If that the way I have come off, that you can’t read, I apologize. But sometimes legal opinions kind of ramble on, and in Wong, there is a lot of that. I went back and reviewed some of your posts. Maybe the problem is structural.
On a legal opinion, you can’t just ignore all the stuff in the middle of the opinion, and jump to the issue and conclusion. Ask your daughter and son-in-law. But, consider how you would reference the case in a future case. Suppose for a second that Wong was denied citizenship.
Now suppose “Son of Obama” comes up, a guy who wants to recognized as a citizen, but his daddy was a Kenyan. Son of Obama wants to run for president, his mom was an American, and he was born in Hawaii. California won’t accept his filing for the primaries, etc. because he is not an NBC.
He goes to Court. Now the gov’t isn’t just going to say, Well your honor, in Wong, the Court decided he wasn’t a citizen. And leave it at that. They have to go back into that stuff in the middle of the case, all the reasoning, all the case cites, and the determination of the Framer’s intent, and pull out what it was that formed the basis of why Wong wasn’t granted citizenship. Some of that may or may not be relevant to Son of Obama.
All that stuff in the middle isn’t just fluff. It is how the Wong court got to where it did. It’s relevant. And when “Son of Obama” opinion gets written, all the relevant stuff from Wong is going to be set forth in Son of Obama again. BECAUSE IT IS RELEVANT...it’s how the court decided the case.
Look at that Indiana case again. Notice how the Indiana court grabbed the relevant parts of the Wong opinion and laid them out again. That’s how it works.
parsy, who was not trying to insult you
Justice Gray laid out in the final few paragraphs exactly how the case was decided. That being on the basis of the 14th amendment, and somewhat tangentially that Wong had not expatriated himself. The rest may have something to do with how it was argued, I suppose, but I have not read the arguments and briefs, and I doubt anyone else here has either.
But the fact remains that the case was not about "natural born citizenship", it was about citizenship. Wong was not running for President, and that is the only time Natural Born citizenship matters. Any mention of "natural born citizenship" is dicta, or in most cases merely part of citations or quotes where it would be awkward, at best, to remove.