When in the year of our Lord 1869 American papers reported that in Iowa
a woman had been admitted to the bar, most readers were inclined to
regard this “bit of news” as one of the many jokes, sprung occasionally
upon credulous people in order to warn them what the “new woman” might
be able to do. But in this case the “joke” turned out to be a fact. And
if people had been somewhat better acquainted with their Bibles, they
would have known that the woman lawyer of Iowa was only another
confirmation of Rabbi Ben Akiba’s famous saying: “There is nothing new
under the sun!”
Open your Bible and read in Chapter 4 of the Judges IV about =Deborah=,
the Joan of Arc of the Hebrews. Of this most extraordinary woman
recorded in Jewish history it is stated that she was a prophetess as
well as a judge, “to whom the children of Israel came for judgment.”
The Greeks and Romans too had female lawyers. From writers of the
classic past we know that =Aspasia= pleaded causes in the Athenian
forum, and =Amenia Sentia= and =Hortensia= in the Roman forum. And
Valerius Maximus (Hist. lib. VIII, Chapter 3) states that the right of
Roman women to follow the profession of advocate was taken away in
consequence of the obnoxious conduct of =Caliphurnia=, who, from “excess
of boldness” and “by reason of making the tribunals resound with
howlings uncommon in the forum,” was forbidden to plead. The law, made
to meet the especial case of Caliphurnia, ultimately “under the
influence of the anti-feministic tendencies” of the period, was
converted into a general one. In its wording the law sets forth that the
original reason for woman’s exclusion “rested solely on the doings of
said person.”
The “howlings of Caliphurnia” furnished the legislators of all later
periods with a welcome pretext to exclude women from practice of the
law, and it was not till 1869 that a woman again obtained admission to
the bar. This pioneer was =Miss Arabella A. Mansfield= of Mount
Pleasant, Iowa, who was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869, under the
statute providing only for admission of “white male citizens.”
The next female lawyer was =Mrs. Belva Ann Lockwood=, a graduate of the
Law School of the National University at Washington, D. C. Having been
admitted in 1873 to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia, she applied in October, 1876, for admission as practitioner of
the Supreme Court of the United States, but was rejected under the
following decision: “By the uniform practice of the Court from its
organization to the present time, and by the fair construction of its
rules, none but men are admitted to practice before it as attorneys and
counselors. This is in accordance with immemorial usage in England, and
the law and practice in all the States, until within a recent period;
and the Court does not feel called upon to make a change until such a
change is required by statute or a more extended practice in the highest
courts of the States.”
[Illustration:
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD.
]
But if the members of the Supreme Court had entertained the hope of
scaring away women once and for all, they soon enough found that they
were mistaken. Mrs. Lockwood drafted a bill and secured its passage in
Congress, providing “that any woman who shall have been a member of the
bar of the highest court of any State or Territory, or of the Supreme
Court of the District of Columbia, for the space of three years, and
shall have maintained a good standing before such court, and who shall
be a person of good moral character, shall, on motion, and the
production of such record, be admitted to practice before the Supreme
Court of the United States.” This bill was approved on February 15th,
1879. Since then Mrs. Lockwood as well as a number of other female
lawyers have been admitted under this law to practice before the highest
court of the United States.
A “Woman’s International Bar Association” was organized in 1888, for the
purpose of establishing law schools for women and of promoting the
interests of female lawyers as well as of securing better legal
conditions for women.
According to the Census of 1910 there were 1010 woman lawyers in the
United States.
“Having taken up the law,” so said Miss Edith J. Griswold, herself a
counsellor-at-law, “woman will not rest until she stands on a level with
man, and the end of the Twentieth Century will probably find an
equilibrium in the United States Government that can only be obtained
(as in the home government) by the equal balancing of the different
propensities of male and female mind in the making and enforcing of
laws. The prophecy that the time is coming when woman will govern seems
ludicrous, and yet it is no more ludicrous than the present lopsided
arrangement whereby man has the exclusive power of government. With the
rapid advance of woman conditions are being manifested that require
woman’s judgment, and to obtain true justice in matters relating to both
sexes an equal number of men and women should compose both the court and
the jury. By the end of the Twentieth Century, I believe, a woman’s
judgment will carry as much weight as a man’s, and the opinions handed
down from our higher courts will have to be concurred in by an equal
number of male and female judges.”
[Illustration]