Talk:Hunter v. Underwood

Could somebody with access to the sources check this?

I'm planning to change part of the text, based not on the secondary source given, but on the primary source. The troublesome sentence is:

The provision was adopted at a convention in 1901, and the court found ample evidence that the law was passed with the intention of disenfranchising poor African-Americans.<ref>Varat, p. 574</ref>

The problem is that the primary source says something fundamentally different, namely that all parties, and the judges, agreed that the outspoken purpose of the 1901 Alabama constitutional reform was to derive all or almost all black people the right to vote. There is also somer discussion about "poor people", but then in the connection "poor white people". I think that someone mixed up these two groups, "the blacks" and "the poor whites", and from that formed the erroneously qualified group "poor Afran-Americans". Now, I would find it remarkable (but not impossible) that this misleading summary was made in the given secondary source, i. e., "Varat, J.D. et al. Constitutional Law Cases and Materials, Concise Thirteenth Edition. Foundation Press, NY: 2009"; I find it more likely that the wp editor summarised what Varat et al. wrote incorrectly. However, since I do not have access to it, I cannot surmise this to be the case. Therefore, when I rewrite, I'll have to base my summary on the primary source, the full text from Justia.com.

The Supreme Court decision, read without the motivation, might possibly be misinterpreted. It contains inter alia:

That § 182 may have been adopted to discriminate against poor whites as well as against blacks would not render nugatory the purpose to discriminate against blacks, it being clear that the latter was a "but-for" motivation for adopting § 182.

The formulation "...against poor whites as well as against blacks..." could possibly mislead a casual reader to think that the court is discussing measures to derive only poor whites and poor blacks the suffrage. However, if you continues to read the full text, there is in reality no interpretation involved in noting that the basis of the court decision included that the Alabama constitution revision aimed at practically eliminate the African-American suffrage in the state. In the courts motivations, it is noted that appellees to the Court of Appeal (i. e., the original plaintiffs), claim this, and that the appellees to the Supreme Court (i. e., the original defendants), admit this to be the case. In the preliminary hearing, the latter were questioned and answered the following:

"Q. The aim of the 1901 Constitution Convention was to prevent the resurgence of Populism by disenfranchising practically all of the blacks and a large number of whites; is that not correct?"

"A. Yes, sir."

It is furthermore noted that the appellant court came to the same conclusion (i. e., that the purpose was to stop virtually all blacks from having the right to vote), from hearing expert witnesses, and from inspecting the official records from the 1901 constitutional convent; e. g., the following is quited from the convent opening address by John Knox:

"And what is it that we want to do? Why it is, within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State."

The supreme court explicitly agrees with the finding of the appellant court.

The remaining differences of opinion, according to the analysis by the Supreme Court, were focused on whether there in addition were legitimate reasons for including the general clause about `moral turpidity'. The appellees, representing the State of Alabama, claimed that besides the outspoken (and unconstitutional) aim to deprive the blacks of suffrage, there was also a hidden agenda, namely also to deprive the poor whites of the same, in order to counteract the growing political influence of the Populists against the ruling Southern Democrats. They claimed that this was a legitimate aim, and that this made the entire decision legal.

The Supreme Court opinion makes it clear that they do not think it self-evident that the aim of limiting poor white suffrage in order to counter the threat of an opposition party is constitutional; but accept this as a premise for the sake of argument. They find that even if this would have been a partial and constitutional motivation for the disenfrancisement statues, they were unconstitutional.

As I wrote, I do not think this needs interpretation, just reading through the primary source. However, wp does prefer secondary sources, when available. Therefore, it would be better to restore a quote of the secondary source (Varat et al.) - provided it is as I suspect, that the formulation "poor blacks" is a mistake by our editors, and not a quote from Varat. If I am wrong, we are in a complicated situation; the way I normally handle this is by giving some summary or representative citations from the primary source, and then continye with "... which [the secondary source] sums up as...", or something in that style.

Anyhow, it would be rather interesting to hear what the soerce does say. JoergenB (talk) 21:05, 8 August 2014 (UTC)