EDWARD G. RYAN
(Edward George Ryan)
With these words Ryan denied Wisconsin's first known female attorney, Lavinia Goodell, the right to practice law before the Supreme Court
Though Ryan was not necessarily a proponent of Southern secession, he was an outspoken critic of the Lincoln administration’s misuse of Constitutional powers in the Civil War.
The Chief Justice refused to accept the previously established legal precedents of other states which would limit considerably the right of the state to regulate corporations. As a result Wisconsin became one of America’s pioneers in regulating corporations which over 25 years later, Theodore Roosevelt was to do for the nation as a whole. The phrase “empire within an empire,” the translation of the Latin that Ryan used, has often been quoted to describe the power corporations had at that time.
Edward George Ryan was an Irish American immigrant, lawyer, and judge, and was the 5th Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
