This is simply not true. Minor v Happersett had one or two sentences that might POSSIBLY have been relevant, and those sentences were interpreted by a later Supreme Court to mean that the Minor Court was NOT "committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment."
The purpose 14th Amendment was to ensure equal application of the rule for who was and was not a citizen by birth, i.e., a natural born citizen.
So in essence, the later Court quoted Minor v Happersett to make a point that was AGAINST the two-citizen-parent claim, NOT in favor of it.
The case that actually established the existing precedent was US v Wong Kim Ark, in 1898. That precedent is that pretty much any child born on US soil is a natural born citizen. And that is settled law. No credible authorities on either side of the aisle give any credence to claims otherwise.
“This is simply not true. Minor v Happersett had one or two sentences that might POSSIBLY have been relevant”
The Court’s holding in Minor vs Happersett states that she (Virginia Minor) was a US citizen because she was born in the US to parents who were citizens.
This was because in order to decide if Virginia Minor was eligible to vote the court first had to establish whether she was a citizen. The criteria the court used was born in the US of two US citizens.
We all need to accept that we got zoomed in 2008 by the Democrats who had an ineligible candidate they wanted to run for President. Fortunately for them McStain’s eligibility was questionable. So the GOP and Dems banded together and let both of them run. Now the GOP is eager to continue to put up their ineligible candidates for 2016. In effect they are trying to backdoor re-define the concept of natural born citizen which is the job of the Supreme Court. Sadly SCOTUS is trying to duck their duty so the issue rages on.
The case that actually established the existing precedent was US v Wong Kim Ark, in 1898. That precedent is that pretty much any child born on US soil is a natural born citizen. And that is settled law. No credible authorities on either side of the aisle give any credence to claims otherwise.
Mr. Winston, you may be confusing a few, though the level of discourse for this thread is refreshingly well informed. Still, I’ll correct a few misstatements; Minor v. Happersett is all about natural born citizenship, because that was the only class of citizen defined in the Constitution. The case is clearly written, and clearly reasoned, and unequivocal.
The 14th Amendment nowhere mentions the term ‘natural born citizen’, and thus can have had no effect upon it. The Supreme Court doesn’t allow decisions to infer changes in other decisions. Reinterpretation must be explicit, and the author of the 14th Amendment, John Bingham, in his two addresses to the House, while explaining his amendment, explicitly tells us who are natural born citizens; “I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….” Exactly the interpretation cited by John Marshall, and by Morrison Waite, and by John Jay, and by Charles Evans Hughes, all chief justices.
In Wong Kim Ark Justice Gray cites Minor v. Happersett and quotes the passage in its entirety. Though he wanders through British Common law, he returns to find that Wong Kim, born to domiciled aliens in San Francisco, is a citizen, but not a natural born citizen. Read the end of the decision. The argument is a mess, and that may have been Justice Gray’s intention. It leads in irrelevant directions but returns to the only decision possible, because it rests on the 14th Amendment, which never mentions natural born citizenship.