Bradwell v. State of Illinois, (1872), U.S. legal case that tested the constitutionality of the Illinois Supreme Court’s denial of a license to practice law to reform activist Myra Bradwell because she was a woman.
The case of Bradwell v. State of Illinois was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1872. The Illinois opinion noted that the statute regulating attorneys’ licenses was rooted in the state legislature’s express adoption of English common law, which did not accept women to the bar. Further, the Illinois Court wrote, “That God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged to men to make, apply, and execute the laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic truth.” Bradwell’s attorneys argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Illinois Supreme Court’s denial of a license abridged Bradwell’s “privileges and immunities” as a citizen of the United States. In its decision affirming the Illinois Supreme Court’s denial, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Bradwell’s claim fell outside the purview of the Fourteenth Amendment because she was a citizen of the state taking action and because Fourteenth Amendment protection did not extend to the regulation of law licenses. In a concurring opinion, three of the justices wrote that “[t]he paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” Bradwell was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1890 and was granted a license to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892.