United States Supreme Court Opinion: Myra Bradwell v. The State of Illinois

United States Supreme Court Opinion: Myra Bradwell v. The State of Illinois

Supreme Court majority opinion on Bradwell v. Illinois

Myra Bradwell printed the United States Supreme Court majority opinion of her case in this edition of the Chicago Legal News.
Justice Miller, who wrote the majority opinion, first explains the details of the case, including how Bradwell was denied her law license based on her married condition. Miller than addresses the plaintiff’s claim “that admission to the bar of the State of a person who possesses the requisite learning and character is one of those which the State may not deny,” according to the Fourteenth Amendment’s privileges and immunities clause.The court strikes down this claim stating “the right to admittance to practice law in the court of a State is not one of these. This right in no sense depends on citizenship of the United States.” They do not address whether she is capable or should practice law; they simply state that the Fourteenth Amendment does not cover the right of employment, since it deals with citizenship.
Even though Bradwell lost the case, she still printed the opinion for her readers to view. This shows she viewed her case to spark a movement for other women. 

Myra Bradwell

Chicago : Chicago Legal News Co., 1869-1925, Vol V, pg. 351

University of Minnesota - https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951d02617798t

April 15, 1873

Hathi Trust: Digital Library

Online resource through Hathi Trust: Digital Library

Bradwell v. The State, 83 U.S. 130 (1872)

Digital copy of physical volumes: Volume 5, pg 351

English

Newspaper

MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court. The record in this case is not very perfect, but it may be fairly taken that the plaintiff asserted her right to a license on the grounds, among others, that she was a citizen of the United States, and that having been a citizen of Vermont at one time, she was, in the State of Illinois, entitled to any right granted to citizens of the latter state. The court having overruled these claims of right founded on the clauses of the federal Constitution before referred, those propositions may be considered as properly before this Court. As regards the provision of the Constitution that citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states, the plaintiff in her affidavit has stated very clearly a case to which it is inapplicable. The protection designed by that clause, as has been repeatedly held, has no application to a citizen of the state whose laws are complained of. If the plaintiff was a citizen of the State of Illinois, that provision of the Constitution gave her no protection against its courts or its legislation. The plaintiff seems to have seen this difficulty, and attempts to avoid it by stating that she was born in Vermont. While she remained in Vermont, that circumstance made her a citizen of that state. But she states, at the same time, that she is a citizen of the United States, and that she is now, and has been for many years past, a resident of Chicago, in the State of Illinois. The Fourteenth Amendment declares that citizens of the United States are citizens of the state within which they reside; therefore the plaintiff was, at the time of making her application, a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the State of Illinois. We do not here mean to say that there may not be a temporary residence in one state, with intent to return to another, which will not create citizenship in the former. But the plaintiff states nothing to take her case out of the definition of citizenship of a state as defined by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. In regard to that amendment counsel for the plaintiff in this Court truly says that there are certain privileges and immunities which belong to a citizen of the United States as such; otherwise it would be nonsense for the Fourteenth Amendment to prohibit a state from abridging them, and he proceeds to argue that admission to the bar of a state of a person who possesses the requisite learning and character is one of those which a state may not deny. Page 83 U. S. 139 In this latter proposition we are not able to concur with counsel. We agree with him that there are privileges and immunities belonging to citizens of the United States, in that relation and character, and that it is these and these alone which a state is forbidden to abridge. But the right to admission to practice in the courts of a state is not one of them. This right in no sense depends on citizenship of the United States. It has not, as far as we know, ever been made in any state, or in any case, to depend on citizenship at all. Certainly many prominent and distinguished lawyers have been admitted to practice, both in the state and federal courts, who were not citizens of the United States or of any state. But on whatever basis this right may be placed, so far as it can have any relation to citizenship at all, it would seem that, as to the courts of a state, it would relate to citizenship of the state, and as to federal courts, it would relate to citizenship of the United States. The opinion just delivered in the Slaughter-House Cases renders elaborate argument in the present case unnecessary, for, unless we are wholly and radically mistaken in the principles on which those cases are decided, the right to control and regulate the granting of license to practice law in the courts of a state is one of those powers which are not transferred for its protection to the federal government, and its exercise is in no manner governed or controlled by citizenship of the United States in the party seeking such license. It is unnecessary to repeat the argument on which the judgment in those cases is founded. It is sufficient to say they are conclusive of the present case.

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