denied an application of a woman to
be admitted to practice as an attorney upon the ground "that
under the constitution and laws of the United States a Court is
without power to grant such an application, and that a woman is
without legal capacity to take the office of an attorney."
_Lockwood's Case, 9 Ct. of Claims, 346, 356._ At October terms
1876 of the Supreme Court of the United States, the same
petitioner applied to be admitted to practice as an attorney and
counsellor of that Court, and her application was denied.

The decision has not been officially reported, but upon the
record of the Court, of which we have an authentic copy, it is
thus stated: "Upon the presentation of this application, the
chief-justice said that notice of this application having been
previously brought to his attention, he had been instructed by
the Court to announce the following decision upon it: By the
uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the
present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but
men are permitted to practice before it as attorneys and
counsellors. This is in accordance with immemorial usages in
England, and the law and the practice in all the States until
within a recent period, and the Court does not feel called upon
to make a change until such change is required by statute or a
more extended practice in the highest Courts of the States." The
subsequent act of congress of February 15, 1879, enables only
those women to be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court
of the United States who have been for three years members of the
bar of the highest Court of a State or territory, or of the
Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

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., 525. 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 decision