Per a Leo comment to the thread blog post:
begin quote:
I abide by the SCOTUS standard stated in O’GILVIE ET AL., MINORS v. UNITED STATES – 519 U.S. 79 (1996):
“Although we gave other reasons for our holding in Schleier as well, we explicitly labeled this reason an “independent” ground in support of our decision, id., at 334. We cannot accept petitioners’ claim that it was simply a dictum.”
Rather than reaching the 14th Amendment issue, the SCOTUS in Minor looked to an independent ground in support of its decision that Minor was a US citizen. That ground was Article 2 Section 1, the natural born citizen clause. In doing so, the Court in Minor defined nbc… and it is the only SCOTUS case which directly construed the A2S1 nbc clause as part of its reasoning. According to the majority in Ogilvie and Breyer’s opinion, such reasoning is not dictum. – Leo
Except, of course, that it didn't.