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This is the story of a forgotten woman.…But the reason why she’s forgotten might be an understandable one.…But maybe she’s worth remembering anyway.I dunno.You be the judge.In her lifetime she was a bestselling author, whose second novel was taken seriously enough by a British prime minister that he wrote a 10,000-word negative review of it.She was, for several years, a towering figure in the culture of her time, late Victorian and Edwardian England. She was friends with Theodore Roosevelt and Henry James.She was a serious and ambitious writer, a public intellectual, whose works sold hundreds of thousands of copies.She also worked for good causes, like the education of the poor, and founded what was basically Britain’s first kindergarten.She lived long enough to visit the Western Front in World War 1, and report on it.But she doesn’t show up in popular books about goodnight stories for rebel girls, or celebrations of great women in history.Not simply because people haven’t heard of her; but because those who do know about her, are aware that, frankly, she kind of wasn’t a rebel girl.Still, I’m willing to bet that most of you have not heard of her, or that if you have, all you know is her rather strange pen-name.Dear friends.It’s my melancholy pleasure to introduce Mary Augusta Ward.Known to her contemporaries, and to posterity, as Mrs Humphry Ward (1851–1920.)Mary Ward, c. 1890.She was born Mary Arnold in Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen’s Land, where her father Tom was an Inspector of Schools at the time. His father had been Thomas Arnold, the legendary headmaster of Rugby public school, which meant that Tom’s brother, the poet and critic Matthew Arnold, was Mary’s uncle.When Mary was very small, Tom Arnold did something that would turn out to have a lasting influence on his eldest daughter.He converted to Catholicism.This made his position as a school inspector untenable, and in 1856, the family, which by then included Mary’s two surviving younger brothers Willie and Theodore, moved to England.Five-year-old Mary was left at the family home with her grandmother and aunt, while her mother, father and brothers went to Dublin, where he’d been made a tutor at the new Catholic university.In 1858, seven-year-old Mary was sent to boarding school.In 1861, ten-year-old Mary was sent to another boarding school.In 1865, she was sent to another boarding school, the rest of the family having moved in the meantime to Oxford. Her father had converted back to Anglicanism again. (He would later re-convert back to Catholicism.)In Oxford, she finally went to live with her family, after nine years of being away from them. She had, in the meantime, acquired five new siblings.The young Mary Arnold was apparently quite a firecracker. She was frequently disciplined at school for unruly behaviour, and her modern biographer John Sutherland notes that at the age of 14, she seems to have fallen seriously in love with one of her teachers, Miss May, a passion she later wrote about in her 1894 novel Marcella, where Miss May appears as ‘Miss Pemberton’:A tall slender woman with brown, grey-besprinkled hair falling in light curls after the fashion of our grandmothers on either cheek, and braided into a classic knot behind—the face of a saint, an enthusiast—eyes overflowing with feeling above a thin firm mouth—the mouth of the obstinate saint, yet sweet also: this delicate significant picture was stamped on Marcella's heart. What tremors of fear and joy could she not remember in connection with it? what night-vigils when a tired girl kept herself through long hours awake that she might see at last the door open and a figure with a night-lamp standing an instant in the doorway?Maybe it’s just the literary conventions she worked within, but her fiction retains a lot more enthusiasm for female beauty than for the male version. Mary Ward’s men are seldom very vividly described, but she lingers over the physical appearance of her female characters.Miss May wasn’t the only woman that Mary was attracted to. Years later, as a young married woman in her early thirties, she met and, according to her memoirs, ‘fell in love with’ the beautiful Laura Tennant, a young socialite, ‘one of the most ravishing creatures I have ever seen’. Laura Tennant married Alfred Lyttleton and died in childbirth aged 24.To the best of my knowledge, little to nothing has been made of the queer figurations that are in Mary Ward’s writing; nobody cares enough about her work to want to.But anyway, Victorian society soon taught her to suppress any tendencies to unruly behaviour or same-sex passion.She was unlucky in her education, and she knew it.She went to school when primary schools in England were almost entirely unregulated, the Elementary Education Bill of 1870 being some years off, and for the rest of her life she resented the fact that her shiftless younger brother Willie got a better education at Rugby than she’d received, simply because he was a boy.In Oxford, although she wasn’t a student, the adults around her recognised that she was intelligent. She got much encouragement from male educators such as the Rector of Lincoln College, Mark Pattison, who almost certainly fancied teenage Mary (he had a well-known thing for much younger women), and who obtained permission for her to browse undisturbed in the lower parts of the Bodleian Library. She later remembered those times of reading old (and new) books as among the happiest of her life.Mark Pattison, livin’ the dream, as you can see.Through Pattison, she met George Eliot, arguably the greatest English novelist of the era, and sat at the great woman’s feet, imbibing her wisdom.Slowly, Mary Arnold began to try her hand at writing, and to think of herself as someone who had something to say.In 1871 she met Humphry Ward, a Fellow at Brasenose College, and they formed what used to be called an ‘understanding’.I would show you a picture of Humphry, but I’ll explain later why I have not.In 1872, Humphry and Mary got married. She was only 20.Mary Ward in her wedding gown, aged 20: photograph by Lewis Carroll.Over the next ten years, the Wards attempted to establish themselves as a couple of some substance in Oxford society.Mary got herself established as a journalist and columnist, writing pieces for The Times, the Saturday Review, the Pall Mall Gazette and other periodicals.She had three children, Arnold, Julia and Dorothy.Dorothy went on to become her mother’s devoted assistant and disciple.Julia, who loved her mother but was no stooge, married George Macaulay Trevelyan, who would go on to write the 1944 classic English Social History, and Julia herself would write her mother’s first biography.Of Arnold…we will talk later.In 1881 Mary wrote a children’s book, Milly and Olly, which she published under the married name that she would use for the rest of her life.In 1884 she published her first novel for adults, Miss Bretherton. Neither book exactly set the world on fire.By the late 1880s, Mary and Humphry Ward were a couple with a young family who had great ambitions for themselves, but were getting basically nowhere, socially and professionally speaking.It didn’t help that Humphry, who the society of the time would have considered the natural achiever of the family, was a right glass of warm water, failing to distinguish himself in most of the things he attempted. He lacked…vim. He behaved as though opportunities ought to just come to him. They didn’t.However, in Victorian England this was not necessarily an obstacle to a chap’s advancement, as long as he was well-spoken and had been to the right college, which Humphry had.In 1882, Humphry got a permanent position as art critic of The Times, where over the next few decades he earned a place in art history as the critic whose finger was absolutely not on the pulse of the most exciting things in modern art. The story was told that he once told the painter James Whistler what he thought was good and bad about his work. In response, Whistler was crushing as he only could be:My dear fellow, you must never say this painting is good and that is bad. Good and bad are not terms to be used by you. Say ‘I like this and I don’t like that’ and you’ll be within your right. And now come and have some whisky. You’re sure to like that.It’s now time for me to explain why I haven’t decorated this answer with a picture of Humphry.If you do a google image search for ‘humphry ward’, there are no pictures of him.Only of his far more productive and talented wife.In 1885 Mary sold her planned but as yet unwritten second novel Robert Elsmere to the publisher Smith, Elder & Co.It took her three more years to actually write it, and it was only published after George Smith, her publisher, had asked that it be cut down from its original enormous length.In the course of writing it, she suffered a serious physical breakdown and developed the writer’s cramp that she’d suffer from for the rest of her life.But when Robert Elsmere was finally published, it sold over a million copies.What is Robert Elsmere about, and why did it sell so well?Robert Elsmere is, as you can see, a novel of heroic dimensions. The above is the original three-volume library edition. My paperback copy, a reprint of the one-volume sale edition, has 576 pages.In brief: in the wild fells of Westmoreland (present-day Cumbria) lives the fragile widow Mrs Leyburn and three daughters: beautiful, pious and dutiful Catherine; sarky, sexy, violin-playing Rose; and the reserved and sardonic Agnes (who, if this were a contemporary novel, would probably be the protagonist.) The late Mr Leyburn was hella pious, and drummed into his children the importance of duty above all else, but Catherine’s the only one who really internalised the lesson.Early on, we are introduced to the title character, Robert Elsmere, the local rector, a young, passionate, intellectual red-headed bloke who’s committed to good works. He falls hard for one of the Leyburn girls.Is it Rose, the most entertaining one? No! It’s Catherine, the boring one! Never mind, because although Catherine Leyburn is devoted to doing what her father wanted to do, even at the expense of her own happiness, she’s not a total cipher, a mere straw woman of duty and piety. Much against every inch of her religious upbringing, she finds herself falling in love with Elsmere, and the enormous first third of the novel ends with them getting married.In the second part of the novel, we join Robert and Catherine Elsmere in his parish in Surrey, where he’s visited by his old tutor Langham, a rather cynical freethinker. Langham, for his part, starts to get all quivery in the presence of Rose, who for her part finds him Byronic and fascinating with all his talk of, um, ‘thought’.But the real meat of the novel is in the conflict between Elsmere and the local squire, Mr Wendover.Wendover is a bitter and sarcastic old man with a fantastic library full of German philosophy. He’s allowed his agent Henslowe let the estate fall to ruin, with tenants living in hovels, because he lives for his hobby of study and reading and ain’t give a damn about charity. Elsmere manages to persuade Wendover to see for himself just how crappy his tenants’ lives are, whereupon Wendover overcomes his distaste for the good-working clergyman and becomes more friendly.However, the middle of the novel is taken up with Elsmere’s confrontation with Wendover, in which Wendover’s corrosive scepticism ends up destroying Elsmere’s faith. Robert Elsmere ceases to believe that Jesus did miracles, was the son of God, was resurrected, etc.And here’s the crucial thing:Mary Ward herself had ceased to believe those things too. Her hours of reading in the Bodleian Library had opened her eyes to the groundbreaking scholarship of the likes of Strauss and Feuerbach.The rest of the novel is the working-out of the consequences, and includes some decent social comedy, and some romance between Rose and Langham, and some fairly heart-rending conflict between Robert and Catherine, who still believes.In the context of late Victorian society, Robert Elsmere cut to the heart of how the public was feeling about religion. It laid out in the most detailed and authentic way just how and why many people were losing their faith.And because it laid these things out in terms that the average reader could immediately grasp, it was a hit.Mary Ward wrote about how she’d been on a train waiting to depart, and a young woman had rushed up to the carriage, having just got the first volume from the library, and was boasting to a friend about it. Mary didn’t reveal that she herself was the author, but sat in the compartment while the young woman devoured the book.Robert Elsmere made her reputation. She was 37 years old.William Ewart Gladstone, who was at the time in between serving a term as British prime minister, read it and couldn’t put it down. He was astounded by what he regarded as its heretical qualities, and decided to write a long review about how dangerous the book was.The result was that the book sold even more copies.After Robert Elsmere, Mrs Humphry Ward wrote another 22 novels. But she never quite reached that level of fame and success again.One of them, 1898’s Helbeck of Bannisdale, is regarded by many people as better than Robert Elsmere, and not just because it’s considerably shorter. (I’ve started it, and my first impression is that it probably is—it’s certainly tighter.)But for the most part, although she often succeeded in getting very lucrative deals for novels such as The Marriage of William Ashe and The Case of Richard Meynell and Diana Mallory, her sales slowly dropped off.And here we have to ask the question:Why did Mary Ward publish her books using her married name, rather than her own?From her very first book, Mary used ‘Mrs Humphry Ward’ as her authorial name.She had a lifelong tendency to form friendships with intellectual men and—this is crucial—seek their approval. Some of this is due to the looming presence in her life of her grandfather, Thomas Arnold, and uncle Matthew.When she wrote anything, she tended to offer it to the men in her life who she regarded as her intellectual superiors, to see if they thought it was okay. She didn’t do this with Robert Elsmere, but she did do it with later works.If they didn’t approve, which happened whenever they thought she was being too controversial, she would tone the book down.Robert Elsmere itself had been even longer in its original draft. Her modern biographer John Sutherland commented that it would have been better if she’d written it as a saga, because the need to cut it down to novel-length meant cutting out a lot of the intellectual disputation, which resulted in a book that was both very long and also curiously underwritten.Mary Ward fairly quickly became the breadwinner in her family, and she was so successful as a writer that she won a lot of bread.But as time went by, she was also consumed by the need to seem successful and respectable. One of her most-used phrases in later life was What will people think?In spite of her reputation in early middle life for religious unorthodoxy (a 1976 book about Robert Elsmere is entitled Victorian Heretic), as she got older, she started to go to church, which she hadn’t done in a long time.She bent over backwards to encourage her husband and son in their professional lives, while not doing the same for her daughters. Humphry dabbled in art collecting, and wasted tons of the money she earned on ‘Rembrandts’ that weren’t Rembrandts. Mary could barely bring herself to mildly tick him off about this.Her son Arnold seems to have been a complete tool. Quarrelsome, arrogant, addicted to gambling and not very talented, he had an undistinguished career in the military and then was a largely insignificant Tory MP. Mary steadily paid off his gambling debts with the profits from novels she pumped out too often; she should have written less and taken more care about her books, but the family always needed money to support the lifestyle it wanted.She did valuable charity work. She helped found Somerville College, one of the first two women’s colleges in Oxford. She went on to found the Passmore Edwards Settlement, an organisation for working with the London poor, and on her death it was renamed the Mary Ward Settlement. It’s now the Mary Ward Centre, an adult education college. The centre’s website does not mention who Mary Ward was.But in 1908, she did the thing that is probably the main reason why she’s not celebrated today.1908 was a year when the women’s suffrage movement was really getting going, and the resistance to it was really hotting up.In that year, Mary was approached by Lord Curzon and the Earl of Cromer and asked if she’d like to be the figurehead of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League.According to her daughter Janet, Mary ‘groaned but acquiesced’.She couldn’t say no to a request for help from powerful men, even if, as in this case, she was supporting something as transparently boneheaded as the anti-suffrage movement.For the next several years, she appeared at one meeting after another, making speeches about how voting was not the business of women, and having to listen to idiot men rant on about how weak and stupid women were.What was her argument? It certainly wasn’t that women were too stupid to vote—at least, it wasn’t quite that. She pointed out that in her twenties she’d helped found a women’s college, and had inaugurated a series of educational lectures for women.Instead, she argued that the growth of the British Empire meant that the country was facing a host of new problems:constitutional, legal, financial, military, international problems—problems of men, only to be solved by the labour and special knowledge of men, and where the men who bear the burden ought to be left unhampered by the political inexperience of women.It was a circular argument, really: Women shouldn’t be allowed to gain political experience because they’re too politically inexperienced.And as the reader has probably guessed, it impressed fewer and fewer people as time went by. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted the vote to women over 30 who met certain property qualifications, and ten years later all women over 21 were granted the vote.Mary Ward wasted most of her last years in a futile effort to delay women getting the vote. She thought that men in general knew better, and that a woman’s place was to support the men in her life, in spite of the fact that she was easily the most intellectually gifted and energetic member of her own immediate family.Mary Ward in 1914.The books kept coming out; some good, some not so good.Theodore Roosevelt got her to write a series of reports about Britain’s efforts in the war, and she duly got permission from the Government Propaganda Department to go to the front and write some stirring stuff about our boys. She duly delivered, along with some outraged sentences about the horribly unpatriotic Irish having their beastly Rising while a war was going on.The Coryston Family drew on the troubles of her own family with honesty and power. She wrote novels that dealt with the experience of war: Sutherland recommends The War and Elizabeth, which captures the uncertain mood of 1917, and Harvest, which is about violent crime. I haven’t got to them yet.She published her memoirs, A Writer’s Recollections, which contained fond memories of departed friends like Henry James.In 1920, she died from heart failure, after a long period of chronic bronchitis and heart disease.In 1917, Mary Ward’s nephew, Aldous Huxley, who would go on to be, well, Aldous Huxley, met Virginia Woolf at Heal’s in London. They strolled up and down talking about his aunt. Woolf recalled the conversation in her diary:The mystery of her character deepens; her charm and wit and character all marked as a woman, full of knowledge and humour—and then her novels. These are partly explained by Arnold, who brought them near bankruptcy four years ago and she rescued the whole lot by driving her pen day and night.Huxley loathed Arnold Ward, as did Arnold’s sister Janet. In fact, most people who knew Arnold Ward ended up disliking him.Mary Ward was an intelligent and talented woman, whose career shows how such a person’s energies can be wasted if they find themselves in a society which doesn’t value them. She herself shared a lot of the values of that society, which is why she allowed her tyrannical sense of duty to lead her into the anti-suffrage movement. She groaned, and acquiesced.And then, as Virginia Woolf said, her novels.You can buy most of Mrs Ward’s fiction in Kindle form for a few quid, or read it on Gutenberg, if you so wish; at long last her work is valued at the same price as classic writers who are far more famous.There was very little public mourning at her death. The Times gave her a two-column obituary. Virginia Woolf noted in her diary ‘it appears she was a woman of straw after all—shovelled into the grave and already forgotten.’There have been no dramatic revivals of interest in her work. Only recently, in the era of digital publishing and print-on-demand, has there been new scholarly editions of any of her novels. My copy of Robert Elsmere is an Oxford World’s Classic from the late 1980s, long out of print. Henry James wrote an admiring review of the book (earning her undying gratitude), in which he described very well what it’s like to read:It suggests the image of a large, slow-moving, slightly old-fashioned ship, buoyant enough and well out of water, but with a close-packed cargo in every inch of stowage-room. One feels that the author has set afloat in it a complete treasure of intellectual and moral experience, the memory of all her contacts and phases, all her speculations and studies.The literary critic Q.D. Leavis was notorious for being brutal about any hint of fakeness, ‘sophistication’ or inauthenticity in a book, and indeed for her general waspishness (which she shared with her husband F.R.), but even she found a good word to say about Helbeck of Bannisdale:The novel … incarnates a Protestant-Catholic deadlock and ends tragically, for the situation is inevitably tragic. In it Mrs Ward maintains the impartiality and wide understanding through natural sympathies that she had achieved in life, as a girl in a difficult but not unhappy home. The situation, the conflict and the insoluble deadlock have stature from being representative, not modish, and so transcend the merely personal feelings of the author …Mary Ward was once a bestselling author, a giant of her time.Other answers to this question have suggested such diverse authors as G.K. Chesterton, Somerset Maugham, and even Charles Darwin—still well-known, if not as widely read as they used to be.Mary Ward was a serious woman; even ‘heavily’ serious, like the caricature of a Victorian writer. But she had a sense of humour, even if she seldom put it in her novels. (Robert Elsmere always lightens up whenever Rose comes in.)I think she would look at the idea that these authors are not widely read anymore, and be bitterly amused.She could tell those boys what it’s like to have your entire literary career completely vanish.Thanks for reading.Sources:Henry James, ‘Mrs Humphry Ward’, in Essays, American & English Writers, 1984, Library of AmericaQ.D. Leavis, ‘Women writers of the nineteenth century’, in Collected Essays Vol 3: The Novel of Religious Controversy, 1989, CambridgeJohn Sutherland, Mrs Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian, 1990, OUPJanet Penrose Trevelyan, The Life of Mrs Humphry Ward, 1923, accessed at The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward by Janet Penrose TrevelyanMrs Humphry Ward, Robert Elsmere, 1987, OUPMrs Humphry Ward, Helbeck of Bannisdale, 1983, PenguinMrs Humphry Ward, The Works of Mrs Humphry Ward, 2 vols, Kindle editionMrs. Humphry [Mary Augusta] Ward, 1851-1920: An Introduction to her Life and Works - a fine short online biography with pictures.

Simple. They license the permissions to use the brands, artwork, photos, iconic images, or designs (or they work with a distribution company which brokers licenses for them). And they factor the cost of the royalty payments they pay the rights owner for using the images into the cost of the posters or memorabilia that they sell.That’s one of the main purposes of copyright protection. Copyright doesn’t mean that NOBODY can reproduce a copyrighted work (good heavens, that would be an insane world to live in since everything would be an original and nothing could ever be reproduced). Instead, it means that the copyright owner is the one who decides how and where and under what terms their work may be reproduced. And if that copyright owner gives written permission, or offers a license, or works with a company to manage those licenses, then that’s their prerogative to do, and it wouldn’t be a copyright violation when there’s permission to do it. It’s also an efficient method of handling permission requests, too.For example, my employer has an account with Shutterstock that I manage. Shutterstock works with individual photographers and graphic artists to obtain artwork for distribution through their vast professional image gallery, and they sell licenses to individuals and businesses to use those images under specified terms. The original artists get compensated for their work via royalties or other payments through their contract with Shutterstock. As a Shutterstock account user, as long as I use the images I purchased access to under the terms of my licensing agreement, I’m fine, and we’re all in compliance with the copyright on them. But if somebody who doesn’t have a license to use them merely finds those images on Google Images and re-posts them on their website, that’s a copyright violation and the owner of the copyright can sue them for damages in civil court because they reproduced copyrighted material without the owner’s permission. So they’re infringing on the original artist’s right to copy and govern the distribution of their work (including their right to profit from it), and for all practical purposes, stealing from them.Regarding the two specifics you mentioned or depicted:Intellectual property rights on famous historical paintings could have fallen into the public domain (many have, but not all) or their copyright may have been renewed by the artist’s estate - and if so, a management agency handles the rights (licensing and usage permissions) on those.Some of the examples in your pic are of classic brands whose legacy and trademark is promoted, reinforced, and enhanced through distribution of these posters and iconic images, and these companies have marketing departments which not only license the use of the image(s) and trademark(s) but which even seek out opportunities like this to be featured in artwork as an intentional marketing tool.It’s baffling to me that people can be so confused about copyright that they would think that people who actually own a copyright can’t allow others to use their work…or that people who have permission to use a copyrighted image are somehow in violation of that copyright by using what they have permission to use.If I let my neighbor or family member use a tool or outfit, I don’t get to turn around and call the police and accuse them of stealing what I already gave them permission to use. It’s my prerogative as the owner to decide who can use it and how. And if I take a product I’ve developed and sell it to a retailer at a wholesale discount for them to re-sell, and they turn around and sell it according to the terms we’ve agreed to, they haven’t broken the law; instead I’ve entered into a business distribution relationship where we’ve come up with terms that are agreeable to both of us about where and how those products will be distributed, and I’ll receive compensation through a portion of the profits from those sales. Why would this be any different?One of the two main purposes of copyright protection is to allow owners to do this very thing…so that they can profit from their creative work if they choose to!

I don’t know whether to thank or curse you for the A2A, Neil. As a general rule, I don’t answer questions with more than 20 answers[1][1][1][1] , as by that point I assume that everything that can be said has been said. However, the 495 answers that the edit log says this question has received at the time of this writing are… Well, I’ll get to those; but, suffice to stay, they stopped me in my tracks[2][2][2][2] .The short of it is that the broad character and quality of the answers was distressing enough to keep me awake at night - so thanks for that.This answer will be far from my lengthier magna opera, but I’m going to take it in four parts. Part I will unpack the question. Part II the answers to date. Part III the core of my answer. Part IV some concluding thoughts.Part I: Unpacking the question.I’m going to be honest with you, Neil: the question as worded is confusing, and I reckon that confusion has contributed greatly to many of the dismissive answers you’ve received to-date (to be discussed in Part II). As we say in policy circles, if you get the question wrong, your solution will also be wrong[3][3][3][3] .Let’s look at the question.Given that nothing in the US Constitution gives citizens or the president a right to keep tax returns secret, shouldn’t Federalist Supreme Court justices agree that statutes requiring presidents or candidates to release their tax returns are valid?There are two problems. The first is that you’re leading with a fallacy (ie, that because the Constitution is silent on one thing, it is permissive of another), and the second is that you’re obscuring the main controversy (ie, statutes requiring presidents and presidential candidates to disclose their taxes) by making Supreme Court justices the subject of the question. This becomes apparent when you move the opening, dependent clause to the end of the question as such:Shouldn’t Federalist Supreme Court justices agree that statutes requiring presidents or candidates to release their tax returns are valid given that nothing in the US Constitution gives citizens or the president a right to keep tax returns secret?Which leaves as the basic, subject-verb-object simple sentence:Shouldn’t Supreme Court justices agree the statutes are valid?But then that reveals a second logical error, which is that you’ve assumed the validity of the statutes in the first place - which I’ll discuss in detail later. Between the two fallacies and the confusing phraseology, you’ve invited not just a great deal of hostility to how you’ve presented the question, but a plethora of answers which miss the mark simply because they missed the point of the question.For my purposes, the form of the question I will address in Part III will be:Would statutes requiring sitting presidents or presidential candidates to release their tax returns be valid under the Constitution?That strikes me as a fair interpretation of the intent of the question stripped of fallacies and convoluted structure.Part II: Unpacking the answersSo… I tried reading all of the answers to-date - really, because I’m going to be pretty harsh here. But I think I got about 200 deep before I got the gist of things and finally went to bed.Based on my sample, though, I confidently assert that the overwhelming majority of answers to this question are wrong.Now, just as an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time might ultimately produce Shakespeare, the sheer volume of answers has provided the contours of a single, correct answer, but they’re lost in the morass of derisiveness and, well, wrongness that otherwise pervades the feed.Without giving air time to the answers that are wrong by virtue of their curtness, hostility, or rambling, tangential screeds, here are the main themes that the substantive answers get wrong.Over-reliance on the Fourth AmendmentIn challenging the leading assertion that there is “nothing in the Constitution [that] gives citizens or the president a right to keep tax returns secret,” many, if not the bulk of answers, point you to the Fourth Amendment, which states:The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.Using the Fourth Amendment to debunk the assertion isn’t wrong (ie, there is, in fact, something in the Constitution), but where most of these answers went on to err was asserting that the implied right to privacy contained within the Fourth Amendment is absolute.It is not.The Fourth Amendment protects “the right . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and there may be (and are, as we’ll see) reasonable grounds to demand one’s “papers,” which so-far has been categorically unexplored by the answers.Over-reliance on the Ninth AmendmentEither in isolation or in combination with articulation of the Fourth Amendment, a number of answers have tried to challenge the core of your leading assertion by pointing out that the Constitution itself - through the Ninth Amendment - effectively says, “Don’t take my silence to be absolute.”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.But as with discussion of the Fourth Amendment, the answers generally fail to go on to address the implicit question: “Why do you assume that the Ninth Amendment affords an absolute protection?”Incorrect application of the Tenth AmendmentAs with the Ninth Amendment, several answers invoked the Tenth to challenge the assertion that absence of authority is permission of conduct. But just as many answers challenged you on whether you read the Constitution, I wondered whether any who invoked the Tenth had ever read it - even when they quoted it:The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.While the Ninth Amendment concerns rights not articulated by the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment concerns powers; more specifically, it articulates that powers not given to the Federal government are retained by the States - or, if the States have not assumed such powers, then to the people.The Tenth Amendment is ultimately your best argument for defending your assertion: that is, if the States choose to legislate to mandate political candidates’ disclosure of tax returns, that may be a legitimate exercise of the States’ powers (it isn’t, as I’ll discuss in the next part, but it was your strongest argument).Asserting lack of jurisdiction and over-reliance on the Fifth AmendmentSome of the most popular answers to-date assert that your question fails because there either aren’t any such statutes in the first place; that the only relevant statutes are those which explicitly protect the privacy of a person’s tax returns, regardless of Constitutional provisions; or, no entity outside of the IRS has any scope to see a person’s tax returns, regardless of Constitutional provisions.The most popular answer to-date even contains this breathtaking assertion:States have no authority over federal taxes or returns therefore, in turn, they also have no authority to demand their release or examine them.I’m sure that would come as a shock to the many state prosecutors who have relied on persons’ federal tax returns to prove the commission of financial crimes under their state’s laws. Let the appeals begin! (cc: Andrew Weill)Of the 200-ish answers I scoped prior to writing mine, only two cited the statute governing Congress’ authority to demand and examine a person’s tax returns[4][4][4][4] (and one of them incompletely, thus incorrectly):(f) Disclosure to Committees of Congress(1) Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Finance, and Joint Committee on TaxationUpon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.(2) Chief of Staff of Joint Committee on TaxationUpon written request by the Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish him with any return or return information specified in such request. Such Chief of Staff may submit such return or return information to any committee described in paragraph (1), except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.(3) Other committeesPursuant to an action by, and upon written request by the chairman of, a committee of the Senate or the House of Representatives (other than a committee specified in paragraph (1)) specially authorized to inspect any return or return information by a resolution of the Senate or the House of Representatives or, in the case of a joint committee (other than the joint committee specified in paragraph (1)) by concurrent resolution, the Secretary shall furnish such committee, or a duly authorized and designated subcommittee thereof, sitting in closed executive session, with any return or return information which such resolution authorizes the committee or subcommittee to inspect. Any resolution described in this paragraph shall specify the purpose for which the return or return information is to be furnished and that such information cannot reasonably be obtained from any other source.The use of shall in those paragraphs is key[5][5][5][5] . It isn’t that Congress has the authority to ask for permission to see a person’s tax returns, it has the express authority to demand and examine them, and they “shall” be provided for such purpose.A number of answers - almost all without citing the above statute - have gone on to challenge Congress’ authority to enter into such examinations without a “legitimate purpose.” The Supreme Court, however, has already ruled that Congress has broad investigatory powers that includes examination of a person’s financial details[6][6][6][6] [7][7][7][7] :We are of opinion that the power of inquiry -- with process to enforce it -- is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function. It was so regarded and employed in American legislatures before the Constitution was framed and ratified. . . .A legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information respecting the conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change, and where the legislative body does not itself possess the requisite information -- which not infrequently is true -- recourse must be had to others who do possess it. Experience has taught that mere requests for such information often are unavailing, and also that information which is volunteered is not always accurate or complete, so some means of compulsion are essential to obtain what is needed. All this was true before and when the Constitution was framed and adopted. In that period, the power of inquiry, with enforcing process, was regarded and employed as a necessary and appropriate attribute of the power to legislate -- indeed, was treated as inhering in it. Thus, there is ample warrant for thinking, as we do, that the constitutional provisions which commit the legislative function to the two houses are intended to include this attribute to the end that the function may be effectively exercised.The contention is earnestly made on behalf of the witness that this power of inquiry, if sustained, may be abusively and oppressively exerted. If this be so, it affords no ground for denying the power. The same contention might be directed against the power to legislate, and, of course, would be unavailing. We must assume for present purposes that neither houses will be disposed to exert the power beyond its proper bounds, or without due regard to the rights of witnesses. But if, contrary to this assumption, controlling limitations or restrictions are disregarded . . . a witness rightfully may refuse to answer where the bounds of the power are exceeded or the questions are not pertinent to the matter under inquiry.Now, that latter statement sets up another of the most common assertions made in the answers to-date, which is reliance on the Fifth Amendment to shield someone from self-incrimination by way of illicit declarations on their tax returns.It is true that people are required to declare illicit sources of income on their taxes, and may claim protections in such returns[8][8][8][8] …If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making, he could have raised the objection in the return, but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all.…however, that is not an absolute defence to having tax returns introduced as evidence in criminal prosecutions[9][9][9][9] .In combination with Congress’ declared, broad authority to make investigations in order to ascertain the adequacy of existing tax laws or, say, evidence of bribery or Emoluments Clause violations that may require impeachment and removal of Federal officials, the notion that Congress has no jurisdiction is patently false.And in combination, the government’s legitimate interests in ensuring citizens’ compliance with tax law absolutely generates reasonable grounds to demand and examine a person’s tax returns, scuttling the Fourth Amendment argument put forward in so many answers.However, that alone isn’t sufficient to answer the question.Part III: My answerOf the answers I scanned, only two came close to the Constitutional provision which actually holds over the question:No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states cannot add qualifications to office beyond what’s in the Constitution[10][10][10][10] . While the existing ruling concerned candidates for Congressional office, there’s little question that the principles would apply to presidential candidates:[T]he power to add qualifications is not part of the original powers of sovereignty that the Tenth Amendment reserved to the States. Petitioners' Tenth Amendment argument misconceives the nature of the right at issue because that Amendment could only "reserve" that which existed before. As Justice Story recognized, "the states can exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the national government, which the constitution does not delegate to them .... No state can say, that it has reserved, what it never possessed."Likewise, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that Congress also has no scope to add qualifications beyond the Constitution[11][11][11][11] :[A]nalysis of the "textual commitment" under Art. I, § 5 has demonstrated that, in judging the qualifications of its members, Congress is limited to the standing qualifications prescribed in the Constitution.Therefore, any statute that would require a president or presidential candidate to release their tax returns as a condition of candidacy or qualification to receive electoral votes would be patently unconstitutional.Moreover, while I dismissed the broad assertions of the Fourth Amendment’s applicability earlier, I also said that it wasn’t necessarily incorrect to cite it. Indeed, the Fourth Amendment, on its own and in combination with others, has been said to create “a zone of privacy” that cannot be violated without due process[12][12][12][12] .While Congress has the power to demand a person’s tax returns as an exercise of its legitimate investigatory powers, the same could not be said of the states requiring disclosures for the sake of record-keeping, nor to the public for the sake of transparency. Even in Congress’ power to examine a person’s tax returns, they must do so in closed session unless given express permission of the individual under scrutiny.And so even if the mandate were made separate from any condition of running for office, coercing someone to violate their privacy - even if given some guarantee of immunity or security in secrecy - would almost certainly be ruled to be an unconstitutional violation.Part IV: Concluding thoughtsThe most frustrating thing about this question and the answers it had so-far received was that there are engaging points to be made, but the hostility the question provoked - between its fallacious wording and, let’s be obvious now, the direct challenge to President Trump fiercely resisting any examination of his taxes[13][13][13][13] [14][14][14][14] - took priority over serious examination of those issues.More to the point: the most upvoted and distributed answers to this question are patently wrong, but they served a reinforcing tribal purpose, and succeeded solely on that merit. And yet, had they taken a pause and made serious examination of the issues, they still could have made a defence of President Trump on the facts.That was really what kept this question and the answers floating in my mind overnight.As well aware as I am of my reputation for liberally footnoting my answers[15][15][15][15] , I do it for a reason: So that people can, if they’re inclined, check my work and debate me on the facts.However, I could count the number of sources the hundreds of authors to-date used to answer this question on two hands, and yet they largely presumed to be authoritative without even offering the weakest of evidence.Moreover, given the tedious repetition of the arguments in the answers, it was plain that few, if any, had bothered to see if their case had already been made and could be buttressed rather than repeated, and so decided to shout for the sake of opining.But what distresses me isn’t that people are wrong, or even that people might disagree with me - it was the confidence of the wrongness, no different than the fallacies within the question as presented, and the fact that people who should know better went along with it because it served a tribal purpose.I’ve been on Quora and engaged in politics long enough that I should be neither surprised nor bothered by that - and, indeed, I generally don’t care about people holding biases[16][16][16][16] - but seeing literally hundreds of answers that were such a gross, obvious display of tribalism over reasoning (when, again, reasoned answers could have served the same purpose) gave me a disquieting pause.Also, Neil, now that you have almost closed in on 500 answers to the question, I would strongly encourage you to stop asking for additional answers. It’s not that I believe that I’ve provided such a commanding response that no other could have merit, but you’re now well beyond the point of diminishing returns.Footnotes[1] Carter Moore's answer to Before posting your own answer to a question on Quora, do you read what everybody else has written? Why or why not?[1] Carter Moore's answer to Before posting your own answer to a question on Quora, do you read what everybody else has written? Why or why not?[1] Carter Moore's answer to Before posting your own answer to a question on Quora, do you read what everybody else has written? Why or why not?[1] Carter Moore's answer to Before posting your own answer to a question on Quora, do you read what everybody else has written? Why or why not?[2] Carter Moore's answer to How do you write your Quora answers? How do you decide what questions you will answer? How long does it typically take for you to answer a question? Do you plan out your answers?[2] Carter Moore's answer to How do you write your Quora answers? How do you decide what questions you will answer? How long does it typically take for you to answer a question? Do you plan out your answers?[2] Carter Moore's answer to How do you write your Quora answers? How do you decide what questions you will answer? How long does it typically take for you to answer a question? Do you plan out your answers?[2] Carter Moore's answer to How do you write your Quora answers? How do you decide what questions you will answer? How long does it typically take for you to answer a question? Do you plan out your answers?[3] Carter Moore's answer to What is analytical writing?[3] Carter Moore's answer to What is analytical writing?[3] Carter Moore's answer to What is analytical writing?[3] Carter Moore's answer to What is analytical writing?[4] 26 U.S. Code § 6103 - Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information[4] 26 U.S. Code § 6103 - Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information[4] 26 U.S. Code § 6103 - Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information[4] 26 U.S. Code § 6103 - Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information[5] Carter Moore's answer to How has Donald Trump successfully blocked Congress from obtaining a copy of his tax returns?[5] Carter Moore's answer to How has Donald Trump successfully blocked Congress from obtaining a copy of his tax returns?[5] Carter Moore's answer to How has Donald Trump successfully blocked Congress from obtaining a copy of his tax returns?[5] Carter Moore's answer to How has Donald Trump successfully blocked Congress from obtaining a copy of his tax returns?[6] McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135 (1927)[6] McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135 (1927)[6] McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135 (1927)[6] McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135 (1927)[7] In Teapot Dome Case, Supreme Court Cemented Congressional Power to Investigate[7] In Teapot Dome Case, Supreme Court Cemented Congressional Power to Investigate[7] In Teapot Dome Case, Supreme Court Cemented Congressional Power to Investigate[7] In Teapot Dome Case, Supreme Court Cemented Congressional Power to Investigate[8] United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927)[8] United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927)[8] United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927)[8] United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927)[9] Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648 (1976)[9] Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648 (1976)[9] Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648 (1976)[9] Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648 (1976)[10] U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)[10] U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)[10] U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)[10] U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)[11] Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)[11] Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)[11] Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)[11] Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)[12] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)[12] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)[12] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)[12] Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)[13] The many times Donald Trump promised he was going to release his tax returns [13] The many times Donald Trump promised he was going to release his tax returns [13] The many times Donald Trump promised he was going to release his tax returns [13] The many times Donald Trump promised he was going to release his tax returns [14] President Trump asks Supreme Court to block access to his tax returns, setting up separation of powers battle[14] President Trump asks Supreme Court to block access to his tax returns, setting up separation of powers battle[14] President Trump asks Supreme Court to block access to his tax returns, setting up separation of powers battle[14] President Trump asks Supreme Court to block access to his tax returns, setting up separation of powers battle[15] https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-fit-in-on-Quora/answer/Tom-Robinson-110/comment/120715406[15] https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-fit-in-on-Quora/answer/Tom-Robinson-110/comment/120715406[15] https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-fit-in-on-Quora/answer/Tom-Robinson-110/comment/120715406[15] https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-fit-in-on-Quora/answer/Tom-Robinson-110/comment/120715406[16] Carter Moore's answer to What's wrong with being "politically biased"?[16] Carter Moore's answer to What's wrong with being "politically biased"?[16] Carter Moore's answer to What's wrong with being "politically biased"?[16] Carter Moore's answer to What's wrong with being "politically biased"?