Minor made an argument that she was a citizen on the basis of the 14th amendment. If it wasn't relevant or not an issue, there would be no reason for the court to bring it up. Second, why would they not accept that argument??
The argument is, that as a woman, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State in which she resides, she has the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship, which the State cannot by its laws or constitution abridge.
The part in bold above is the citizenship clause from the 14th amendment. The court had no problem recognizing this and then rejecting it:
But, in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position. 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.
Do you understand what this is saying?? Women did NOT need the 14th amendment to give them the "position" of being citizens. They were already citizens without this provision. The court goes on to explain how people became citizens, and ONE of those ways is by the criteria that they exclusively characterized as natural-born.
And if it's not clear that they are rejecting the 14th amendment argument, they make it clear a few paragraphs later:
The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her.
When they defined Minor's citizen through the law of nations definition of natural-born citizen, it wasn't a passing remark. She has "always been a citizen from her birth." For this statement to have meaning, it has to rely on the natural-born citizen definition because that was the ONLY definition given that did not have doubt. We know this declaration was a legal precedent because the Wong Kim Ark decision affirmed the definition of NBC by quoting the exact paragraph from Minor and THEN by giving the holding in Minor:
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.I maintain that we need a clear spicific definition. ....
There's no citizenship statute or definition that matches the language of your example, especially using the word ONLY to establish the criteria.
The Minor precedent was quoted and affirmed by another panel of Supreme Court justices more than 20 years later. Despite a split decision, that court agreed on the definition of natural-born citizen, and it said the court was "committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment." Minor introduced its definition of natural-born citizen to say there were two ways citizens could be added to the United States (after the first way, which was by being a member of the new society). The first way was birth and the second was naturalization. The natural-born are distinguished specifically from aliens and foriegners who must rely on naturalization or have the doubts about their citizenship resolved. Natural-born citizens do not have this doubt. They are simply defined as: "all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens." Eighteen Supreme Court justices agreed. There's no higher legal authority.
Thank You for your careful and complete reply...... Since we both agree that Obama is in no way eligible, the next step is for our position to prevail in court. If this can be done as you say by using Minor as the primary precedent, I am all for it. But whether we use Minor, fall back on original intent or use both, because a crime has been and is currently being committed in the highest office of the land, this matter needs to be adjudicated. The sooner the better. In spite of what you say, I still maintain that in order to end this controversy, we need a clear and complete definition by a current court using today’s language of the Natural Born Citizen requirement as it relates to the office of President of the United States. And I am not alone in my opinion. Doing nothing only reinforces historical precedent especially if Romney selects Marco Rubio as his running mate.