lator.) She applied herself to the study of law practice for two years, and during that period diligently frequented the hearings of the tribunals. Desiring to be inscribed on the list of the Order [of Advocates], she passed successfully the theoretical and practical examination prescribed by law, and the Council of the Order, after consultation, on August 9, 1883, rendered an opinion favorable to her eurollment. The Public Minister, making use of the latitude allowed him by Italian law, opposed this opinion. The Court refused to admit Signora Poet to the bar.

The motives which influenced the Turin Court of Cassation may be thus briefly summarized: "The practice of the profession of advocate cannot be compared with that of any other profession to which the completion of a course of study and the obtaining of a diploma gives a right of access; this practice exacts a concurrence of other conditions prescribed by law. Rights and duties spring from it; the functions of the advocate constitute more than a profession, they are a kind of public and necessary office, according to the saying of Anastasius: laudabile vitæque hominum necessarium officium.

"In fact, every citizen has the choice of resorting or of not resorting to the labor of those who practice a profession. Whilst to have recourse to an advocate is both obligatory and necessary, and whilst those who practice other professions are free to lend the assistance requested of them or to refuse it, advocates cannot refuse theirs, especially in cases where the magistrate orders this assistance to be given. The principle proclaimed by the praetor, Si non habebunt advocatum, ego dabo (Lex I, § 4, de postulando), has been respected by all legislation, and is maintained in full force by the legislation which governs us. The Italian law has also accepted and followed the teachings of the Roman law in the matter of distinctions, favors, privileges and remuneration. It has organized colleges of advocates, having a legal representation; it has grarted to them an exceptional jurisdiction and given to them extraordinary means for prosecuting the payment of their fees; it has bestowed a special dignity upon them, that of succeeding to the magistracy after a few years of practice.

"The profession of advocate being a public office, or, at the very least a species of public and civil office, to admit women to the practice thereof, it is not enough to say that in actual legislation no law has pronounced their exclusion; a positive text must be found declaring woman capable of holding all offices and positions as well public as civil. If the Italian Civil Code has extracted women from that species of 'inferiority (diminuzione di capo) under which she was placed in the past, and has admitted her to the enjoyment of almost all civil rights on a footing of equality with man; if laws, enacted concerning certain special matters have qualified woman for certain specified offices, it is unquestionable that, in order for women to enjoy certain rights and perform certain duties, a like qualification must be expressly conferred upon them by legislation. In Italian law, there is no enactment which accords to woman the right to practice the profession of advocate, but, weighing the letter and the spirit of the laws bearing on the question, the conclusion is, that, in the mind of the legislator, the profession of advocate ought to be a business reserved for men, and that women ought to remain strangers to it. Articles 39 No. 2, 50 No. 3, 72, 128, of the law concerning the organization of the judiciary, say that those who have carried on the profession of advocate for a certain period of time may be nominated for praetors, judges, and councilors of Appeal and of Cassation. If women were admitted to the bar, they also might perform these judicial duties. Such could not have been the intent of the legislature.

"The qualification of woman for the profession of advocate should be in express terms, for it is an extraordinary thing, outside all usages and even expressly forbidden by the general law The Roman law excluded women from this. office, and no modern enactment has abrogated this provision of the general law. The reason for which the praetor forbade women to plead, as a thing contrary to the reserve and modesty befitting the sex, has the same validity to-day that it formerly had.

"It would be unbecoming and villainous (brutto)," adds the decree, "to see women descending into the arena of the forum, 'taking part in the midst of the bustle of public procedure, ex

citing themselves in discussions which easily carry one beyond bounds, and in which one could not show toward them, all the respect which it is proper to observe toward the more delicate. sex. Moreover, woman might at times be compelled to deal, ex professo, with questions which the excellent rules of polite society' do not allow to be discussed in the presence of respectable women.”

The Turin Court of Appeal has felt itself obliged to terminate its decree by a consideration, which, although it be delicately humorous, hardly seems to us juridical.

"After what has already been said, there is no need even to mention the risk which the gravity of legal proceedings might run, if—to say nothing of other things-one should sometimes see the toga covering the strange and bizarre garments which fashion often imposes upon women, or the cap placed upon not less extravagant coiffures; just as there is no further need to mention the very grave danger to which the magistracy would be exposed, of being the object of suspicion and calumny, every time that the scales of justice should turn in favor of the party for whom a woman advocate had pleaded."

One

The Turin Court of Cassation rejected the application of Signora Lidia Poet. The decree of the Supreme Court involves itself in lengthy disquisitions, philosophical rather than juridical, to demonstrate that the public law and the private law have not established in Italy, the equality of the sexes. can easily judge of the value of the entire decree, by reading this passage from the strange argument of the Turin Court: "If the legislator had really intended to admit women to practice the profession of advocate, he would not have employed invariably the generic masculine term avvocato; he would also have used the expression avvocata, which is found in the Italian language and is in use in common speech."-(E di vero, non é poi un argomento tanto lieve quello del trovarvisi sempre adoperato il genere mascolino avvocato, non la parola avvocata, che pur esiste nella lingua italiana e si usa nel comune parlare. Decree Cass. Turin, p. 323. Col. 2 Journ. Ind.)

Truly, the argument against woman which prevails in Italy, must be very weak, for a supreme court to be reduced to invoke

in its support such shabby subtilties-we might even say, such pitiful quibbles. [For a full account of Signora Poet's case, with the decrees thereupon, see La Donna e l'Avvocatura, by Signor Santoni-de Sio, Roma, 1884. Translator.]

(A fuller account of this case, with, perhaps, some translations from the Italian, will appear in a subsequent number of the "Law Times."-Ed.)

PORTUGAL has not yet solved the problem of the introduction of women to the universities. The woman lawyer, like the woman physician, is a thing unknown there.

IN RUSSIA, women are excluded from university courses.(There is, however, a school of medicine, which was founded for women.) This fact reveals nothing surprising for a country where the students are organized as a part of the military, wearing uniforms, and obeying military chiefs. Although exclusion from the universities might be pronounced against women, the Czar rightly judged that they could possibly claim the right to become members of the bar, so long as their incapacity had not been formerly expressed. Hence the Emperor of all the Russias, sanctioned the decree of January 7, 1876, which forbade women access to the functions of advocate. As early as 1871, the question of the admission of women to the offices of Russian public administration, was decided in the negative.

IN SWEDEN, women can attend university courses and the schools of law, and obtain there the degree of Doctor.

No Order of Advocates exists in that country. Neither the Civil Code, nor that of Civil and Criminal Procedure of 1734, still in force, compels professional jurists to plead for another before the tribunals. The Code, (Sect. Procedure, ch. XV, 2), expresses itself thus: "Those who demand or defend for another before the tribunals, should be men of good reputation, honest, and endowed with intelligence. In general, the tribunal should in each case, receive the defenders."

As M. the Count K. d'Olivecrona, Counselor of the Supreme Court of Sweden has written to us, the legislature certainly never dreamed, in 1734, that women might present themselves before the tribunals, in the character of advocate.

Up to the present time no woman has appeared before the

Swedish Courts of Appeal, or before the Supreme Court, to fill the office of advocate. Before the nist prius tribunals, especially the provincial ones, women frequently appear, armed with full power from their husbands, and the tribunal allows them to plead.

According to information sent to us from another source, by the Rector of the University of Upsala, a woman who has completed her legal studies and received her diploma, has an incontestable right to practice as advocate before any tribunal whatever in the country.

IN TURKEY, the law of January 13, 1876, concerning advocates, evidently does not trouble itself about the woman lawyer. Turkey is the only country in Europe where the women still live in special apartments, and are compelled to veil their faces when they go out. In the country of the harem alone, a court of appeal would be authorized to invoke, against the admission of women to the bar, the text of Lex 21, Cod. II, 13 (12): ne feminæ persequendæ litis obtentu in contumeliam matronalis pudoris irreverenter irruant, et conventibus virorum vel judiciis interesse cogantur.

As to SWITZERLAND, where there is no federal legislation concerning the practice of the profession of advocate, we cannot think of analyzing here all the local laws, whose provisions vary exceedingly from one canton to another. For instance, in the canton of Neufchatel, a woman would be admitted to plead before the tribunals, the profession of advocate being free, but in Geneva, on the contrary it would be otherwise; for the law of June 22, 1878, grants the right to practice as advocate only to Swiss citizens enjoying civil and political rights.

In all Switzerland-we might even say in all the German countries, one woman alone has obtained the diploma of a Doctor of Laws. This is Mme. Emelie Kempin-Spyri of Zurich, concerning whom several judicial decisions have been rendered, which we shall now consider in detail.

In the Canton of Zurich, the profession of advocate is free; the first man who comes, be he shoemaker or stonebreaker, can set up as advocate, though he may not have the least idea of law or of right. The only condition imposed is that of