Talk:Buck v. Bell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, a collaborative effort to improve articles related to Supreme Court cases and the Supreme Court. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.

[edit] Mental age of 8?

Who is the authority for saying that "Buck's mother ...[had] a mental age of 8"? I know the lawyers alleged this, but it there any authority beyond that? Our article currently states it as fact. -- Jmabel 21:51, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Good point, didn't realize that had come off that way (the "claimed Priddy" was supposed to be for the whole statement, not just the criminal record). It's according to the Colony superintendent, that's all. I restructured the sentence a bit, hopefully that makes it more clear. --Fastfission 02:02, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Mental age" in further life

I assume there must have been subsequent examinations of her IQ or "mental age" or whatever - I wonder how they turned out? (131.130.121.106 18:51, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC))

I have not heard of any follow-ups on Carrie Buck except those done by journalists in the early 1980s (one is noted in Stephen J. Gould's epilogue to The Mismeasure of Man, who says that both Carrie and her sister Doris, also sterilized, were "able and intelligent"). One (I think in Kevles' In the name of eugenics, but maybe from somewhere else) I have seen said she enjoyed crossword puzzles. Personally I find none of this terribly convincing about her intelligence one way or the other, but I find the issue of her actual intelligence to be very, very minor in the scope of the case as a whole, which was a pretty clear miscarriage of justice when seen through a historical lens (rigged defense, expert testimony from cranks, and the entire circumstances being misrepresented), though by the time it reached the Supreme Court all of that was too late to have been sorted out (the Supreme Court generally does not do fact-finding in regards to the original case; they take for granted that the facts agreed upon in the previous trials were validated or previously challenged if need be, and such was clearly not the case in this instance). --Fastfission 05:18, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Irving Whitehead Misrepresented

The article states that: "Carrie's lawyer, Irving Whitehead, poorly argued her case, failed to call important witnesses, and was remarked by commentators to often not know what side he was on." In appellate advocacy (such as arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court) witnesses are not called, as they would be in a trial. No testimony is given and no evidence of any kind is entered. It is understood that the facts were established at trial, and not disputed by the parties.

The wording was just a little out of order. He wasn't misrepresented; that just refers to the earlier part of the trial, before it reached the Supreme Court. --Fastfission 03:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)