WBAI

Charlotte Adelman

Description

A short history of the WBAI, as well as news clippings from the early 1900s. Biographies and photos of WBAI members.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Northwestern University School of Law
• WBAI
• History
• Illinois

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 juin 1992
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781681625614
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 14 Mo

Extrait

T HE F IRST 75 Y EARS

Photograph of bust of Myra Bradwell, courtesy Northwestern University School of Law .
Turner Publishing Company
Created and designed by David A. Hurst, Publishing Consultant
Written and coordinated by Charlotte Adelman, WBAI Archivist
Copyright 1992 Womens Bar Association of Illinois and Turner Publishing Company
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced without the written consent of the Author and Publisher.
The materials were compiled using available and submitted materials; the publisher regrets they cannot assume liability for errors or omissions.
Library of Congress Catalog No. 91-75256
ISBN: 978-1-68162-560-7
LIMITED EDITION
Additional copies may be available directly from the publisher.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Past Presidents
History of WBAI
History of WBAI History Book
WBAI at 75
WBAI Foundation
Photos from 75th Installation
Law Practice Report
WBAI Member Vignettes
F OREWORD
F OR USA/I LLINOIS W OMEN L AWYERS T HE P AST IS E NTWINED
by Charlotte Adelman
The history of women lawyers in Illinois is, in fact, the history of women lawyers in the United States.
Until 1869 there were no women lawyers in the nation.
In 1869, two women applied for admission to the bars of their respective states, Illinois and Iowa. Had the Illinois Supreme Court granted Myra Bradwell s application, she would have been one of the first two women admitted to the bar in the United States. But the Illinois Supreme Court refused her application, and Illinois lost that distinction.
In rejecting Bradwell s request, the court ruled that she could not be a lawyer because of her disability of being a married woman and, upon appeal, because of her sex. Until such disability shall be removed by legislation, the court said, it was powerless to grant her application.
In 1869 Iowa became the first state in the country to admit a woman to the bar. She was Belle Mansfield, who, ironically, never practiced law.
However, Illinois was the first state where a woman graduated from law school: Ada Miser Kepley of Effingham in 1870 became the first woman in the United States to graduate from law school. She attended Chicago University Law School, predecessor to Union College of Law, later known as Northwestern University School of Law.
But Illinois refused to admit her to the bar.
Nevertheless, Kepley was the first woman in the United States to practice in a court of law. In 1870, while Myra Bradwell s case was pending before the Supreme Court, Effingham County Judge Decius permitted Kepley to practice in his court.
In 1871 Alta Hulett of Rockford petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court for admission to the bar. She was rejected. She reacted by drafting legislation that would prohibit sex discrimination in employment and this gave women access to the legal profession. Hulett, Bradwell and Kepley all worked on the bill, which was enacted in 1872.
A year later, Illinois admitted its first woman to the bar. Alta M. Hulett. In 1881 it admitted Ada Kepley. In 1882 Bessie Bradwell, Myra s daughter, graduated from Northwestern Law School. In 1890, the Illinois Supreme Court granted Myra Bradwell a law license on her original application filed in 1869. (It was too late for her, however; she was dying of cancer.)
In 1899 the American Bar Association still refused to admit women membership. (In response, New York women lawyers founded the Women Lawyers Club.) In 1901 The Chicago Legal News , founded by Myra Bradwell, noted, It is with pride and pleasure we mention the fact that Illinois has more women lawyers than any state in the world and Chicago has more than any other city in the world. (Sept. 14, 1901, page 29.)
In 1908, the first legal sorority in the United States was established in Chicago by female students at Chicago-Kent College of Law. It flourished throughout the United States especially in Washington, D. C., and had chapters abroad.
Illinois, in 1913, passed a law giving women partial suffrage, only in presidential and municipal elections making Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women suffrage in a presidential election. In 1914 WBAI was formed.
When the 19th Amendment was passed, giving the women the right to vote, Illinois was the first state to ratify it on June 10th, 1919.
For most states, this was followed by giving women the right to sit on juries. Unfortunately, Illinois lagged behind. It was only after 20 years of lobbying by the Women s Bar Association of Illinois and other groups that legislation giving women this right passed in 1939.

Ada Kepley
Class of 1870, law department of Chicago University. SHE WAS THE FIRST WOMAN IN ILLINOIS AND THE UNITED STATES TO RECEIVE A LAW DEGREE. However, because Illinois did not allow women to enter learned professions, she was refused a license to practice. Her husband, Henry B. Kepley, wrote the bill granting women the right to enter professions. It was passed in the Illinois legislature in 1872. Ada Kepley received her law license in 1881, but was not active in the field. (Courtesy Mabel Brown Collection, Northwestern University School of Law)

Alta Hulett
First woman lawyer in Illinois. (Courtesy Chicago Historical Society)

Judge Mary Bartelme
Class of 1894, Northwestern Law School, first Illinois woman attorney elected to judgeship. Judge Bartelme retired in 1933 after more than 35 years of service on behalf of the delinquent and misunderstood youngsters of Cook County. She served as Circuit Court Judge in charge of the juvenile system for more than nine years. She was president of WBAI in 1927. (Courtesy Northwestern University School of Law)

Sophonisha Breckinridge
First woman to graduate from University of Chicago Law School, 1904 (Courtesy University of Chicago Law School)
In 1919 Matilda Fenberg was the first woman admitted to Yale Law School. She later became a prominent Chicago attorney. (Harvard Law School didn t admit women until 1950; Notre Dame Law School in 1969; and Washington and Lee Law School in 1972)
Different and worse treatment for women law students and lawyers was the norm until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
After that, it was illegal to discriminate against women in employment. Women started asserting their rights and could help guarantee them by filing lawsuits and making other demands. Law schools and employers slowly tried to comply with the law.
In 1990, women law students nationally numbered 54,100, up from 6,700 in 1970, according to ABA statistics. Women lawyers are regularly hired by public agencies and private law firms. Television depicts them as an accepted component of the litigious world of trail lawyers.
But what does the future hold? In 1991, There are a few litigators among attorneys but even fewer female litigators, and it starts at the law school level with the presumption and assumption that this is not something women should do or are capable of doing. said Roxanne Barton Conlin, president-elect of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, a former U. S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa.
Discrimination that starts in law school presents an alarming situation, in view of the steadily rising number of women in law school.
How can employment discrimination be challenged?
University of Chicago law professor Mary Becker notes that sex discrimination law suits are an effective way. But, she says, Such suits are good for women in general, but to the individual who does it, the personal costs are exceedingly high.
Personal costs include being ostracized for being openly critical of the powers that be. After toiling through law school and passing the bar exam, exclusion from law practice is devastating. Thus, few women lawyers file such suits. This explains why discrimination lingers. When harm is not exposed, there is no reason for those doing the harm to stop.
In her book, The Invisible Bar , Karen Berger Morello, a New York attorney, speculated about what might happen as a substantial number of women enter the legal profession.
She concludes it will not necessarily mean women will rise to higher levels of the profession. Rather, she predicts, they will be relegated to a second tier, much like teachers in primary schools are mostly women while teachers in higher grades are men.
She believes the forces that once kept women out of the law have shifted to keep them out of powerful positions in the law.
For women attorneys to achieve parity with their male counterparts, one thing is clear: Women cannot afford to be complacent. Women lawyers still present a challenge to the male establishment. To overcome continuing resistance, women must be prepared to dig in for the long haul.
The Chicago Tribune s Nina Burleigh commenting on Anita Hill s testimony during the Thomas hearings said, Successful women must emerge from their positions of relative security and strength and tell their stories.
Perhaps inspired by Hill, many women lawyers and women judges have increasingly done just that. For change to occur, women together with fair-minded men, must strongly support those courageous enough to speak out.
References
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law.
Meg Gorecki, Legal Pioneers: Four of Illinois First Women Lawyers, Illinois Bar Journal, Oct. 1990, Vol. 78, No. 10.
Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar.
How We Started - 75th History of NAWL, National Association of Women Lawyers.
Chicago Sun-Times, Aug. 21, 1991.
Chicago Tribune, Oct. 8, 1991.
Willard Livermore, Women of the Century (1893)
Reprinted from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin .
Dear WBAI Members:
For more than three quarters of a century, The WBAI has been witness to remarkable breakthroughs for women in the legal profession and the workplace in general. With all due humility, we would like to think that our efforts have in no little way influenced this trend. The history of the WBAI in front of you-which in itself is a unique celebration of