They went a little further than that. They said that women did NOT need the amendment to have the position of being a citizen, and they specifically said the 14th amendment did NOT confer citizenship on Virginia Minor because she already had it. The only way that argument stands and makes sense is by accepting that the class of citizenship that the court characterized as natural-born, was how Minor acquired her citizenship: by being born in the country to citizen parents. IMO, the Minor court went out of its way to show that natural-born citizenship was a separate class of citizenship that was neither affected by nor redefined by the 14th amendment. Gray's treatment of this case in Wong Kim Ark affirms and upholds the NBC definition by clearly emphasizing that Minor was born to citizen parents, and by saying that the 14th amendment does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens.
I agree edge919, and anyone interested enough to read this far into this thread owes it to him/herself to read the original. But, with Leo Donofrio’s guidance, I see the reasoning just a little differently. Virginia Minor thought she should have acquired the right to vote under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Justice Waite's approach was to show that Mrs. Minor, a citizen and a woman, had no suffrage rights before the 14th Amendment, and then to show that the 14th Amendment never mentioned suffrage.
To have jurisdiction, the Supreme Court needed to determine that Mrs. Minor was a citizen, since “equal protections of the laws” applies to “citizens.” Here is the reasoning which took some time to grasp. The only citizen defined by the Constitution was a natural born citizen. That class of citizenship was only required to be eligible to the Presidency. As Justice Gray in Wong Kim Ark pointed out, citizens have all the rights and protections of natural born citizens. What he didn't say, except by citing Justice Waite's Minor v. Happersett decsions, only natural born citizens can become President.
Each state had its own citizenship statutes, which the Constitution ordered the Congress to address, eventually, with an uniform naturalization code. Congress makes naturalized citizens, natural citizens having been defined in the Constitution. So to make a decision, not knowing who Congress would eventually include as citizens, Justice Waite used the only definition extant, that for natural born citizenship.
This brings up the old shibboleth “because it was never defined in the Constitution.” Why is that a shibboleth? Because the framers intended virtually all definitions in the Constitution to come from the common language and common law familiar to the framers. The unique role of the Supreme Court as interpreter of the Constitution meant that to decide the case, the court needed to affirm the common language and common law, as Justice Waite wrote in his decision - “At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted ...”
While it sounded tautological, Waite said that Virginia Minor was a citizen because she was a natural born citizen. That was the only path to asserting her citizenship with the authority of the federal government. The uniform naturalization code was only begun with the 14th Amendment, and Waite needed the citizenship status of Virginia before the 14th Amendment.
Some have claimed that because they weren't discussing presidential eligibility, the definition was dictum. Leo Donofrio has found contemporary precedent for interpreting the definition clarified by Minor as a general holding, applicable to natural born citizens, but I preferred the approach suggested by that great constitutional scholar, and certainly a more accomplished lawyer the Barack, William Jefferson Clinton who explained: “It depends upon what is is!” A definition specifies equality. Everyone in the class of those born on our soil to citizen parents is a natural born citizen. Everyone in the class of natural born citizens was born on our soil to citizen parents. The only reason for the appearance of that definition in the Constitution was to require that our president be chosen from that class. That class was, and is, the most populous class of citizens in the US. That is a textbook example of how precedence is established.
I also agree that Justice Gray confirms the Minor definition. Curiously, he also throws in lots of misdirection. Leo Donofrio has a fascinating analysis of many of the misleading, and a surprising number of outright incorrect assertions in Wong Kim Ark, which may well become important if and when we honestly face the legitimacy of the ruling that enabled anchor babies. Justice Gray also used a bit of sophistry deployed by Obama’s Con Law professor at Harvard, Larry Tribe, who contributed an analysis to Senate Resolution 511, Apr 2008, in which Pat Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed with Judge Michael Chertoff who said “My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,”
But I digress. Justice Gray suggested that the 1790 Naturalization Act made natural born citizens of children born overseas to two citizen parents. He mentioned that there was a correction in 1795: “In 1795, this was reenacted, in the same words, except in substituting, for the words “beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States,” the words “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.” 1 Stat. 415.” That was a subtle lie. The 1795 Act completely replaced the 1790 Act, and the word natural born citizen appears nowhere in the later act. It made children born to citizen parents beyond the seas “citizens.” Since Gray probably knew of Chester Arthur's father's citizenship - Gray was a very prominent New York politician involved in all sorts of political chicanery - Gray appears to have been creating a cloud of misdirection, though maintaining plausible deniability because he cited Minor first in his decision.
That is exactly the misdirection employed by Larry Tribe and Ted Olson to assert that they thought McCain really was a natural born citizen, because he was born to citizen parents, and because of the 1790 Naturalization Act. Both Gray and Tribe are trying to distract from the written truth, that the 1790 act was fully retracted. But Tribe's statement - Tribe was on Obama's campaign committee - makes it clear that the arrogant progressives understood the Constitution, but also understood that, with McCain the opponent, Republicans would not talk about eligibility, nor admit any hearings, as were held regarding McCain's eligibility. They probably assumed that the public was not capable of understanding the legal precedent, but they made sure by having Center For American Progress Lawyers scrub the network published Supreme Court and Federal Court cases in which Minor v. Happersett was cited - Justiagate. This scrubbing ocurred during the Summer of 2008, and Justia.com was the most common site provided by Google to those searching for cases containing natural born citizen or Minor v. Happersett.
Thanks edge. I agree will everything you've said, but thought expanding the reasoning behind your comments might help anyone not as steeped in the legal history of natural born citizenship to understand the truth.
That is exactly what I said. The Court found that women were citizens before the 14th.