3. The provision granting citizenship to children born abroad out of wedlock applied retroactively; the provision granting citizenship to children born in wedlock did not. The 1934 Act, too, was nonretroactive. The net result was that a child born abroad out of wedlock to a United States citizen mother in 1933 or earlier had United States citizenship after the 1940 Act, but a child born in wedlock did not until 1994 when Congress enacted legislation making the 1934 Act retroactive. Pub. L. 103—416, Tit. I, §101(a)(2), 108 Stat. 4306, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1401(h).
The judge's clerk had more difficulty finding the real effective date than I did.
For you to be correct about the effective date of the law in regards to the child of an unwed mother then the SC is wrong in its recitation of the history of the laws on unwed mothers http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-1060.ZD.html, and the statute itself is wrong in referring to 1952 and the history that only specified a reference to 1409 (a) was merely an oversight and it should have referred to 1409 (c) as well.
Did you even read the post regarding the history of the law?
When I do tax research, I never rely simply on the current state of the law. I want to understand where it comes from and where it is going. This case does precisely that and it demonstrates that the unwed mother section predated the 1952 act, that it had much to do with womens suffrage movement and that it was not amended by 1986 legislation.
Extract from case:
In 1986, however, Congress added further gender-based differentials. ..... The requirements for a child of a United States citizen mother remained the same; such a child obtained the mother’s nationality if the mother had resided in the United States or its territorial possessions for at least a year before the child’s birth...
The footnote explained the origin of Section 1401(h). I don’t recall you commenting on that.