ute with regard to the admission of attorneys by the
court is the 29th section of chapter 3, title 4, of the General
Statutes, and is in the following words: "The Superior Court may
admit and cause to be sworn as attorneys such persons as are
qualified therefor agreeably to the rules established by the
judges of said court; and no other person than an attorney so
admitted shall plead at the bar of any court of this State,
except in his own cause."

It is not contended, in opposition to the application, that the
language of this statute is not comprehensive enough to include
women, but the claim is that at the time it was passed its
application to women was not thought of, while the fact that
women have never been admitted as attorneys, either by the
English courts or by any of the courts of this country, had
established a common-law disability, which could be removed only
by a statute intended to have that effect.

It is hardly necessary to consider how far the fact that women
have never pursued a particular profession or occupied a
particular official position, to the pursuit or occupancy of
which some governmental license or authority was necessary,
constitutes a common-law disability for receiving such license or
authority, because here the statute is ample for removing that
disability if we can construe it as applying to women; so that we
come back to the question whether we are by construction to limit
the application of the statute to men alone, by reason of the
fact that in its original enactment its application to women was
not intended by the legislators that enacted it. And upon this
point we remark, in the first place, that an inquiry of this sort
involves very serious difficulties. No one would doubt that a
statute passed at this time in the same words would be sufficient
to authorize the admission of women to the bar, because it is now
a common fact and presumably in the minds of legislators, that
women in different parts of the country are, and for some time
have been, following the profession of law. But if we hold that
the construction of the statute is to be determined by the
admitted fact that its application to women was not in the minds
of the legislators when it was passed, where shall we draw the
line? All progress