The Famous Five (Canada)

The Famous Five ( German: the famous five ) were five women who the Supreme Court of Canada and later the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council questioned whether 1927 " women are people? ". The case in Canada known as the Persons Case ended with the decision of the Supreme Court that women are not persons under the law, the Privy Council in London this recanted, however.

The women were all from Alberta:

• Emily Murphy ( also first female judge of the British Empire );
• Irene Marryat Parlby ( leader of the rural women, activist and first female Minister in Alberta)
• Nellie Mooney McClung ( Suffragette and Member of Parliament from Alberta);
• Louise Crummy McKinney (First woman to be elected to the Legislature of Alberta or Canada or the British Empire )
• Henrietta Muir Edwards ( founder of the Victorian Order of Nurses ).

The precise question that the five women presented to the court was whether the Constitution Act of 1867 allows women to become members of the Canadian Senate. It says: " The Governor General Shall ... summon qualified Persons to the Senate; ... and every person so Summoned Shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator. " ( The Governor General shall ... appoint qualified persons to the Senate ... and any person appointed to be a member of the Senate and his. )

In Edwards v. Canada ( Attorney General ) S.C.R. 276, the Supreme Court ruled that the terms " people " refers exclusively to men. It held, among other things, that:

• The legislators who had passed a law, no women had in mind when they decided this,
• The language of the law all the time the male personal pronoun he used when speaking of senators.

The Famous Five appealed to the judicial committee of the Privy Council in London, at that time the highest court of appeal for the entire British Empire outside the United Kingdom. This was decided on October 18, 1929 ( Edwards v. Canada ( Attorney General ) AC 124 (PC) ), that women actually are persons within the meaning of the Act and referred to the exclusion of women as a " relic barbarischerer times". The judgment was binding on the entire British Empire; only within the British Isles not, so the question of whether women could sit in the House of Lords, for some years remained controversial.

The importance of the five women in Canada is still controversial in modern times. While they are considered as an important national symbol for women's equality, others interfere in their wider political setting like eugenics to anchor by law to immigration and its campaign. At the same time they doubt the case is important because the Canadian Senate was a political meaningless committee in the 1920s.

The Famous Five are immortalized on the 50 -dollar bill, as well as a monument in Calgary and on Parliament Hill it represents. In the entrance of the Canadian Senate there is a memorial plaque for them, as in the Olympic Plaza in Calgary in their home province of Alberta. Edmonton named five parks in accordance with the Famous Five.