Minor v. Happersett - Significance, The "new Departure", A Constitutional Approach, All Or Nothing, The Fourteenth Amendment

Minor v. Happersett - Further Readings

Minor v. Happersett - Significance

This case marked the second time in two years that the Supreme Court declined to extend Fourteenth Amendment protection to women's rights. Suffrage, the specific "privilege of citizenship" denied in the case, would not be obtained by women nationwide until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. As Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amen…

Minor v. Happersett - The "new Departure"

After the amendment's ratification and adoption, attorney Francis Minor--husband of Virginia Minor, the president of the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri--argued that its section 1 was actually an advance for women. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and…

Minor v. Happersett - A Constitutional Approach

In their petition filed in December of 1872, Virginia Minor's attorneys argued her constitutional rights had been abridged. They cited Article I, section 9, that no bill of attainder shall be passed; Article I, section 10, prohibiting states from passing bills of attainder or "any title of nobility--a status that `male citizens' seemed to have been awarded; Article IV, section 2, which gave citize…

Minor v. Happersett - All Or Nothing

Plaintiffs' argument and briefs presented to the Supreme Court repeated points made before the lower courts and also contained a new claim: "There can be no half-way citizenship. Woman, as a citizen of the United States, is entitled to all the benefits of that position, and liable to all its obligations, or to none." They cited several previous Supreme Court decisions, including Scott v. Sandford,…

Minor v. Happersett - The Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, is the most prominent of the three Aamendments designed to secure the civil rights of the millions of slaves freed during the Civil War. Indeed, the Fourteenth is one of the most important of all constitutional amendments, and has been the case of more legal action--and more discussion by legal scholars--than any other part of the Constitution. Most of t…