Lady Hale, president of the Supreme Court, has paid tribute to the profession’s pioneers in a speech at King’s College, London last week.
She began with the women who tried to join the profession before the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 but were refused. Margaret Howie Strang Hall petitioned Scotland’s Court of Session in 1900 for permission to take the qualifying exams but was rejected on the basis ‘persons’ in the relevant legislation could only mean ‘male persons’.
In England in 1903, Bertha Cave wrote to the Benchers of Gray’s Inn asking to be admitted as a student with a view to being called to the Bar. Her application was rejected by a special committee as caselaw showed women were not ‘persons’. Further appeal to the House of Lords did not succeed.
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