Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the act commonly known because the “Civil Rights Bill,” the “full and equal good thing about all laws and proceedings for the safety of particular person and property,” and the right to exercise and comply with the occupation of an attorney-at-law upon the same terms, circumstances, and restrictions as are utilized to and imposed upon every different citizen of the State of Illinois, and none different. We’re in accord with all of the courts on this nation which have had occasion to pass upon an analogous question, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in Conway vs. The regulation colleges of the nation have now many girls in regular attendance, fitting themselves to perform the duties of the career. A married woman, a citizen of the State of Wisconsin, where by legislation she was capable of holding separate estate, and making contracts regarding the identical, emigrating to a State where the common regulation in this regard prevailed, could not purchase and sell property in her personal title, or contract in reference thereto.
As to the primary query, the fitting of married women to make contracts not affecting their separate property, the position of those who assert such proper is, that as a result of the Legislature has expressly removed the common law disabilities of married ladies in regard to holding property not derived from their husbands, it has therefore, by mandatory implication, additionally eliminated all their frequent law disabilities in regard to creating contracts, and invited them to enter, equally with men, upon those fields of commerce and speculation by which property is acquired by way of the agency of contracts. This case arose earlier than the passage of the Act of 1869. The best of a married lady to bring a go well with in her own identify is a vital incident to the regulation. But don’t disgrace another girl as a result of she has sex with males. They permitted a couple of scientific males to exist and work-a pitiful handful. If she owns a farm she must be permitted to bargain for its cultivation, and to dispose of its products.
If she owns houses she should be permitted to contract for his or her restore or rental. This result can, in my view, solely be reached by disregarding the liberal statutes of our State, passed for the only objective of extending the rights of married women, and eternally eradicating from our law, referring to their power to contract in regard to their earnings and property, the fossil foot-prints of the feudal system, and following the strictest rules of the common regulation. Having received a license to follow legislation as an legal professional, and having acted as such, she would be estopped from saying she was not liable as an lawyer upon any contract made by her in that capability. A married girl, if an legal professional, may very well be dedicated for contempt of courtroom the identical as another attorney. Your petitioner claims that a married girl is to not be classed with an infant for the reason that passage of the Act of 1869. A married girl might sue in her own identify for her earnings, an infant can’t.