Talk:Afroyim v. Rusk

message: I recommend making mention of Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 (1958), an earlier Supreme Court ruling which was opposite to Afroyim (and which the Afroyim decision repudiated).
Also mention Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252 (1980), which confirmed and expanded upon the Afroyim ruling.  The "preponderance of evidence" standard for deciding whether a person's actions had shown an intent to give up US citizenship comes from the Terrazas decision.  Vance v. Terrazas probably deserves an article of its own.
In the "Effect" section, mention that the statute calling for loss of US citizenship for voting in a foreign election — struck down by the Afroyim decision — was repealed by Congress in 1978 (Public Law 95-432).  The "intent" requirement didn't get explicitly added to the loss-of-citizenship statute until 1986 (Pub.L. 99-653), and that was more directly a result of Terrazas than Afroyim.
Richwales 19:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made the above additions. Richwales 16:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Other cases

message: The site with one of Afroyim's paintings is a web copy of a book published in 2000 by the Museum of the City of New York.  The book misstates the nature of Afroyim v. Rusk by saying the case "hinged on [Afroyim's] ability to convince the Court that he had never voted in Israel".  I've been in contact with some people at the museum, and it's currently unclear whether the text on the web site will be corrected or not.  In case it never gets fixed, I'm going to add a note to the article warning about the misstatement.
The MCNY person I've been corresponding with also mentioned that Afroyim reportedly told a reporter for the Staten Island Advance (a small weekly) in 1967 that he had not, in fact, ever voted in Israel.  It would be interesting to track this point down further -- though it isn't strictly relevant to the court case, since the Supreme Court held that even taking Afroyim's having voted in Israel as a given, that still didn't give the US government a valid reason to revoke his citizenship.
Afroyim's obituary was reportedly published on May 20, 1984 — apparently in the Staten Island Advance.
Richwales 16:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Correspondence with museum

message: That should be fixed.  --zenohockey 17:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Richwales 16:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Minority opinion" section is blank

message: The article used to contain a reference to a site (http://www.mcny.org/collections/painting/pttcat87.htm) which talks about Afroyim's life as a painter.  This link was recently deleted by someone who thought that it would be more appropriate in an article about Afroyim himself, rather than about his court case; also, that a comment made on the other site about Afroyim's case was factually incorrect (namely, a claim that the decision hinged on Afroyim's ability to convince the Supreme Court that had in fact never voted in Israel), even though the Wikipedia reference to the site included a disclaimer (which I added last April).
I would propose that this link should be put back in.  First, I don't see any problem with a small amount of material about Afroyim (the man) in this article about Afroyim (the court case).  Second, and maybe more importantly, I would suggest that if a widely held misconception (such as the idea that Afroyim was able to keep his US citizenship because he really hadn't voted in a foreign election after all) is out there on the net, it's better for Wikipedia to acknowledge the misconception — and say that it's a misconception — than to ignore it and then have people be confused when they run across it themselves.
If we don't put this link back in now (with its accompanying disclaimer), chances are someone will eventually find the site and, unaware of the current discussion, put it back in — probably without a disclaimer! — and we'll be back to where we were before I added the disclaimer in April 2006.
Comments?
— Richwales 21:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As the one who originally put the link in, I fully support your argument.  If there were a Wikipedia article devoted to Afroyim, I agree that that would be a better place to put the link to the paintings.  But there isn't. Grover cleveland 23:52, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm putting the link to Afroyim's painting back into the Afroyim v. Rusk page, for the reasons explained above.  Richwales 00:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to site with a painting by Afroyim 

message: I'm not a lawyer, but I just stumbled over Rogers v. Bellei  which appears to have clarified, limited application of, or partially overturned Afroyim v. Rusk. If I've got that right, shouldn't it be mentioned in this article (or have I missed something which should have been obvious)? -- Boracay Bill (talk) 05:27, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The facts were significantly different between these two cases.  Rogers v. Bellei was distinguished from Afroyim v. Rusk because Mr. Bellei was born in Italy (to an Italian father and an American mother).  This meant Bellei's US citizenship was statutory (resulting from an act of Congress dealing with foreign-born children of American parents), and not mandated by the 14th Amendment.  Thus, the Supreme Court ruled that statutory loss of citizenship for such people, under certain circumstances, was OK.  Afroyim, on the other hand, was naturalized in the US, so his US citizenship was protected by the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause.  Richwales (talk) 05:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Rich. I understand that in Bellei SCOTUS considered circumstances which they had not considered in Afroyim. My point is that the lead sentence of this article says flatly, "Afroyim v. Rusk, , was a United States Supreme Court decision that set an important legal precedent that a United States citizen cannot be deprived of American citizenship involuntarily." In Bellei, however, the Court drew a sharp distinction between two classes of US Citizens, those who are and those who are not "Fourteenth-Amendment-first-sentence" citizens—Bellei being one who is not, and therefore being one who (contrary to Afroyim) can be deprived of American citizenship involuntarily. Bellei, AFAICT, limits the application of Afroyim to those who are "Fourteenth-Amendment-first-sentence" citizens.  It seems to me that this article on Afroyim ought to mention this and ought not to open with a flat statement which seems to contradict this. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 23:40, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rogers v. Bellei 

message: I just did a major expansion of this article, with a view toward eventually getting it to the Featured Article level.  I'm not done yet.
One change I made probably deserves explanation.  Previously, the article said Afroyim v. Rusk "held that a person born or naturalized in the United States cannot be deprived of his or her citizenship involuntarily".  In fact, the decision in this case held (more broadly) that no U.S. citizen could have their citizenship taken away involuntarily.  The narrowing of the effect of Afroyim came four years later, when the Supreme Court held (in Rogers v. Bellei) that a person born abroad to an American parent did not owe his U.S. citizenship to the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause and could validly lose his citizenship for failing to satisfy a statutory U.S. residence requirement.  So, the Afroyim v. Rusk article now properly explains that the case's holding talked about the rights of U.S. citizens in general, and that the limitation came later, in Rogers v. Bellei.  I'm just mentioning this so no one thinks I overlooked this point in the course of my rewrite.  — Richwales 05:38, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Making further improvements 

message: So in Perez v Brownell a hispanic loses their citizenship but here an Israeli jew got to keep theirs? Knock me down with a feather.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.29.190 (talk) 21:05, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who'd Have Guessed? 

message: The introduction doesn't explain *why* the government attempt to revoke citizenship. It just says, this happened, then that happened.
:The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a Polish-born man, because he had cast a vote in an Israeli election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Without repeating or explaining the government's argument, this is a useless history.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt me (talk • contribs) 23:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The revocation of Afroyim's US citizenship happened because of a provision of the law at the time (the Nationality Act of 1940) which decreed automatic loss of US nationality for voting in a foreign election.  This fact can certainly be added to the lead, provided it can be done in a very brief way (in keeping with the high-level summary nature of a lead section).  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 02:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a short explanation of the above to the lead section of the article.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 04:28, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad introduction 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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