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The First Women Members Of The Supreme Court Bar, 1879-1900, Mary L. Clark

San Diego Law Review

In 1879, Belva A. Lockwood of Washington, D.C., became the first woman member of the bar of the U. S. Supreme Court. Lockwood had applied for admission to the bar three years earlier, but had been refused on the ground that no woman had ever been admitted and thus there was no precedent for women's admission. Not easily defeated, Lockwood lobbied Congress to amend the rules governing admission of attorneys to the Supreme Court bar to allow for women as well as men. In February, 1879, Congress adopted "an Act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women," which authorized women …