I recall something called that. They were from the pre-21st century era, yes?

But but but Westlaw costs money and you have to go to a library to read books. They want it all free and effortless.

It shows up a lot on Google searches and is a reasonably good source of case law for the casual researcher. However, it has a rather greater number of glitches than you see on Lexis or Westlaw, both of which charge a heavy premium for the comparative accuracy of their content and other value-added services. To be fair, I have seen fairly serious errors in both Lexis and Westlaw, including Shepard's signals that were completely inaccurate (one of which is still inaccurate despite me pointing out the error years ago), published cases that appeared in neither service (I had them fix one once) and, more commonly, screwy pagination or scanning errors.

My primary beef with Westlaw is that it does not follow Blue Book form, so using the cite checker feature to proof a brief results in every. single. blessed. citation. in the brief being flagged. I've been complaining to my Westlaw sales rep about this for almost a decade, and it's clear that West has no interest in fixing it.

A minor bug, however. I would NEVER use Justia.com for legal research.

I noticed that someone at Orly's Facebook page gave a link that listed the 25 cases that were linked to Minor v Happersett. Cases Linked to Minor v Happersett

I did not check every case listed, but those I did, talked solely about right to vote issues. I did notice that in a couple of cases, the referenced cases did not mention Minor V Happersett, instead they simple mentioned the word "minor." I wonder if the hackers were really birthers who didn't like the fact that none of the cases that referenced Minor v Happersett supported their claims.

Which is exactly what the holding in Minor addressed. It was, very simply, a voters rights case. Virginia Minor's citizenship was not at issue in the case at all. Mario's opinion on Minor being precedent relies on his BS statement that the Court in Minor had to first determine Virginia's citizenship status, which is, in a word, complete BS. (okay, 2 words).

Thanks for checking those out. They're all listed at Leo's blog and at Diana Cotter's Examiner article on the subject.

danae is pimping hers and leo's articles over at free republic. i think she's vying for a Pulitzer. She posted it twice; there are two freeper threads.

Some of her comments from the thread on leo's post:











http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-blo ... 5619/posts

HELLO?

And the thread for her own article:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/ ... =1&;page=1


And a bunch of birther blogs are hopping on board. They have connected Comrade Tim Stanley, CEO of Justia, with Obama For America. I hope they don't make the connection to Stern, else Fogbow could be in trubble.

http://wtpotus.wordpress.com/2011/10/21 ... ment-65049

The "evidence" of Stanley's link to Obama was that Stanley joined an "Obama for America" Linkedin.com group. Race itsa locator.

Meanwhile, at Taitz's:

xxx-http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=26756#comments

Remember when danae was pushing the Chief Editor Sammy Korir/African Press International was going to release the "whitey tape"?

So does she.



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/blogg ... ge=240#240

Then there was the last "scrubbing" scoop she got from Leo:



http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in ... c-internet

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2463719/posts

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3344&p=115733#p115621


She's perfect for that WND opening.

I went to Leo's blog and just randomly clicked on one of the cases he claims justia has "scrubbed" Minor.

I then went to the links at justia and findlaw for that case, BREEDLOVE V. SUTTLES, 302 U. S. 277 (1937) which appears to be a voter rights case related to the poll tax.

Link to Breedlove at justia

Text containing the cites to Minor from justia (which was supposedly "scrubbed"...



Link to Breedlove at findlaw

Text containing the cites to Minor from findlaw (which was supposedly "scrubbed"...



just sayin'.

That's kind of disappointing. I had a certain amount of respect for Danae, as she she got her photocopy of the vital record she didn't try and pass it off as a certified copy or even a real LFBC but she stated it was just a photocopy and even sat the pic of the COLB right beside it.

Oh well.

well sure, now that they've been caught.


a few more from Dianna Cotter / Danae.



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/blogg ... ge=225#225

I told you she was vying for a Pulitzer!


#

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/ ... ge=135#135


http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:dana ... =no-change


I see a poultizer in her future.

And just exactly where does it state that in the holding of Minor? And no, neither Mario nor Leo every reference the holding in Minor.

And of course they always ignore certain portions of what the Minor Court stated, such as...



And...





et cetera.

The Court, in deciding Minor, did not have to nor did they determine the citizenship or lack thereof of Virginia Minor. There was no question as to her citizenship.

I must admit, I am impressed how Donofrio's "theory" has really spread through Birtherstan. ORYR republished; being picked up by WND surely is only days away. And at the P&E: THE EXTENT OF THE DECEPTION PERPETRATED BY OBAMA SUPPORTERS IS MINDBOGGLING:

It's always something. There' all out to getcha', Leo.

Hey... remember this? "...Judge Sabatino purposely tried to alter the nature of my lawsuit, and tried, through improper ex parte communication through his law clerk, to instruct me how to file a lawsuit that was improper. And he tried to trip me up. And he tried to delay this case so that it would never get to the Supreme Court before the elections."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUmnlVyhs50

I never realized before just how many people are after Leo. No wonder he had to bleach his hair and wear a disguise to deliver his lawsuit. A shame about him tripping up like that and bringing his electronic passport. oy. If only he had never tripped that RDIF tracker.

http://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2009/ ... obey-orde/

oh yeah.

Danae should do a series on all the different ways that Leo has been sabotaged. If a weekly column, it should take her right up through 2016. And we how how suspense-filled it would be. SUV's, bleached hair, corrupt judges and law clerks, and so on.

There's your Poulitzer, danae!

The Supreme Court addresses legal questions presented to it. The holding is the answer to the legal question presented and the ratio decidendi is the rationale necessary to answer such question. These are what is precedent from the case. Obiter dictum are judicial comments unnecessary to the decision of the case. Hence, in order to determine whether a statement is obiter dictum, one must look at the question presented and the holding of the case and see if such statement was necessary in the court's answering of the question. Obiter dictum is not precedent but still can be persuasive authority if well supported and reasoned. However, obiter dictum is often unsupported assertions that are not very persuasive. They also may be the opinion of only one justice as justices don't usually write separate opinions if they disagree only with obiter dictum. They also may be the opinion of only one justice as justices don't usually write separate opinions if they disagree only with obiter dictum. Obiter dictum may also be on subjects not thoroughly research, argued or briefed.

Virginia Minor sued the registrar of voters who refused to register her to vote since Missouri law didn't allow women to vote. She lost and appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. Minor argued that the 14th Amendment citizenship clause granted citizens the right to vote under the privileges and immunities clause and made several other Constitutional arguments that had nothing to do with citizenship. The defendant conceded Minor's citizenship in the original pleadings and never disputed or argued the issue in the subsequent appeals. The Missouri Supreme Court never addressed the conceded fact of her citizenship and it found citizenship irrelevant to the right to vote, so it didn't matter if she was a citizen or not.

In the Supreme Court, the question thus presented to the court was "whether, since the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, a woman, who is a citizen of the United States" has the right to vote. The question did not ask if Minor was a citizen. Such was a conceded fact and so the question presumes she is. The court does not need to address issues that are not presented in the question before the court and the court often looks at very narrow legal questions leaving other issues as decided below. Of course, if citizenship is deemed to be irrelevant to the right to vote, like in the court below, there is no need for the court to determine if she is a citizen at all since such is irrelevant to the question presented. The court could simply say women had no right to vote, citizen or not. The holding of the case was "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and that the constitutions and laws of the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily" with the rationale being primarily that "the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage." Obviously, since being a citizen does not confers the right of suffrage, it was unnecessary to determine if Virginia Minor was a citizen. Hence, the court could have ignored the issue like the court below. Such, this discussion is clearly dictum. Such conclusion is made stronger in that the citizenship discussion cites no authority, never addresses contrary argument and never actually tells us the status of her parents. This is classic dictum.

There is an even bigger problem with the precedent argument. Let's pretend that the court did actually hold that Virginia Minor was a "natural born citizen" and the court said children of aliens were not natural born citizens. Since it would be unnecessary to address the status of children of aliens to determine Minor's status, any statements about children of aliens would be dictum. Of course, the Minor court makes no such statement about children of aliens.

And I am pretty sure no court at any level has ever cited Minor as precedent with respect to the definition of "natural born citizen."

There's a very simple reason the dicta specified that Minor, being born in the country to two citizen parents, was born a citizen. The issue of whether a child born in the country to aliens was not resolved at the time, and did not need to be resolved in the case. Given that there was a dissent in Wong Kim Ark, it is entirely possible the Court had members who would have objected had the dicta stated, despite the lack of necessity to do so, that anyone born in the country is born a citizen. Minor was decided unanimously. As anyone who knows anything about the Supreme Court knows, language is often watered down or otherwise made noncontroversial in order to achieve unanimity. The dicta in Minor have all the hallmarks of compromise language.

The "tell" is the sentence, "For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts."

Reinforcing that point is a citation to Minor in the Wong decision. It was used specifically as a rebuttal to a comment in the decision in The Slaughterhouse Cases in which Justice Miller wrote:

"The phrase, 'subject to its jurisdiction' was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States."

To defuse this particular piece of dicta, Justice Gray first explained that it was, after all, just dicta. He then went on to point out that almost the identical court followed up soon afterward with another decision that contradicted that comment.

"That neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench..."

And what was that case? You guessed it. Minor v. Happersett. And what was the actual quotation Gray used to make this point? You guessed it again. The same one that Donofrio is asserting established a precedent that is exactly the opposite of what Justice Gray claims it says. The fact that the Minor decision acknowledged the possibility that children of foreigners could be citizens was the key point that Justice Gray was making. And it eviscerates Leo's position with surgical precision.

In short, the Wong decision calls total bullshit on Donofrio's hallucination regarding the precedential significance of Minor v. Happersett.

From Cotter's Justiagate:

Page 165 of volume 88 of the U.S. Reports is, of course, the first page of Minor. (Regarding Osborn, volume 22 of the U.S. Reports the same as volume 8 of Wheaton's reports.) But as this comment says nicely:

Donofrio, etc. are so busy looking at erroneous hypertext links, they're not reading the actual text.


* Nb. the "troubling language" from Osborn: "A naturalized citizen is indeed made a citizen under an act of Congress, but the act does not proceed to give, to regulate, or to prescribe his capacities. He becomes a member of the society, possessing all the rights of a native citizen, and standing, in the view of the Constitution, on the footing of a native. The Constitution does not authorize Congress to enlarge or abridge those rights. The simple power of the national legislature is to prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and the exercise of this power exhausts it so far as respects the individual. The Constitution then takes him up, and, among other rights, extends to him the capacity of suing in the courts of the United States precisely under the same circumstances under which a native might sue. He is distinguishable in nothing from a native citizen except so far as the Constitution makes the distinction. The law makes none."

http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=26756#comments

Again, the only connection that has been shown is that Justia's CEO joined an "Obama for America" Linkedin group.

Well, geez, that's plenty of evidence if you're not birfessed, ain't it?

At Donofrio's:

Leo is now accusing Justitia of "fraud"?

Didn't he recently accuse someone else of fraud? Some bankruptcy lawyers and a court?

How did that turn out?

Does Leo know what "fraud" is? (He should, based on how he plays tournament chess.)