First, let me say that reasonable people can differ on the meaning of Minor as compared to WKA without resort to ad hominem attacks, which I hope we can keep off of this thread.
My take on Minor is that the court defined NBC _only_ as a means of establishing whether Mrs. Minor was in a class citizen which they needed to do before they could decide whether she, as a citizen, would have a right to vote.
The court _did_ reach the question of whether Mrs. Minor was a citizen and their holding was that she was a specific type of citizen, a natural born citizen.
In obiter dictum in Minor the court said that regarding the children of aliens born on US soil that was “doubt” as to whether they were citizens. The court said it could _not_ reach the question of whether these children of aliens were citizens, but the court clearly defined NBC in a way that _excluded_ them as being NBC, i.e. born on US soil of two citizen parents. A child born in the US with one or more alien parents cannot be NBC under the Minor holding, period.
Note that Minor was decided in 1875 _after_ the 14A was authorized, so as of 1875 there was still doubt that children born in the US with one or more alien parents were even citizens.
It took until 1898 in the Wong Kim Ark case (WKA) before the court reached the issue of the “doubt” about the citizenship of children born to aliens on US soil raised by the court in Minor.
If you look at the Wiki page (heavily moderated by Obama supporters) even Wiki does not claim that WKA has anything to do with defining natural born citizen. If you search the page you won't find the term, nor will you find reference on the WIKI WKA page to the discussion and definition of natural born citizen in Minor v Happersett that are contained within WKA in obiter dictum.
The whole issue in WKA _only_ involved whether Wong was a 14th Amendment citizen due to being born “under the jurisdiction” of the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
quote
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), was a United States Supreme Court decision that set an important legal precedent about the role of jus soli (birth in the United States) as a factor in determining a person's claim to United States citizenship. The citizenship status of Wong—a man born around 1871 to Chinese parents who were domiciled in the United States—was challenged, based on an 1882 law restricting Chinese immigration and prohibiting immigrants from China from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Eventually, this issue reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in Wong's favor, deciding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution could not be impaired in its effect by an act of Congress.
end quote
http://www.federalistblog.us/2006/12/us_v_wong_kim_ark_can_never_be_considered/
....In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the court was specifically asked to address “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and held it meant:
The persons declared to be citizens are “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them (U.S.) direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.....
...Here we have the framers, the Attorney General and the Elk court all agreeing that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means political attachment. The question begs, what happened to the adopted meaning?....
....Conclusion
The ruling in Wong Kim Ark is of little relevance to the question surrounding the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction” since that was not the question before the court as it was in Elk. Whatever one wants to make of the Wong Kim Ark ruling it will have little bearing over questions of whether aliens who have no political attachment to the country can be born born subject to its jurisdiction......
“Totally false. It simply did not happen. That is why the issue was debated before the Supreme Court with WKA years later. They would not have accepted arguments about it if it had been previously settled.”
Ahh, another classic Obot response from Seizethecarp. The technique is to throw out the impenetrable Wong Kim Ark as if it means something to the definition of natural born citizens. Then make some comments about the 14th Amendment because few will read it. That, along with the true, but irrelevant comment that “Because it was not defined in the Constitution,” simply confuses people, as it is designed to do. Virtually no words are defined in the Constitution, which was by design, so that interpretations depended only upon the words understood by the Framers at the time the Constitution was written.
The only constitutionally defined citizen before the 14th Amendment was a natural born citizen. Minor v. Happersett, questioning whether the 14th Amendment changed the privileges of citizens given women the right to vote. The 14th Amendment, it turns out, never mention sufferage, but to make the point, Chief Justice Waite needed an undoubted citizen. The only citizen for which there was a definition that was undoubted was the class to which Elizabeth Minor belonged, by far the majority of citizens, natural born citizens. Wong Kim Ark didn’t change that definition. No constitutional amendment can change an earlier definition by inference. Every word must be assumed to have meaning. Justice Gray never claimed to change that definition, and sited Minor v. Happersett as the authority, which it is.
If anyone cares whether the Constitution has relevanve, Barack Obama is in violation of the precedence established by Minor v. Happersett. Obama’s legal staff were always aware of this, and the evidence is in over 25 edited supreme court case records published by Obama’s Harvard schoolmate at his legal reference site justia.com. This must have legal ramifications, but to protect Obama’s ineligibility by providing counterfit supreme court cases will have to be addressed if and when we have a less corrupt justice department. (See Leo Donofrio’s evidence at naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com)