AN HISTORICAL LOW POINT FOR THE U.S. SUPREME COURT BRADWELL V. ILLINOIS

BradWell v. state of Illinois was an 1873 United States Supreme Court case that solidified the narrow reading of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and determined that the right to practice a profession was not among those privileges. Brought by Myra Bradwell, the case is also notable for being an early 14th Amendment challenge to sex discrimination in the United States.

The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible or everything that goes wrong.

Myra Bradwell (circa 1870) BACKGROUND

(In 1869, Myra Bradwell (1831-1894) passed the Illinois bar exam and applied for admission to the Illinois bar in accordance with a state statute that permitted any adult of good character and with sufficient training to be admitted to the practice of law. Because she was a woman, however, the Illinois Supreme Court denied her admission, noting that the "strife" of the bar would surely destroy femininity. The legal rationale was based on the common law doctrine of coverture which denied a married woman a legal existence apart from her husband. (See inset.) Bradwell appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that her right to practice law was protected by the Privileges or Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Decision

The Supreme Court disagreed with Bradwell in an 8-1 ruling. It upheld the decision of the Illinois court and ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not include the right to practice a profession—therefore, it was properly regulated by the states.

Coverture was a legal doctrine in common law whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, in accordance with the wife's legal status of feme covert. An unmarried woman, or feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name. Coverture arises from the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one person. Coverture was established in the common law of England for several centuries and throughout most of the 19th century, influencing some other common law jurisdictions. After the rise of the women's rights movement in the mid-19th century, coverture was increasingly criticized as oppressive, hindering women from exercising ordinary property rights and entering professions. Coverture was first substantially modified by late-19th-century Married Women's Property Acts passed in various common-law jurisdictions, and was weakened and eventually eliminated by later reforms. Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States.

Aftermath

Toward the end of Myra Bradwell’s life, the Illinois Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court admitted Bradwell to practice law nunc pro tunc, and the year of her admittance was officially, albeit symbolically, 1869. (In general, a ruling nunc pro tunc [which means ‘now for then’ in Latin] applies retroactively to correct an earlier ruling.)

It wasn’t until 1971 (in Reed v. Reed) that the Supreme Court would rule (for the first time) that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited differential treatment based on gender n

The sole dissenter, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, was unable to file an opinion because of deteriorating health. He was appointed as the 6th Chief Justice of the United States in 1864 by President Abraham Lincoln, having previously served as the Governor of Ohio, a Senator (representing the state of Ohio), and as Secretary of the Treasury. He is one of only a few U.S. politicians who have served in all three branches of the federal government.