Thus, the court is saying Virginia Minor's citizenship is established by a common-law type of definition (not English Common Law, but what appears to be nearly a verbatim citation of Vattel's definition of natural citizenship).
This may be quibbling over a point, but something within the Constitution has to define whom it covers. The Supremacy clause says so, doesn't it. If you have to look elsewhere, then the Constitution ultimately is superior to whatever is found elsewhere.
It sounds like you're saying (and pardon me for hypothetically putting words in your mouth) when "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" to bind us, we have to look elsewhere to find out who "We" and "our Posterity" are?
To me, a common sense understanding would be that people born in the country (our Posterity) of parents who are also citizens of the country (We the people) do not need to look elsewhere to define their citizenship.
The Preamble already lays out that the purpose of the Constitution was to define a country that was meant to be passed down to "our Posterity," meaning the citizen children of citizen parents.
But that's just me. I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know?
-PJ
A lot of things are not defined in the Constitution. It's very typical for the Supreme Court to look outside the Constitution and outside U.S. law for guidance. The common references are English common law and international law, such as expressed in the Law of Nations by Vattel. The court has said this in both the Minor and Wong Kim Ark decisions. The latter relied heavily on English common law to give teeth, so to speak, to the 14th amendment.
It sounds like you're saying (and pardon me for hypothetically putting words in your mouth) when "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" to bind us, we have to look elsewhere to find out who "We" and "our Posterity" are?
No, we have to look elsewhere to understand what the Art. II Sec I legal term "natural born citizen" means. The Court already acknowledged general citizenship as deriving from the Constitution in the sections you're talking about:
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. There cannot be a nation without a people. The very idea of a political community, such as a nation is, implies an [p166] association of persons for the promotion of their general welfare. Each one of the persons associated becomes a member of the nation formed by the association.
Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these States when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, became ipso facto a citizen -- a member of the nation created by its adoption.
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 [n6] 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," [n7] 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
From there the court says NBC is not defined in the Constitution, so they have to look elsewhere for the meaning. To me, that says the Constitution does not tell who becomes a citizen by birth, but it does acknowledge a class of persons who naturally become citizens at birth. Then it defines what it means to be an NBC.
Again, it's significant that so recently after the adoption of the 14th amendment, the court insisted on refusing to apply the birth clause of that amendment to a person who was obviously born or naturalized in the United States. If they wanted to say that the 14th defined who becomes a citizen at birth, this was a great opportunity. But the obvious reason they didn't was that if the only thing that was required to be a citizen was birth in the country, there was no need for a 14th amendment.
That's the defect in the Wong Kim Ark decision. It argues that citizenship by birth is a long held fundamental rule, but obviously it wasn't universally applied in the United States, else there was no need for the amendment to be written. The 14th amendment served the purpose of creating citizenship for those persons born in the country who would NOT naturally be recognized as citizens. This means anyone NOT born to TWO citizen parents. For any other combination, there is doubt. Justice Gray removed the doubt about 14th amendment citizenship by birth by stating the parents had permanent residence and domicil in the United States in order to meet the "subject to the jurisdiction" requirement. Incidentally, Obama's parents do not meet this requirement.