131 Mass. 376 | Mass. | 1881
The question presented by this petition, and by the report on which it has been reserved for our determination, is whether, under the laws of the Commonwealth, an unmarried woman is entitled to be examined for admission as an attorney and counsellor of this court.
This being the first application of the kind in Massachusetts, the court, desirous that it should be fully argued, informed the executive committee of the Bar Association of the city of Boston of the application, and has received elaborate briefs from the petitioner in support of her petition, and from two gentlemen of the bar as amici curice in opposition thereto.
The statute under which the application is made is as follows: “ A citizen of this State, or an alien who has made the primary declaration of his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and who is an inhabitant of this State, of the age of twenty-one years and of good moral character, may, on the recommendation of an attorney, petition the Supreme Judicial or Superior Court to be examined for admission as an attorney, whereupon the court shall assign a time and place for the examination, and if satisfied with his acquirements and qualifications he shall be admitted.” St. 1876, e. 197.
The word “ citizen,” when used in its most common and most comprehensive sense, doubtless includes women; but a woman is
The rule that “ words importing the masculine gender may be applied to females,” like all other general rules of construction of statutes, must yield when such construction would be either “repugnant to the context of the same statute,” or “inconsistent with the manifest intent of the Legislature.” Gen. Sts. c. 3, § 7.
The intention of the Legislature in enacting a particular statute is not to be ascertained by interpreting the statute by itself alone, and according to the mere literal meaning of its- words. Every statute must be construed in connection with the whole system, of which it forms part, and in the light of the common law and of previous statutes upon the same subject. And the Legislature is not to be lightly presumed to have intended to reverse the policy of its predecessors or to introduce a fundamental change in long-established principles of law.
By the law of England, which was our law from the first settlement of the country until the American Revolution, the Crown, with all its inherent rights and prerogatives, might indeed descend to a woman or to an infant; but, under the degree of a queen, no woman, married or unmarried, could take part in the government of the state. Women could not sit in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, nor vote for members of Parliament. 4 Inst. 5. Countess of Rutland’s case, 6 Rep. 52 b. Chorlton v. Lings, L. R. 4 C. P. 374, 391, 392. They could not take part in the administration of justice, either as judges or as jurors, with the single exception of inquiries by a jury of matrons upon a suggestion of pregnancy. 2 Inst. 119, 121. 3 Bl. Com. 362. 4 Bl. Com. 395. Willes, J., in L. R. 4 C. P. 390, 391. And no case is known in which a woman was admitted to practice as an attorney, solicitor or barrister.
The only English “ instance of a woman lawyer,” cited by the petitioner, is that stated in a note of Mr. Butler to Coke upon
The office of sheriff was partly judicial and partly ministerial; the judicial functions could not be delegated; but the ministerial duties, including that of attendance upon the judges, might be performed by deputy. Dalton’s Sheriff, cc. 1, 4. Bandal's case, Noy, 21. Bacon’s Use of the Law, 4 Bacon’s Works (ed. 1803) 97. Willes, J., in L. R. 4 C. P. 390. When such an
An attorney at law is not indeed, in the strictest sense, a public officer. But he comes very near it. As was said by Lord Holt, “ the office of an attorney concerns the public, for it is for the administration of justice.” White’s case, 6 Mod. 18. Bradley’s case, 7 Wall. 364, 378, 379. By our statutes he is required, upon his admission, to take and subscribe in open court the oaths to support the Constitutions of the United States and of this Commonwealth, as well as the oath of office; this oath, the form of which has remained without substantial change since the time of Lord Holt, nearly a hundred and eighty years, pledges him to conduct himself “ in the office of an attorney within the courts ” according to the best of his knowledge and discretion, and with all good fidelity as well to the courts as to his clients; and he becomes by his admission an officer of the court, and holds his office during good behavior, subject to removal by the court for malpractice. Gen. Sts. c. 121, §§ 30, 31,
There is nothing in the action of the Legislature or of the Judiciary of the Commonwealth which has any tendency to prove such a change in the law and usage prevailing at the time of our separation from the mother country as to admit women to the exercise of any office that concerns the administration of justice.
In 1871 the Governor and Council required the opinion of the justices of this court, under c. 3, art. 2, of the Constitution of the Commonwealth, upon the following questions: “ First. Under the Constitution of this Commonwealth, can a woman, if duly appointed and qualified as a justice of the peace, legally perform all acts pertaining to such office ? Second. Under the laws of this Commonwealth, would oaths and acknowledgments of deeds, taken before a married or unmarried woman, duly appointed and qualified as a justice of the peace, be legal and valid ? ” Although the provisions of the Constitution and statutes of the Commonwealth regarding the office of justice of the peace, while they do not mention women, are not in terms limited to men, yet the justices answered both the questions proposed in the negative, for the following reasons: “ By the Constitution of the Commonwealth, the office of justice of the peace is a judicial office, and must be exercised by the officer in person, and a woman, whether married or unmarried, cannot be appointed to such an office. The law of Massachusetts at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the whole frame and purport of the instrument itself, and the universal understanding and unbroken practical construction for the greater part of a century afterwards, all support this conclusion, and are inconsistent with any other. It follows that, if a woman should be formally appointed and commissioned as a justice of the peace, she would have no constitutional or legal authority to exercise any of the functions appertaining to that office.” Opinion of Justices, 107 Mass. 604.
Whenever the Legislature has intended to make a change in the legal rights or capacities of women, it has used words clearly
The only statute making any provisions concerning attorneys, that mentions women, is the poor debtor act, which, after enumerating among the cases in which an arrest of the person may be made on execution in an action of contract, that in which “the debtor is an attorney at law,” who has unreasonably neglected to pay to his client money collected, enacts, in the next section but one, that “ no woman shall be arrested on any civil
The word “ citizen,” in the statute under which this application is made, is but a repetition of the word originally adopted with a view of excluding aliens, before the St. of 1852, o. 154, allowed those aliens to be admitted to the bar who had made the preliminary declaration of intention to become citizens. Rev. Sts. c. 88, § 19. Gen. Sts. c. 121, § 28. The reenactment of the act relating to the admission of attorneys in the same words without more, so far as relates to the personal qualifications of the applicant, since other statutes have expressly modified the legal rights and capacities of women in other important respects, tends rather to refute than to advance the theory that the Legislature intended that these words should comprehend women.
No inference of an intention of the Legislature to include women in the statutes concerning the admission of attorneys can be drawn from the mere omission of the word “ male.” The only statute to which we have been referred, in which that word is inserted, is the statute concerning the qualifications of voters in town affairs, which, following the language of the article of the Constitution that defines the qualifications of voters for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Senators and Representatives, speaks of “ every male citizen of twenty-one years of age,” &c. Gen. Sts. c. 18, § 19. Const. Mass. Amendments, art. 3. Words which taken by themselves would be equally applicable to women and to men are constantly used in the Constitution and statutes, in speaking of offices which it could not be contended, in the present state of the law, that women were capable of holding.
The courts of the Commonwealth have not assumed by their rules to admit to the bar any class of persons not within the apparent intent of the Legislature as manifested in the statutes. The word “ person,” in the latest rule of court upon the subject, was the word used in the rule of 1810 and in the statutes of 1785 and 1836, at times when no one contemplated the possibility of a woman’s being admitted to practise as an attorney. 121 Mass. 600. 6 Mass. 382. St. 1785, c. 23. Rev. Sts. c. 88, § 20, Gen. Sts. c. 121, § 29.
The conclusion that women cannot be admitted to the bar under the existing statutes of the Commonwealth is in accordance with judgments of the highest courts of the States of Illinois and Wisconsin. Bradwell’s case, 55 Ill. 535. Goodell’s case, 39 Wis. 232. The suggestion in the brief of the petitioner, that women have been admitted in other States, can have no weight here, in the absence of all evidence that (except under clear affirmative words in a statute) they have ever been so admitted upon deliberate consideration of the question involved, or by a court whose decisions are authoritative.
It is hardly necessary to add that our duty is limited to declaring the law as it is, and that whether any change in that law would be wise or expedient is a question for the legislative and not for the judicial department of the government.
Petition dismissed.
The St. of 1882, c. 189, approved on April 10, 1882, is as follows: “ The provisions of law relating to the qualification and admission to practice of attorneys at law shall apply to women.”