Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1873

Bradwell v. State

83 U.S. 130 | 21 L. Ed. 442 | 16 Wall. 130 | 1872 U.S. LEXIS 1140

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Takeaway

In short, Bradwell held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause did not protect a woman's claimed right to admission to a state bar, leaving the matter largely to state control.

Background

Myra Bradwell, a married woman residing in Chicago, applied for admission to the Illinois bar. She asserted that she possessed the necessary learning and character and that, as a citizen of the United States who had been born in Vermont, she was constitutionally entitled to practice law in Illinois.

The Supreme Court of Illinois denied her application. It treated the common-law rule limiting bar admission to men as part of Illinois law and concluded that the legislature had not changed that rule. Bradwell sought review in the Supreme Court of the United States, relying principally on Article IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Article IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause protected Bradwell against Illinois's denial of her application for admission to the bar.

Holding

No. The Article IV clause did not apply because Bradwell was a citizen of Illinois when she sought admission.

Reasoning

Article IV protects citizens of one state against discriminatory treatment by another state. It does not give a state's own citizens a federal claim against that state's laws or courts.

Although Bradwell had been born in Vermont, she alleged that she had long resided in Chicago and was a citizen of the United States. Under the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen of the United States is also a citizen of the state in which she resides. On the record before the Court, Bradwell was therefore an Illinois citizen, not an out-of-state citizen entitled to invoke Article IV against Illinois.

Issue #2

Whether admission to practice law in a state court is a privilege or immunity of national citizenship protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Holding

No. Admission to a state bar is not a privilege or immunity of citizenship of the United States that a state may not abridge.

Reasoning

The Court accepted the general proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment protects certain privileges and immunities that belong to citizens of the United States in their national capacity. But it rejected the claim that a right to practice law in a state court falls within that category.

The ability to practice law had not been made dependent on United States citizenship. Lawyers could be admitted to state and federal courts even when they were not citizens of the United States or of any state. Thus, bar admission was not a right that arose from national citizenship.

Relying on the Slaughter-House Cases, decided the same Term, the Court held that regulating licenses to practice before state courts remained a state power. Illinois's control over admission to its bar was therefore not transferred to the federal government or governed by Bradwell's status as a United States citizen.

Concurrences

Justice Bradley

Reasoning

Justice Bradley agreed that Illinois's judgment should be affirmed, but he did not rest his conclusion on Justice Miller's narrow account of the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities. Instead, he addressed Bradwell's broader claim that every person, regardless of sex, had a constitutional right to pursue any lawful occupation.

In Bradley's view, Illinois could rely on the common-law rule and established practice under which only men were admitted to the bar. He reasoned that the Illinois legislature had not clearly displaced that rule and that the state court could conclude that the legislature did not intend women to be included among those eligible for admission.

Bradley further maintained that a state, acting through its police power, could set qualifications for professions requiring skill, trust, and responsibility. His opinion invoked then-prevailing common-law ideas about marriage and women's domestic role to conclude that Illinois could exclude women from the legal profession without abridging a privilege or immunity of United States citizenship. Justice Swayne and Justice Field joined this opinion.

Dissents

Chief Justice Chase

Reasoning

Chief Justice Chase dissented from the judgment and from all of the opinions. The reported decision provides no written explanation of his reasoning, so it does not state the constitutional basis for his disagreement.