Dispelling the Myth: Opportunities for Women in the Legal Profession

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 51 No. 1 Pg. 0056
• Publication year: 2010
• Pages: 0056
• Year: 2010
• topic: Civil Rights,Constitutional Law

New Hampshire Bar Journal 2010.

2010 Summer, Pg. 56. Dispelling the Myth: Opportunities for Women in the Legal Profession

New Hampshire Bar Journal
Volume 51, No. 1
Summer 2010

Dispelling the Myth: Opportunities for Women in the Legal Profession

By Attorney Jane F. Taylor,
with assistance from Attorney Joceline Champagne

"It is sometimes thought that because many women lawyers do not try cases they are unsuccessful and lacking in energy, I do not think this view correct. A great deal of a lawyer's best and hardest work is done outside the courtroom and is not necessary that all should be trial lawyers. . .," Edith Prouty, Attorney-at-law, wrote in 1876.(fn1)

"'Be yourself,' and strike the work-life balance that suits you best. It's not just the lure of family that takes women off the partnership track, but also that 'women construct much more interesting and varied professional lives,' taking new paths and detours that some men might not," according to comments attributed to then U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan in January 2010, who has since gone on to become the third female United States Supreme Court justice currently sitting.(fn2)

Ever since the first woman was admitted to practice law in the United States in I869 (Iowa, Arabella Babb Mansfield), arguments have raged long and loudly as to whether women should be admitted to the practice of law and, if so, what should be the appropriate role of women in law firms.

"Numerous early women attorneys became trial lawyers because they needed to spend so much of their time litigating their ability to be admitted to the bar."(fn3) Myra Bradwell of Chicago petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court in I869 to be admitted to the Illinois Bar. She was denied because of "the disabilities she labored under as a married woman in regard to making contracts, but being met by an exhaustive argument on this point, the Court abandoned its first reason and refused admission on account of sex. It decided that inasmuch as women were not known as attorneys at Common Law, it was sufficient reason for the Court to decline to exercise its discretion and admit them; that the matter ought to be decided by the Legislature."(fn4) Mrs. Bradwell appealed the matter to the United States Supreme Court under the 4th and l4th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In ruling against Mrs. Bradwell, only Chief Justice Chase "dissented from the judgment of the Court and all the opinions."(fn5)

Justice Miller, delivering the opinion for the Court, stated: "Whether, in the existing social relations between men and women, it would promote the proper administration of justice, and the general well being of society, to permit women to engage in the trial of cases at the bar, is a question opening a wide field of discussion, upon which it is not necessary for us to enter. It is sufficient to say that, in our opinion, the other implied limitation upon our power, to which we have above referred, must operate to prevent our admitting women to the office of attorney at law. If we were to admit them, we should be exercising the authority conferred upon us in a manner which, we are fully satisfied, was never contemplated by the legislature."(fn6)

Justice Bradley stated in his concurrence: "The claim of the plaintiff, who is a married woman, to be admitted to practice as an attorney and counselor at law is based upon the supposed right of every person, man or woman, to engage in any lawful employment for a livelihood. The claim that under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which declares that no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, the statute law of Illinois, or the common law prevailing in that state, can no longer be set up as a barrier against the right of females to pursue any lawful employment for a livelihood (the practice of law included), assumes that it is one of the privileges and immunities of women as citizens to engage in any and every...