Validity

Abstract

Chapter 2 surfaces the history around the decision, by both the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Woman’s Party (NWP), to immediately pivot to other goals after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. While each monitored the litigation around the validity of the Nineteenth Amendment, NAWSA and the NWP both had conventions that resulted in adoption of a new mission. The chapter looks closely at the debates among each group’s members as to what its new mission should be. It concludes that the immediate pivot of each group played a role in the Nineteenth Amendment’s less-than-robust constitutional meaning.