Belva Lockwood Becomes First Woman Admitted to Supreme Court Bar

Context

In the years after the Civil War, American courts and legislatures confronted expanding claims for civil and professional equality, yet the legal profession remained tightly restricted by gender. The Supreme Court's 1873 decision in Bradwell v. Illinois upheld state authority to deny women admission to the bar, reinforcing the view that the practice of law was incompatible with women's traditional roles. Similar exclusions applied at the federal level, where the high court itself limited bar membership to men.

Belva Ann Lockwood arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1866 from upstate New York and quickly joined circles of reformers active in temperance and suffrage. She enrolled at the National University Law School in 1871, completed the course the following year, and obtained her diploma only after appealing directly to President Ulysses S. Grant, the school's ex officio chancellor. Lockwood then secured admission to the District of Columbia bar, becoming one of the first women licensed to practice law in the nation's capital.

What Happened

In October 1876, Washington attorney Albert G. Riddle moved Belva Lockwood's admission to the Supreme Court bar. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite denied the motion from the bench, announcing that "none but men are admitted to practice before [the Court] as attorneys and counsellors." The rejection prompted Lockwood to seek a legislative remedy, enlisting support from male colleagues and members of Congress for a bill removing gender-based disabilities from federal court practice.

The measure, titled "An act to relieve certain legal disabilities of women" and popularly called the Lockwood Bill, was debated in both houses during 1878 and 1879. President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law in mid-February 1879. On March 3, Riddle renewed the motion for Lockwood's admission. Citing the new statute, the Court granted the request without dissent, and Lockwood became the first woman sworn as a member of the Supreme Court bar.

Aftermath

Lockwood's admission immediately enabled her to file papers and appear in federal cases. Three days later she was admitted to the U.S. Court of Claims. In November 1880 she made history again as the first woman to present oral argument before the Supreme Court, appearing in Kaiser v. Stickney on behalf of a client whose case invoked the doctrine of coverture.

The 1879 statute remained in force, allowing other qualified women who met the three-year practice requirement to seek admission to the Supreme Court bar on the same terms as men.

Legacy

Lockwood's breakthrough dismantled a formal barrier at the nation's highest court and demonstrated that persistent legislative advocacy could advance professional equality when judicial avenues were closed. Her example encouraged subsequent generations of women attorneys and formed part of the broader nineteenth-century push to remove sex-based exclusions from public life, contributing to the momentum that produced the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

Later in her career Lockwood argued a major case for the Cherokee Nation in 1906, securing a multimillion-dollar judgment, and she sponsored early Black attorneys, including Samuel R. Lowery, for Supreme Court admission. Historians regard her as a pragmatic strategist whose combination of litigation, lobbying, and public activism helped normalize women's presence in the federal judiciary.