BRADWELL vs ILLINOIS

Brief Fact Summary. Mrs. Myra Bradwell brought suit challenging Illinois denial of her right to practice
law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Synopsis of Rule of Law. Separate spheres ideology allowed Illinois to prohibit women from practicing
law. Womens admission to the bar is not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment is a matter reserved to
the states.

Facts. Mrs. Myra Bradwell was denied an application to practice law in the Illinois Supreme Court. Her
petition included the requisite certificate attesting to her good character and qualifications. The United
States Supreme Court affirmed.

Issue. Does the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provide that one of the
privileges and immunities of women as citizens is to engage in any profession?

Held. The admission to the bar is a matter reserved to the states and Bradwells right to practice law is
not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. While the Court agreed that all citizens enjoy certain
privileges and immunities which individual states cannot take away, it did not agree that the right to
practice law in a state's courts is one of them. There was no agreement, argued Justice Miller, that this
right depended on citizenship. In his concurrence, Justice Bradley went above and beyond the
constitutional explanations of the case to describe the reasons why it was natural and proper for women
to be excluded from the legal profession. He cited the importance of maintaining the "respective spheres
of man and woman," with women performing the duties of motherhood and wife in accordance with the
"law of the Creator."

Concurrence. Justice Bradley. The Illinois Supreme Court requires a certificate from the court of some
county of his good moral character, and is otherwise left to the discretion of the court. The court found
itself bound by two limitations: to promote the proper administration of justice not to admit any class of
persons not intended by the legislature to be admitted, even though not expressly excluded by statute.
Historically the right to engage in every profession has not been one of the established fundamental
privilege and immunities of the sex. The law has always recognized a wide difference in the respective
spheres and destinies of man and woman. The harmony of interests and views that belong to the family
institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from her
husband.

Historically women had no legal existence, and were incapable of making binding contracts without her
husbands consent. This played heavily in the Supreme Court of Illinois decision. The paramount destiny
of women is to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.

YICK WO vs HOPKINS

Facts. An 1880 ordinance of the city of San Francisco required all laundries in wooden buildings to hold a
permit issued by the city's Board of Supervisors. The board had total discretion over who would be issued
a permit. Although workers of Chinese descent operated 89 percent of the city's laundry businesses, not a
single Chinese owner was granted a permit. Yick Wo and Wo Lee each operated laundry businesses
without a permit and, after refusing to pay a $10 fine, were imprisoned by the city's sheriff, Peter Hopkins.
Each sued for writ of habeas corpus, arguing the fine and discriminatory enforcement of the ordinance
violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Noting that, on its
face, the law is nondiscriminatory, the Supreme Court of California and the Circuit Court of the United
States for the District of California denied claims for Yick Wo and Wo Lee, respectively.

Issue. Did the unequal enforcement of the city ordinance violate Yick Wo and Wo Lee's rights under the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Held. Yes. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice T. Stanley Matthews, the Court concluded that,
despite the impartial wording of the law, its biased enforcement violated the Equal Protection Clause.
According to the Court, even if the law is impartial on its face, "if it is applied and administered by public
authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations
between persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within
the prohibition of the Constitution." The kind of biased enforcement experienced by the plaintiffs, the
Court concluded, amounted to "a practical denial by the State of that equal protection of the law" and
therefore violated the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.

PLESSY vs FERGUSON

Facts. The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In
1892, Homer Adolph Plessy -- who was seven-eighths Caucasian -- took a seat in a "whites only" car of a
Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested.

Issue. Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregation on its trains an unconstitutional infringement on
both the privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Conclusion. Equal but separate accommodations for whites and blacks imposed by Louisiana do not
violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. No, the state law is within
constitutional boundaries. The majority, in an opinion authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown, upheld
state-imposed racial segregation. The justices based their decision on the separate-but-equal doctrine,
that separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were
equal. (The phrase "separate but equal" was not part of the opinion.) Justice Brown conceded that the
14th Amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law. But Brown noted
that "in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to
enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to
either." In short, segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.

KOREMATSU vs US

Facts. During World War II, Presidential Executive Order 9066 and congressional statutes gave the
military authority to exclude citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to national defense
and potentially vulnerable to espionage. Korematsu remained in San Leandro, California and violated
Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the U.S. Army.

Issue. Did the President and Congress go beyond their war powers by implementing exclusion and
restricting the rights of Americans of Japanese descent?
Held. The Court sided with the government and held that the need to protect against espionage
outweighed Korematsu's rights. Justice Black argued that compulsory exclusion, though constitutionally
suspect, is justified during circumstances of "emergency and peril."