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The Famous Five or The Valiant Five were five Canadian women who asked the Supreme Court of Canada to answer the question, "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?" in the case Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General).[1] The five women created a petition to ask this question. They sought to have women legally considered persons so that women could be appointed to the Senate.

The petition was filed on August 27, 1927,[2] and on 24 April 1928, Canada's Supreme Court summarized its unanimous decision that women are not such "persons".[1] The last line of the judgement reads, "Understood to mean 'Are women eligible for appointment to the Senate of Canada,' the question is answered in the negative." This judgement was overturned by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This case, which came to be known as the Persons Case, had important ramifications not just for women's rights but also because in overturning the case, the Privy Council engendered a radical change in the Canadian judicial approach to the Canadian constitution, an approach that has come to be known as the "living tree doctrine".

The five women were:

Emily Murphy (1868-1933) (the British Empire's first female judge);

Irene Marryat Parlby (1868-1965) (farm women's leader, activist and first female Cabinet minister in Alberta);

Nellie Mooney McClung (1873-1951) (a suffragist and member of the Alberta legislature);

Louise Crummy McKinney (1868-1931) (the first woman elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, or any legislature in Canada or the rest of the British Empire);

Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931) (an advocate for working women and a founding member of the Victorian Order of Nurses).