## Facts

- Myra Bradwell, a Chicago resident, completed customary legal training and presented proof of good moral character and legal qualifications for admission to the Illinois bar.
- The Illinois Supreme Court denied her application because she was a woman.
- The state court also relied on common-law coverture principles, treating Bradwell’s marital status as a legal disability relevant to practicing law.
- Bradwell sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming Illinois’s exclusion violated Article IV’s Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.

## Issues

1. Whether Article IV, § 2 required Illinois to extend to Bradwell the “privileges and immunities” associated with practicing law.
2. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause makes admission to practice law in state courts a right of United States citizenship that a state may not abridge.
3. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment limits a state’s authority to set qualifications for admission to its bar, including sex-based exclusions.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Illinois Supreme Court’s judgment (8–1).
- Article IV, § 2 was held inapplicable because it protects citizens of other states, not a state’s own citizens.
- The Court held that admission to practice law in state courts is not a privilege or immunity of United States citizenship protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court held that a state’s power to prescribe qualifications for admission to its own bar is not affected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Court would not review the reasonableness of those qualifications.
- A concurrence would have upheld the exclusion on sex-role grounds; the Chief Justice noted a dissent without a written opinion.

## Legal Principles

- Article IV’s Privileges and Immunities Clause restricts discrimination against out-of-state citizens; it does not apply to a state’s treatment of its own citizens.
- The Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause protects only rights incident to national citizenship, not every occupational or professional opportunity regulated by states.
- Admission to practice law in a state court is not, by itself, a privilege or immunity of United States citizenship.
- States retain primary authority to define and enforce qualifications for admission to their own bars, absent a specific federal constitutional limitation.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Illinois’s refusal to license a woman as an attorney, ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause does not protect a right to bar admission and that states may set bar-eligibility rules without federal review under that clause.


Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 130 (1873)