From Myra Bradwell to Sandra Day O’Connor…

It was just the other day that I was invoking the 19th-century shade of Myra Bradwell, but with the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, the old story takes on an especially poignant meaning . From Mrs. Bradwell to Mrs. O’Connor, it’s been a long, uphill climb for ladies in the law. Myra Bradwell, may she rest in peace, was a native of Vermont who moved to Chicago sometime in the mid-1850s. Not long after ratification of the FourteEjnth Amendment in 1868, she did a most audacious, unfeminine thing: She applied for a license to practice law. Curiously, she did not rely upon the equal protection clause but rather upon the privileges and immunities clause, but in any event the Supreme Court of Illinois summarily turned her down. No women were to be allowed in court. Mrs. Bradwell appealed. In April 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court also gave her the brush-off. !t “‘.as wi~hi~ the police powers of Ilhn01s to hm1t membership in the bar to males only. Only Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase dissented, and he didn’t say why. Justice Joseph P. Bradley was so shocked by the whole astonishing idea that he wrote a flaming concurring opinion in which two other justices joined. History, nature, the common law, and “the usages of Westminster Hall from time immemorial” argued against the proposition. Bradley felt impelled to expand upon the wide difference in the spheres and destinies of man and woman. “Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity