Your comment affirms the insidious nature of the Justia scrubing of Minor from citations. Legal researchers using free internet links get lulled into confidence in the reliability of the links.
Note that Wiki moderators have viciously scrubbed any attempts to include reference to Minor v Happersett from their “natural born citizen” page.
The Wiki page on Natural Born Citizen has been recently updated for comments by Lawrence Solum relating to Rubio and even makes reference to his own law review article from Sept. 2008 based on the Minor v Happersett formulation and mentions that Solum has modified his position away from Minor in a way that just happens to make Obama and Rubio eligible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_of_the_U.S._Constitution
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Academic opinions
In a 2008 article published by the Michigan Law Review Lawrence Solum, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, stated that “there is general agreement on the core of [the] meaning [of the Presidential Eligibility Clause]. Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a ‘natural born citizen’”.[24] In April 2010, Solum republished the same article as an online draft, in which he changed his opinion on the meaning of natural born citizen to include persons born in the United States of one American citizen parent. In a footnote he explained that “based on my reading of the historical sources, there is no credible case that a person born on American soil with one American parent was clearly not a ‘natural born citizen’.” He further extended natural born citizenship to all cases of jus soli as the “conventional view”.[25] Although Professor Solum stated elsewhere that the two-citizen-parents arguments “weren't crazy”, he believes “the much stronger argument suggests that if you were born on American soil that you would be considered a natural born citizen.”[26]
Ronald Rotunda, Professor of Law at Chapman University, stated, “There's some people who say that both parents need to be citizens. That's never been the law.”[27] Polly Price, Professor of Law at Emory University, added, “It's a little confusing, but most scholars think it's a pretty unusual position for anyone to think the natural born citizen clause would exclude someone born in the [United States].”[26] Professor Chin concurred with that assessment, stating, “there is agreement that ‘natural born citizens’ include those made citizens by birth under the 14th Amendment.”[28] Similarly, Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law at UCLA, found “quite persuasive” the reasoning employed by the Indiana Court of Appeals, which had ruled “that persons born within the borders of the United States are ‘natural born Citizens’ for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”[29][30]
Daniel Takaji, Professor of Law at Ohio State University, stated Marco Rubio (whose parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of his birth in the United States) was a natural-born citizen because he was born in the United States; the citizenship status of his parents was irrelevant.[31]
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Yes, Wiki has a page on Minor, but the unnamed reviewer goes to great pains to state on that page that Minor is “obiter dictum” and not precedent and omits the subsequent citations as precedent that were scrubbed by Justia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_v._Happersett
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In obiter dictum, the Court referenced the natural-born-citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution, stating, “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.”
Subsequent history
Minor has not been explicitly overruled by another Supreme Court decision. In fact, Minor is still cited for the proposition that the Constitution does not confer the right to vote. However, as the decision relates to women's suffrage in particular, it is no longer applicable because of the Nineteenth Amendment.
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Let us now examine what Obama’s enablers are peddling on this blog. They must and do attack the Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) decision on two fronts. First, they argue that the definition of a “natural-born citizen” given by the Court is dicta and therefore not binding precedent. But they are wrong. In Minor, the U.S. Supreme Court had to decide whether Virginia Minor, a woman, was a “citizen” in order to determine whether as a “citizen” she enjoyed a constitutional right to vote under the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV. So the Court reasoned that once she was shown to be a “citizen,” it did not matter that she was a woman, unless Missouri could still disqualify a woman from voting because being a “citizen” did not guarantee any person the right to vote. It does not matter whether the Court chose to say that Minor was a “natural born Citizen” or just a “citizen.” Either way, Virginia Minor would advance to the next step in the analysis which was whether as a “citizen” she had the right to vote which Missouri could not abrogate. The Court chose the “natural-born citizen” path. It thoroughly analyzed and considered what a “natural-born citizen” was and after saying that it is a child born in the country to citizen parents, found that Virginia Minor was a “natural-born citizen” and therefore also a “citizen.” After the Court told us what a “natural-born citizen” was, it then made the comment about there being doubts as to whether a child born in the country to alien parents was even a “citizen.” The Court said that it was not necessary for it to decide that question and it did not because Virginia Minor was a “natural-born citizen” which necessarily also made her a “citizen.” So the focus of the Court’s decision regarding citizenship was in defining who the “original citizens” and the “natural-born citizens” were. The Court did not and did not have to answer the question about who was a “citizen” under the Fourteenth Amendment which in the question that it raised involved deciding whether a child born in the jurisdiction of the United States but to alien parents was born “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” We know that this latter question concerning who was a “citizen” under these circumstances was answered by U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 which also confirmed Minor’s definition of a “natural-born citizen” and analyzed whether such a child was born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment.
So as we can see, Minor’s analysis and discussion about citizenship was central to the Court’s answering the question of whether Virginia Minor was a “citizen” which it answered by telling us that she was a “natural-born citizen” which automatically made her a “citizen” also. Hence, Minor’s discussion and decision on what a “natural-born citizen” is was central to the Court’s holding regarding citizenship (as I explained the other holding concerned whether voting was a privilege and immunity originally guaranteed by the constitution’s privileges and immunities clause) and not dicta.
Read more:
http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-obamas-enablers-mislead-public-on.html