Women Advocates Before the Supreme Court CLARE CUSHMAN Legend has it that when Dolley Madison and a group of the First Lady’s friends arrived one day at the Supreme Court in the middle of an oral argument, the great advocate Daniel Webster stopped his oration, bowed to the ladies, and started again from the beginning. Although such excessive gallantry was not standard practice in the early nineteenth century, it was customary for wives of Washington dignitaries to dress up in the latest fashions and come to the Supreme Court to observe oral arguments. The passive, decorative role women then other attorneys, and to argue cases before the played in the life of the Court contrasts Bench. sharply with the professional one they play Before examining the contributions of today. This gradual transformation did not the women advocates who followed in Lock- begin until 1880, ninety-one years after the wood’s footsteps, however, it is appropriate Court’s inception, when a woman was finally to consider claims that two earlier women, permitted to leave the spectator ranks and join Lucy Terry Prince and Myra Clark Gaines— the show. That was the year that Belva A. neither of whom were lawyers—personally Lockwood became the first female attorney to pleaded their own land dispute cases before argue a case before the Supreme Court.1 The the Supreme Court. No official documents previous year she had forced the Court, have been discovered to support these through congressional intervention, to license claims. women to practice before it.2 It had not been an easy task.3 Lockwood’s admission opened Lucy Terry Prince (c. 1725–1821) the doors for successive women attorneys to file petitions and briefs at the Supreme Court, Lucy Terry Prince, an African-American, is to join its bar and to move the admission of usually hailed in reference books as the first 68 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY No official record has been found documenting the alleged oral argument of Lucy Terry Prince, a freed slave, before Justice Samuel Chase in 1796. This oil portrait of Prince, one of the first published African-American poets, is purely imaginary; no likeness of her exists. WOMEN ADVOCATES BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT 69 woman to address the Supreme Court of the United States,” but there is no evidence to United States. The popularizer of this legend suggest that she made the trip to Philadelphia is Massachusetts historian George Sheldon, (where the Court was then lodged) to do so. who described the event in his 1893 article Sheldon based his assumption on a letter writ- “Negro Slavery in Old Deerfield,” which was ten by a Guilford historian named Rodney published in New England Magazine and Field—who was neither an eyewitness to the widely circulated. He wrote that Prince was event nor a contemporary of the Princes—that permitted to argue her Vermont land claim simply stated that she appeared before a suit in 1796 before the “Supreme Court of the “United States Court.”7 United States . presided over by [Justice] A more likely scenario, given Chase’s fa- Samuel Chase of Maryland.” Apparently, vorable comparison of Prince to other Ver- Chase was so impressed by Prince’s elo- mont lawyers, would be that she argued be- quence that he complimented her on making fore Justice Chase when he was riding circuit “a better argument than he had heard from any in Vermont. (In those days, circuit courts were lawyer at the Vermont bar.”4 presided over by one Supreme Court Justice Her performance would have been all the and one district court judge). Justice Chase more extraordinary considering her back- did sit at one session of court in Vermont ground. She was taken from Africa as a child while on circuit, at Bennington in May 1796, in 1730 and eventually sold to a Deerfield, which coincides with the time at which the lit- MA, innkeeper named Ebenezer Wells. She igation would have taken place.8 However, purchased her freedom in 1756 after her mar- the court records show no cases with which riage to Abijah Prince, a free black. In 1762, a Prince or Bronson were associated. Perhaps wealthy Deerfield landowner deeded Abijah Lucy Terry Prince was a principal or a witness Prince 100 acres of land in the newly opened in a federal district court or the state superior territory of Guilford, VT. The Princes and or supreme court. their six children took up residence there in There is no doubt that Prince, an eloquent the 1780s. Hungry for land, they had also ob- storyteller renowned for her keen memory, tained a grant of 300 acres of wilderness tract must have been an effective oral advocate be- in nearby Sunderland. fore whatever court she did appear. In fact, The predatory behavior of a wealthy she merits a place in history whether or not Sunderland neighbor, Colonel Eli Bronson, she argued before Justice Chase. Her lyrical was the basis for the legendary suit. He set up thirty-line doggerel, “The Bars Fight,” which a claim to the Princes’ property and, accord- accurately recounts the dramatic events sur- ing to nineteenth-century Sunderland histo- rounding an Indian raid on Deerfield that she rian Giles B. Bacon, “by repeated law suits witnessed in 1746, was printed posthumously obtained about one-half of the home lot, and in 1855. This accomplishment distinguishes had not the town interposed [the Princes] her as one of the first published Afri- would have lost the whole.”5 A prominent cit- can-American poets.9 izen, Bronson allegedly hired Royall Tyler, a future chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Myra Clark Gaines (1803–1885) Court, and Stephen R. Bradley, a future Ver- mont senator, as his counsel. The Princes The other woman mistakenly reported to were said to have engaged Isaac Tichenor, a have pleaded her land claim case before the future governor of the state, to defend their Supreme Court is perpetual litigant Myra claim.6 Clark Gaines. The gallant orator Daniel In his article, Sheldon wrote that Prince Webster is alleged to have been the opposing argued before “the Supreme Court of the advocate.10 70 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY The land dispute case of Myra Clark Gaines, involving her claim to valuable New Orleans property, came before some thirty different Justices, who issued thirteen separate rulings. WOMEN ADVOCATES BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT 71 This myth probably arose because Gaines Pioneers of the Bar and her heirs filed an astonishing twenty-one motions before the Court between 1836 and Belva Lockwood thus remains unchallenged 1891.11 Some thirty different Justices heard as the first woman either to file a brief or pres- the case, issuing thirteen decisions.12 Passion- ent oral argument at the Supreme Court. Sub- ate and dogged in her pursuit of her inheri- sequent female advocates also qualified as pi- tance claim to valuable New Orleans proper- oneers in various ways. ties, Gaines was wealthy and shrewd enough Opposing the proposed sale by Congress to engage the most seasoned oral advocates to of her tribe’s sacred burial ground in Kansas argue on her behalf.13 Over a period of five City, KS, Lyda Burton Conley (1874–1946), decades she employed more than thirty law- of Wyandotte and English ancestry, became yers, seventeen of whom died in her service. in 1910 the first Native American woman to There is no evidence, however, that she ever argue before the Supreme Court. (The first pleaded her own case against Daniel Webster Native American was probably Elias C. or any other advocate. (In fact, Webster was Boudinot, a Cherokee, in 1871.) Along with one of the advocates she retained in her ser- her sisters Helena and Ida, Conley protested vice.) However, she did present her own argu- Congress’s proposal in 1906 to transfer the ment in a state court trial, stepping in after her bodies and sell off the Huron Cemetery, counsel, infuriated by the judge’s bias, which would have violated the government’s stormed out. Gaines was also active in helping treaty with her tribe. The Conley sisters pad- her lawyers prepare briefs. locked themselves in the cemetery, built a for- At issue was the mysterious disappear- tified shack to dwell in, and fended off gov- ance of a will drafted by her Irish immigrant ernment officials and realtors (but not other father, Daniel Clark, when he died in 1813. In Wyandottes) with their father’s shotgun for the will, Clark named Myra his legitimate seven years.14 daughter and heir to the large fortune he had Conley had long realized the value of the accumulated. Her Creole mother, Zulime coveted piece of real estate where her parents Carriere, held no record of her marriage to and a sister were buried, and had equipped Clark, which they had kept secret because she herself with a law degree from Kansas City had not obtained an annulment from her first School of Law in 1902 to defend it by peace- husband, a French wine merchant and biga- ful means. She unsuccessfully filed suit for a mist. Upon Clark’s death the will disap- permanent injunction in district court against peared, and his sisters and business partners the Secretary of the Interior. After losing an claimed that Myra was illegitimate and there- appeal, she left her sisters to hold the fort in fore ineligible to inherit from her father under 1909 while she traveled to Washington to Louisiana’s unique civil code. Because hun- argue the case before the Supreme Court. dreds of New Orleans residents stood to lose Conley argued pro se; she did not become a their land if she won her claim, she was forced member of the Supreme Court bar until to resort constantly to federal courts to obtain 1915.15 A draft of the argument she delivered the fair trial that hostile local courts did not al- at the Court, written in her own hand, reveals ways provide.