What does the verdict have to do with the understanding of the Justices on a point of law? Dicta or Holding, the Judge is still stating the understanding of the court. Making it part of a verdict does not make the opinion of a judge any more or any less correct.
Again, I point out that Justice Waite Looked square at the 14th amendment, and did not find "natural born citizen" in it. I regard it as his informed opinion that the 14th amendment did not define the term "natural born citizen."
I assume you feel exactly the same way about Justice Gray's and the other five justices' opinion in Wong Kim Ark.
MT: "We were not discussing the Minor decision YET.
We are discussing Wong Kim Ark.
Until I have your response on that subject, the discussion of court cases will proceed no further."
Fair enough.
From WKA two passages:
The first explains the English Common Law and its application to the US.
"It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born."
"III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established."
The second passage explains the 14th Amendment and how it creates "natural born citizens".
"The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes."
[The 14th Amendment makes citizens of everyone born in the US except children of foreign ambassadors, of invading armies and of members of Indians tribes.]
"The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;" and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides".
[It's the citation to Lord Coke and the Calvin's Case that is the key. The allegiance owed by an alien to the US is as Lord Coke said in the Calvin's Case, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject"". He is using Lord Coke's words to show what applies in the US. The child born in the US to alien parents is natural born. And he repeats the Binney quote as being proof of his assertion.]