Talk:Afroyim v. Rusk

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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statute calling for loss of US citizenship for voting in a foreign election — struck down by the Afroyim decision — was repealed by Congress in 1978 (Public Law 95-432).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)

I've made the above additions. Richwales 16:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

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)

I finally realized, last night, that "Beys Afroyim" is Yiddish for "B. Ephraim" — presumably a derivation of his birth name, Ephraim Bernstein. Richwales 16:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Minority opinion" section is blank

That should be fixed. --zenohockey 17:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. Richwales 16:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link to site with a painting by Afroyim

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)

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)