http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1872/ U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, presented by The Oyez Project (www.oyez.org) en-us <p>Is the right to obtain a license to practice law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to all citizens of the United States?</p><p>No. While the Court agreed that all citizens enjoy certain privileges and immunities which individual states cannot take away, it did not agree that the right to practice law in a state's courts is one of them. There was no agreement, argued Justice Miller, that this right depended on citizenship. In his concurrence, Justice Bradley went above and beyond the constitutional explanations of the case to describe the reasons why it was natural and proper for women to be excluded from the legal profession. He cited the importance of maintaining the "respective spheres of man and woman," with women performing the duties of motherhood and wife in accordance with the "law of the Creator."</p> http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1872/1872_0/ <p>Did the creation of the monopoly violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments?</p><p>No. The involuntary servitude claim did not forbid limits on the right to use one's property. The equal protection claim was misplaced since it was established to void laws discriminating against blacks. The due process claim simply imposes the identical requirements on the states as the fifth amendment imposes on the national government. The Court devoted most of its opinion to a narrow construction of the privileges and immunities clause, which was interpreted to apply to national citizenship, not state citizenship.</p> http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1872/1872_2/