of the qualifications of the applicant we have no doubt, and we put our decision in writing in order that she, or other persons interested, may bring the question before the next Legislature.... It is to be remembered that at the time the statute was enacted [the statute under which admission was sought, which provided that “no person shall be permitted to practice as an attorney or counsellor at law,” etc. Ed.] we had, by express provision, adopted the common law of England, and, with three exceptions, the statutes of that country passed prior to the fourth year of James the First, so far as they were applicable to our condition. It is also to be remembered that female attorneys at law were unknown in England, and a proposition that a woman should enter the courts of Westminster Hall in that capacity, or as a barrister, would have created hardly less astonishment than one that she should ascend the bench of bishops, or be elected to a seat in the House of Commons. It is to be further remembered that when our act was passed, that school of reform which claims for women participation in the making and administering of the laws, had not then arisen, or, if here and there a writer had advanced such theories, they were regarded rather as abstract speculations than as an actual basis for action. That God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged to men to make, apply, and execute the laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic truth. It may have been a radical error, but that this was the universal belief certainly admits of no denial. A direct participation in the affairs of government, in even the most elementary form, namely, the right of suffrage, was not then claimed, and has not yet been conceded, unless recently, in one of the newly settled territories of the West.... But it is not merely an immense innovation in our own usages, as a court, that we are asked to make. This step, if taken by us, would mean that, in the opinion of this tribunal, every civil office in this State may be filled by women; that it is in harmony with the spirit of our constitution and laws that women should be made governors, judges, and sheriffs. This we are not prepared to hold.... There are some departments of the legal profession in which woman can appropriately labor. Whether, on the other hand, to engage in the hot strifes of the bar, in the presence of the public, and with momentous verdicts the prizes of the struggle, would not tend to destroy the deference and delicacy with which it is the pride of our ruder sex to treat her, is a matter certainly worthy of her consideration. But the important question is, what effect the presence of women as barristers in our courts would have upon the administration of justice, and the question can be satisfactorily answered only in the light of experience.” (Supreme Court Reports of Illinois, vol. lv. p. 535.)
The Supreme Court of Illinois having refused to grant to Mrs. Bradwell a license to practice law in the courts of that State, she appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the judgment of the State court was affirmed. She was there ably represented by Mr. Matthew Hale Carpenter. Mr. Justice Miller delivered the opinion of the court. In affirming the judgment, the refusal being made on the ground that women are not eligible under the laws of Illinois, the court held that “such a decision violates no provision of the Federal Constitution”; that the right to practice law in the State courts is not “a privilege or immunity of a citizen of the United States, within the meaning of the first section of the fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution of the United States”; and that “the power of a State to prescribe the qualifications for admission to the bar of its own courts is unaffected by the fourteenth amendment, and this court cannot inquire into the reasonableness or propriety of the rules it may prescribe.” (16 Wallace’s Reports, Supreme Court U. S., p. 130). Mr. Justice Bradley, while concurring in the judgment, gave expression to his views in a separate opinion in which he took occasion to say that, “The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womankind.” The Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, “dissented from the judgment of the court, and from all of the opinions.”