## Facts

- Clyde Wilson Summers, a law-school graduate and Christian pacifist, applied for admission to the Illinois bar.
- He satisfied all formal requirements for admission except for receiving a favorable character-and-fitness certification.
- The certification was withheld because Summers was a conscientious objector to war and stated he could not, in good faith, undertake militia service if called.
- Illinois required attorneys to take an oath to support the Illinois Constitution, which contained a militia-service provision applicable in time of war.
- The Supreme Court of Illinois denied Summers’s petition for admission; Summers sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court on federal constitutional grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether a state supreme court’s decision denying a bar-admission petition presents a justiciable “case or controversy” under Article III.
2. Whether denying bar admission because an applicant cannot in good faith take a required oath to support the state constitution violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

## Decision

- The Court held the matter was justiciable because the state court’s ruling was a merits determination affecting Summers’s claimed entitlement to practice law.
- The Court affirmed the denial of admission, concluding Illinois could require bar applicants to be able to take the constitutional oath in good faith.
- The Court rejected the claim that the denial unlawfully penalized Summers’s religious beliefs, characterizing the exclusion as based on inability to satisfy a generally applicable oath requirement.
- A dissent argued the denial operated as discrimination based on religious belief because Summers met all other qualifications and was excluded solely for pacifist convictions.

## Legal Principles

- A state supreme court’s final decision on a bar-admission petition can constitute a judicial determination creating an Article III case or controversy.
- States may condition admission to the practice of law on an applicant’s ability to take a required oath to support the state constitution, as construed by the state.
- Denial of bar admission does not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments where the state acts on an applicant’s inability to take the oath in good faith, rather than on hostility to religious belief as such.
- Bar admission may be treated as a conditional status tied to fitness to serve as an officer of the state’s courts, including compliance with neutral professional prerequisites.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Illinois’s refusal to admit Summers to the bar, holding that the state could require an applicant to be able to swear in good faith to support its constitution, and that the resulting denial did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments.


In re Summers, 325 U.S. 561 (1945)