Rather they were ruling on the claim made by Virginia Minor, a woman who claimed that as a U.S. citizen, she was denied her Constitutional right to vote by the State of Missouri as they had prevented her from exercising what she believed to be her Constitutional Right of citizenship by denying her to register to vote and the question before the Court was whether the Court would uphold as Constitutional, the constitution of the State of Missouri that ordained: “Every male citizen of the United States shall be entitled to vote.”
So the very first thing the court did was look at the question of whether or not Virginia Minor was a U.S. citizen as defined by the Constitution and then secondly and most importantly whether, if she was, if this citizenship conferred “Suffrage” in the State of Missouri, the second point being the most important and what constituted the binding part of the ruling – the binding part being the Holdings, or ratio decidendi (Latin for “the rationale for the decision), are those parts of a court’s opinion that are binding on lower courts and later courts. This binding is referred to as the doctrine of stare decisis which provides hierarchical (vertical) and temporal (horizontal) continuity throughout the judicial system.
In considering that question the SCOTUS had to look at the facts at hand and whether Virginia Minor was a citizen and the SCOTUS found that Virginia Minor was indeed a U.S. citizen. The SCOTUS found that this fact was beyond question as she was as not only was she born in the U.S., she was also born of two U.S. citizen parents so her citizenship was beyond question. Whether or not she was a “Natural Born Citizen” or not was beyond the scope of the question at hand although the Court discussed it as a matter of background and as such it was an obiter dictum – “Obiter dictum (plural obiter dicta, often referred to simply as dicta or obiter) is Latin for a statement "said in passing". An obiter dictum is a remark or observation made by a judge that, although included in the body of the court's opinion, does not form a necessary part of the court's decision. In a court opinion, obiter dicta include, but are not limited to, words "introduced by way of illustration, or analogy or argument".
It was an “obiter dictum” as the question as to whether she was a “Natural Born Citizen”, a citizen by statute or a naturalized citizen made no difference one way or another in the ruling as it was really not a question of whether or not she was a citizen as that was established, but whether only male citizens ( and there was no question before the Court that Virginia Minor was a woman) could vote under the constitution of Missouri. It was also not a question before the Court as to whether males in the State of Missouri were limited as to their right to vote based on whether they were born here of U.S. citizen parents, or here of non-citizens parents or naturalized or made citizens by statute as all citizen males could vote in the State of Missouri.
What the SCOTUS said:
“Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides that “no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” and that Congress shall have power “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words “all children” are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as “all persons,” and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.”
So the SCOTUS in Minor v. Happersett admitted there were doubts about whether “children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents” were natural-born citizens but went on to say that there were never any doubts as to the children born here of citizen parents such as was the case with Virginia Minor. The SCOTUS was merely reaffirming that Virginia Minor’s citizenship, even that as a female, was beyond doubt.
The rest and the pertinent part of the ruling addressed whether individual states could limit who among citizens could vote.
In fact the SCOTUS even went on to say:
“Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be found in the constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.
In other words the Court said that some states allow even non-citizens (presumably male and in some states, with other restrictions that effectively prevented male black citizens from voting) to vote under some circumstances while not allowing U.S. born female citizens to vote and the Court found no fault in this. So at the end of the day, even Virginia Minor’s citizenship was not really the question at hand, but rather, could individual states determine who was eligible to vote or not. Again the court was not addressing who was eligible to be elected POTUS based on their citizenship or of their parent’s citizenship, whether they were born on U.S. soil or on foreign soil but U.S. citizen parents nor did it make a binding ruling on who was a “natural born citizen”. Quite ironically one could take away from Minor v. Happersett by inference, that while she was ultimately ruled not eligible to vote, she was eligible for the office of POTUS.
“Certainly, if the courts can consider any question settled, this is one. For nearly ninety years the people have acted upon the idea that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage. If [88 U.S. 162, 178] uniform practice long continued can settle the construction of so important an instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly is, most certainly it has been done here. Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.”
Finally the SCOTUS said:
“Being unanimously of the opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and that the constitutions and laws of the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily void, we
AFFIRM THE JUDGMENT.”
Of course the SCOTUS ruling in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874) was made completely moot by the 19th Amendment that granted women suffrage in all U.S. States. So while perhaps technically true that no future court ruling never overturned Minor v. Happersett, no future court ruling had to as it was completely vacated by the 19th Amendment.
Mr. Expat, you have changed a few important words in your analysis of Minor v. Happersett; Words, with which you have obvious facility, matter. You contradicted the very citation you quoted:
From Chief Justice Waite: “Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.” You claimed “...there were doubts about whether “children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents” were natural-born citizens.”. Nice try.
I'm sure you knew better, which suggests that you may be a more refined apologist from the former office of misdirection run by Anita Dunn, at least one of whose employees was honest enough to admit to be assigned to sowing confusion at Free Republic. Or perhaps you simply made a mistake?
You also misconstrued the challenge before the Minor court. In the decision, Justice Waite explains, referring to the 14th Amendment: "Before its adoption, the Constitution of the United States did not in terms prescribe who should be citizens of the United States or of the several states, yet there were necessarily such citizens without such provision."
We were formed from semi-sovereign nation states, each of which had its own constitution, and each defined naturalization differently. Our framers considered it improvident to force states to accept "an uniform rule of naturalization" before the Constitution was even ratified, making it an explicit power of Congress to settle the issue later. The only citizen defined in the Constitution was a natural born citizen. Framers knew well that language changes over time and specified, as Justice Waite invoked in Minor v. Happersett: "At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, ..." Definitions have never been in the Constitution, but explicitly refer to the common law and language at the time of our framers.
To resolve Virginia Minor's challenge, it was essential to confirm her Constitutional citizenship as it existed before the 14th Amendment, because the 14th Amendment never mentions suffrage. Thus Justice Waite said: "It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens." It sounds tautological, but was carefully constructed logical reasoning. Mrs. Minor was a Constitutionally defined "citizen", because she was a natural born citizen. To complete his construction he needed to confirm the common-law definition, repeated dozens of times as dictum -"it was never doubted" - to prove that Mrs. Minor was not given suffrage by the 14th. There were no dissenting opinions. (this analysis owes much to Leo Donofrio).
Minor v. Happersett thus established precedent, and was anathema to Obama's comrades. This is why acolytes of George Soros' Center for American Progress "mangled" at least twenty five Supreme Court cases, corrupting their citations to Minor v. Happersett to prevent searches from turning up Minor v. Happersett. The CEO of Justia.com, the nation's busiest free, on-line legal archive Tim Stanley, admitted the corruptions, but claimed it was "a programming error." If we needed any other evidence for the importance of Minor v. Happersett, this scrubbing of Supreme Court case law erased all doubt. Leo Donofrio with Diana Cotter of The Portland Examiner first exposed this crime - and it is a crime./p>
There is a Center for American Progress conference at a major law school where an eminent professor challenges Stanley, and his associate, the CIO for Center for American Progress Eric Malamud, by pointing out that all his graduates have been taught to question legal document sources, particularly the free, or in Stanley's case, publically subsidized legal sources like Justia. They are assigned cases to research on line and compare their citations, their accuracy. Malamud managed to get Cornell to scrub the key incriminating paragraph from a Cornell Law version of a Supreme Court decision. Malamud almost became director of the US Printing Office. They are all looking for money, which is fine, but honesty and defense of the Constitution have disappeared. They don't realize that their individual sovereignties will disappear with our bill of rights and Constitution.