"How much opportunity was lost due to that so-called glitch." That would be the proverbial
If the non-resident foreigner status of his (to this day unproven) father was brought into the conversation early enough, his NBC status could have been discussed based on the definition of NBC in the MvH case and this could very well have sunk his run before the Democratic Convention. The "mangling" of the Justia links was in late spring or early summer of 2008, right? Hmmm
Once he was the "official" nominee, and especially once he was "elected", the fix was in. Justiagate or no Justiagate.
What I meant was that some of the judiciary remedy was diverted due to the disappearance of minor vs. Happerstadt (sp?) from justia. How much opportunity was lost due to that so-called glitch.Little, I'd say, but the answer gets complicated. The information was always available at Lexis and Westlaw, for an attorney doing in-depth research or trying to Shepardize the case in question (a procedure by which you determine the subsequent history of a case, or find other cases which have cited a specific case to agree with it, or amplify, modify, add to, distinguish, or overrule the entire case or a particular legal point in the case).
However, attorneys simply looking to quote certain cases aren't always going to pay to use Lexis and Westlaw (if their Lexis and Westlaw accounts are on a per-use basis), or if they are hot-linking the case or a quote from the case, which can only be done with Justia, of the three.
Also, 'little,' because the case that was hidden isn't directly on point in the opinion of most, although it touches on relevant issues and is a U.S. Supreme Court opinion.
You would also have to review all that was said about the case that was affected - some people said it wasn't meaningful because it wasn't cited by other cases, when in fact it was cited but Justia removed the cites to it from 25 other cases. We don't know whether those who said the Minor v. Happersett wasn't cited were saying so because they couldn't find it in Justia.
Even if we were to say it didn't affect the outcome, there's this: leftist lawyers were claiming there was no 'there' there to the 'natural born cititzen' issue. Really? If there was nothing to the issue, then why go to the trouble to make the cases on 'natural born citizen' disappear from the nation's premiere free search engine of, and repository of, free federal court opinions by making them unsearchable, or deleting cites to them? Why alter the language in a least one 'natural born citizen' case? Why would a liberal law professor republish a law review article about what is required to be a 'natural born citizen,' changing his references to ''parents' to 'parent,' and use the identical title for the new article so that if you search for it, you may find the revised article?
I just discovered this issue yesterday and have spent about eight hours on it - but I'm still chasing rabbits down holes, still trying to learn the facts, trying to analyze the legal implications, and so forth. It's not tinfoil hat speculation. Justia.com has admitted that the cases were mangled - the founder simply says it was a 'coding' error, and coding errors that selectively affect 'natural born citizen' cases (right, as if all coding errors pick those cases during a Presidential campaign) don't also selectively remove words from a 'natural born citizen' case. Something's amiss.