s in accordance with
immemorial usage in England, and the law and practice in all
the States until within a recent period, and the court does
not feel called upon to make a change until such a change is
required by statute, or a more extended practice in the
highest courts of the States.

With all due respect for this opinion, we beg leave to quote the
rule for admission to the bar of that court as laid down in the
rule book:

RULE NO. 2.--_Attorneys_: It shall be requisite to the
admission of attorneys or counselors to practice in this
court, that they shall have been such for three years past
in the Supreme Courts of the States to which they
respectively belong, and that their private and professional
character shall appear to be fair.

There is nothing in this rule or in the oath which follows it,
either express or implied, which confines the membership of the
bar of the United States Supreme Court to the male sex. Had any
such term been included therein it would virtually be nullified
by the first paragraph of the United States Revised Statutes,
ratified by the forty-third congress, June 20, 1875, in which
occur the following words:

In determining the meaning of the Revised Statutes, or of
any act or resolution of congress passed subsequent to
February 25, 1871, words importing the singular number may
extend and be applied to several persons or things; words
importing the masculine gender may be applied to _females_,
etc., etc.

Now, as to "immemorial usage in England." The executive branch of
that government has been vested in an honored and honorable woman
for the past forty years. Is it to be supposed if this
distinguished lady or any one of her accomplished daughters
should ask to be heard at the bar of the Court of the Queen's
Bench, the practice of which the United States Supreme Court has
set up as its model, that she would be refused?

Blackstone recounts that Ann, Countess of Pembroke, held the
office of sheriff of Westmoreland and exercised its duties in
person. At the assizes at Appleby she sat with the judges on the
bench. (See Coke on Lit., p. 326.) The Scotch sheriff is properly
a judge, and by the statute 20, Geo., II