The XIV Amendment and Our Case

The XIV Amendment and Our Case

The Fourteenth Amendment's involvement in Bradwell v. Illinois

In this article, Myra Bradwell and an unnamed party explain their legal journey in appealing to both the Illinois Supreme and United States Supreme Court for the right as a woman to practice law. 
The piece sets forward the plaintiff’s actions and intentions with their legal journey for readers to synthesize before reading the Court’s opinion. The authors state that the appeal to the high federal court was to demonstrate that women have some rights and privileges under the Fourteenth Amendment.
This indicates Bradwell was prepared to lose their appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Furthermore, the specification that their argument was that women have some rights and privileges also indicates their conservative political nature with the appeal.
The article shows Bradwell's intention to bring awareness to women’s rights rather than personal gain with her celebration of several states passing laws against gender discrimination in occupation rather than focusing on the judicial defeat.

Myra Bradwell

Chicago : Chicago Legal News Co., 1869-1925; Vol 5. no. 30, pg. 354

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

April 19, 1873

Hathi Trust: Digital Library

Online resource through Hathi Trust: Digital Library

Digital copy of physical volumes

English

Newspaper

We have heretofore published a telegraphic report of the opinion of a majority of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, delivered by MILLER, J., affirming the judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois, refusing to grant us a license to practice law, upon the sole ground that we were a woman. We have since received an official copy of the opinion of the court, also the opinion of BRADLEY,J., concurred in by FIELD,J., and an official notification that the late lamented CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE, for whose opinion we always had the greatest respect, dissent edentirely from the opinion of the court. These opinions will be found elsewhere in this issue. Although we do not believe the construction of the XIV amendment, as given by a majority of the court, and their definition of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States are sound, we take great pleasure in saying that the opinion delivered by Judge MILLER is confined strictly to the points at issue, and is just such an one as might be expected from an able and experienced jurist entertaining the views that Judge MILLER does upon these constitutional questions. He does not for a moment lower the dignity of the judge by traveling out of the record to give his individual views upon what we commonly term “Woman’s Rights.” We regard the opinion of Judge BRADLEY as in conflict with his opinion delivered in what are known as the New Orleans Slaughterhouse Cases,reported 3 ChicagoLegalNews, 17. In that case Judge BRADLEY said: “There is no more sacred right of citizen ship than the right to pursue unmolested a lawful employment in a lawful manner. It is nothing more or less than thes acred right of labor.” In speaking of pursuits that required the granting of licenses, the judge said: “Public policy may require that these pursuits should be regulated and supervised by the local authorities in order to pro mote the public health, the public order and the general well being, but they are open to all proper applicants, and none are rejected except those who fail to exhibit here quisite qualifications.”* * * “All these systems of regulation are useful and entirely competent to the governing power,and are not at all inconsistent with the great rights of LIBERTY of PURSUIT,which is one of the fundamental principles of a free governmentas well as one of the fundamental privileges of an American citizen.” If, asJ udge BRADLEY says, the liberty of pursuitis one of the fundamental privileges of an American citizen, how can he then, and be consistent, deprive an American citizen of the right to follow any calling or profession under laws, rules and regulations that shall operate equally upon all, simply because such citizen is a woman? Our argument in the Supreme Court of Illinois, and the opinion of that court refusing the application, will be found in 2 Chicago Legal News, 145, and the able argument of our counsel, Hon. MATTH. CARPENTER, in the Supreme Court at Washington, in 4 Chicago Legal News, 108.

Newspaper