BACKGROUND

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the denial of a law license to Myra Bradwell, two historical currents were diverted. First, the decision was a setback for the nineteenth-century wave of feminism focusing on formal equality. As evidenced by the nascent woman suffrage movement, these feminists were working to eliminate sex-based barriers to women's exercise of civil and political rights. Second, the decision undermined the development of an expansive interpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments adopted after the Civil War. The Court apparently feared that the restructuring contemplated by these Amendments would dangerously shift the balance of power from the states to the federal government. Between 1870 and 1873, the Court retreated from endorsing the exercise of federal power and increasingly invalidated Acts of Congress while refusing to restrict discriminatory state actions.

Myra Bradwell was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Chicago Legal News and a feminist. Under her leadership, Chicago's weekly legal newspaper published all new statutes and judicial decisions. Bradwell's columns advocated women's rights and other social and legal advancements. When she decided to become an attorney, Bradwell apprenticed under her husband, James Bradwell. There were no female attorneys in the United States in 1860 and very few in 1869, the year that Bradwell took and passed the Illinois bar exam and applied for admission to the Illinois bar.

At first, the Illinois Supreme Court denied Bradwell's admission because she suffered from a “disability imposed by [her] married condition.” The reasoning relied upon the law of coverture – that is, a married woman's legal existence was incorporated through her husband, impairing her right to enter into legal agreements and her ability to practice law. After Bradwell challenged the denial, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected her application again in January 1870, asserting that it could not act contrary to the intention of the Legislature. The Illinois court apparently feared that admission of a woman might lead to women, married or single, holding public office. Their decision thus expanded Bradwell's “disability” for law practice from her status as a married woman to her status as a woman.

In her legal memorandum to the Illinois Supreme Court, Bradwell inserted two federal constitutional issues that would enable her later to petition the U.S. Supreme Court.