Talk:Minor v. Happersett

message: Van Dyne does not support the suggested inference that Minor defined citizenship.  Please read the entire section more carefully, instead of just that one sentence.  Van Dyne is saying Minor held voting was not synonymous with citizenship, which this article has already stated.  --Weazie (talk) 17:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not just let the words in the source stand for themselves, instead of pushing your interpretation of what they mean? That's what sources are for, aren't they? RodCrosby (talk) 18:11, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Cherry-picking one sentence creates an inference that doesn't exist, gives weight where there should be none, and ignores what the author is actually trying to say.  --Weazie (talk) 18:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: All in your opinion, of course.... And there is only one sentence of Van Dyne's to quote in relation to Minor, in any event. So no cherry picking in sight. I quote it, and with it the "dicta" myth vanishes in a puff of smoke. RodCrosby (talk) 18:39, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, it is clear from the context of what Van Dyne is writing (hint: the section is captioned Children born in United States of alien parentage; Minor was not of alien parentage) that Minor was a voting case that held citizenship and voting were not synonymous.  This reliance on Van Dyne is -- surprise, surprise! -- a birther meme.  There is no problem with citing Van Dyne for the proposition that Minor was a voting case.  But the inclusion of the passing reference to natural-born citizenship in Minor gives undue weight to the topic.  --Weazie (talk) 19:09, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, you've lost me. What's a "birther meme"? You will note that the source treatise is called "Citizenship in the United States", and not "Voting Rights in the United States", so it is fanciful to characterise the citizenship aspect of Minor as a "passing reference". Van Dyne thought it important enough to include on his treatise on Citizenship. You will note further that Van Dyne is smart enough on page 12 to identify as "only a dictum" part of the Slaughter-House Cases, and "not involved in the decision of the case." Whereas, in Minor, on the next page we have "the decision in this case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United states..." So Van Dyne explodes the myth that the citizen aspect of Minor was mere dicta. And yet.... you now choose call it a "passing reference" and "undue". It is neither. It is, in the opinion of Van Dyne, a Supreme Court decision in relation to citizenship. RodCrosby (talk) 19:35, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The passing reference to the Natural-born-citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution in Minor generally (and this exact Van Dyne quote specifically ) is a WP:COATRACK for Birthers.  --Weazie (talk) 19:42, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: So Van Dyne, writing in 1904, was a Coatracker or Birther? I see.... Btw, have you read "Through the Looking Glass"? I think you'd enjoy it! RodCrosby (talk) 19:48, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Van Dyne 

message: Regarding In re Lockwood, :
Accepting (at least for the sake of argument) that a Supreme Court decision may be a reliable secondary source interpreting another Supreme Court decision, let's stop here and see just what the Lockwood court actually said:  "In Miner [sic] v. Happersett, this court held that the word 'citizen' is often used to convey the idea of membership in a nation, and in that sense, women, if born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United States, as much so before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution as since...."
First, there is no mention here of natural-born citizens — just "citizens" — so Lockwood has (as best I can tell) no bearing on whether Minor v. Happersett defines eligibility for the Presidency or not.
Second, Lockwood is certainly not saying that Minor conclusively limited citizenship (natural-born or otherwise) to only the US-born children of US citizens.  If that sort of logic were valid, then we could go one step further and have a crop of "feminist birthers" using Lockwood itself to "prove" that only women born in the US to US citizen parents are natural-born citizens (or even citizens at all!).
In the same sense, Minor said that being born in the US to US citizen parents was a sufficient qualification for being a natural-born citizen, but the court explicitly declined to answer the question of whether this was a necessary qualification — because they didn't have to — because Virginia Minor was not trying to run for President, she was trying to vote — and the only reason the justices of the Supreme Court were talking about citizenship at all in Minor v. Happersett was to establish that Virginia Minor was a US citizen, so that they could move on and decide whether or not the Privileges or Immunities Clause guaranteed her, as a citizen, the right to vote.  "For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts."  (Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. at 168.)
And it's also clear, from a careful reading of Minor, that the Supreme Court didn't see any difference between a "natural-born citizen" and anyone else who had citizenship from birth.  "Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization.  This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides that 'no person except a natural-born citizen ... shall be eligible to the office of President,' and that Congress shall have power 'to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.'  Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization."  (Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. at 167.)
So, if there is in fact any reliable secondary source out there that confirms the notion that, per Minor v. Happersett, one must be born in the US of two American parents in order to be a "natural-born citizen" and eligible to serve as President, In re Lockwood does not appear to be that source.  And I challenge anyone to find any such source.  I've tried, without success:  I shepardized Minor v. Happersett, and I looked through the list of several hundred law review articles mentioning the case, and I read the dozen or so of these articles whose titles contained words such as "citizen", or "natural-born", or "President" (or variations on these words), and none of them even came close to offering Minor v. Happersett as a case supporting this particular birther notion.  Unless someone can find a source other than their own supposedly "common-sense" reading of the Minor opinion, or a birther blog reporting someone else doing this, I'm content to conclude that no reliable legal experts consider this view to be valid, or even to be worth discussing.  — Richwales 07:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on ''In re Lockwood'', ''Minor v. Happersett'', and birther arguments 

message: With respect, I'm going to revert [ this recent edit's] rewriting of the last paragraph (describing the Ankeny case).  I believe the source being offered (a piece from The Economist) is too overtly biased to be usable as the one and only secondary source for this material.  I'm not even sure I'm comfortable with using it along with a description labelling it as one opinion on the subject.  The original text of the paragraph does not, in my view, give undue weight to the "birther" misinterpretation of Ankeny vs. Governor of Indiana; rather, it succinctly describes the case and shows how the Indiana appeals court used Minor v. Happersett to give the birther interpretation short shrift.  This article needs to explain what the relevant piece of Minor really means, in an even-handed and dispassionate manner, because many people will come to this article precisely because Minor is claimed by some birthers as supporting their position, and these readers need to see a fact-based explanation of what the case actually says and means.  It will come as no surprise to anyone reading the rest of this talk page that I believe the "birther" view of Minor v. Happersett is not credible, but that doesn't mean we can adopt the editorializing of an unabashedly anti-birther source as the voice of Wikipedia.  — Richwales 02:27, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ankeny doesn't even merit a mention in this article -- which is about Minor -- because the birther view of Minor is fringe.  It does not violate WP:NPOV to note that a WP:RS labels something fringe; it violates WP:UNDUE to pretend that it a question worth serious discussion when there is no source affording it any respect.  --Weazie (talk) 04:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe we basically agree in principle, though we disagree regarding exactly where to draw the line.  I continue to strongly believe that a major factor in the present-day notability (or notoriety) of Minor is precisely that birthers who don't understand or believe in the difference between holdings and dicta are prooftexting the opinion's comments on citizenship — and for that reason, we do need to make at least modest mention of this part of the opinion, in such a way as to illustrate the accepted mainstream view of what this language actually means.  In particular, I believe the Ankeny case does deserve mention here, because it shows how a real, live court has cited the citizenship comments of Minor to illustrate what this verbiage really meant (and how, taken in proper context, it really means the opposite of what the birthers say it means).  In this respect, Ankeny is a reliable secondary source explaining this minor (no pun intended) aspect of Minor — and in that light, it's worth including precisely because the accepted body of reliable sources (law journals) do not consider the point to be worth the time of day.  If you and I are currently unable to agree on exactly how to handle this issue, I propose we ask at WP:3O or use other ways to get more people involved in this discussion.  — Richwales 04:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Weazie. As much as I'd like to see birther arguments debunked in this context those arguments are still fringe arguments from a fringe group and aren't relevant to this article. There's no point in addressing fringe misinterpretations of the case as if they were serious. There are other articles that could more properly address this--this article should stick to this particular case which, regardless of what birthers say, has nothing to do with Presidential eligibility. Mystylplx (talk) 09:38, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, in that case, I guess we would be better off not saying anything at all here about the Ankeny case.  I've removed the last paragraph entirely for the time being.  — Richwales 15:43, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birther interpretations of this case need to be debunked in a level-headed fashion