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Ok, try to follow this. I know it's confusing, but it's worth it.

You just had to sign up here to do this and you’re annoyed? So sad. Seeing as you’ve not learned what this site is about yet, I’ll be glad to help. At least you’re probably getting paid for this, unlike the rest of us.

Justice Miller's aside in the Slaughterhouse Cases is NOT the holding in the case, and therefore has no legal precedential value.

If you read my post, I said that the Slaughterhouse Cases ADDRESS the issue. I did not say that they were precedent. The majority opinion, because it was contemporaneous with the ratification of the 14th Amendment, record the understanding of those who drafted, passed, and RATIFIED the Amendment, which DOES have value toward an originalist interpretation. Unless you believe that Justice Miller was lying, or prefer a rubber, er, "living Constitution," what the law meant at the time it was ratified is what is at issue, not what anybody else wishes it to mean at a later date. The opinion therefore has value in interpreting the intent of the 14th Amendment.

Got that?

In fact, it is thoroughly dismissed in the LATER case cited by the WaPo (US v. Wong Kim Ark), where the majority opinion stated:

About which I don't particularly care, for reasons I’ll explain later.

Now, as to dicta, notwithstanding the secret construction, hasty passage, and coerced ratification of the 14th Amendment, if it was true that the Supreme Court NEVER used dicta as precedent, you might be on solid ground. However, as Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific (118 U.S. 394 (1886)) proves (pertinent because it is more contemporary with Wong Kim Ark), even a headnote, written by the court clerk has carried significant precedence, especially because it established equal protection for fictitious persons (which may have been (railroad lawyers), Conkling and Bingham’s intent, but was not the understanding of those ratifying the Amendment). Interestingly, that self same court clerk, Court Reporter J. C. Bancroft Davis, was a corporate socialist, a student of Marx, and had a record of falsifying documents, but I suspect that doesn't matter a whit to you.

You can't have it both ways, sirrah. Drop equal protection for corporations and return them to full State jurisdiction and you might have a deal insofar as the integrity of your argument is concerned, but enough of that digression.

In other words, Miller was wrong. And as an "aside" which was not necessary to Miller's holding in that case, it was never law.

No, that's not what it says, despite how much you might wish otherwise. It says that Miller's opinion didn't matter because they were going to define the phrase as they saw fit. Fitting for the corporate attorneys who dominated the Supreme Court in those days.

Allow me to start with an examination of just who these concurring legal geniuses on the Court really were:

We have Rufus Peckham, infamous inventor of the now-discredited term, "substantive due process," used to invalidate a state statute regulating the hours of bakery employees.

We have George Shiras, a prominent (drum roll please) railroad lawyer with no prior judicial experience and friend to corporate railroad barons with a rather keen interest in retaining Chinese coolies. Kinda reminds you of something rather more contemporary, doesn't it?

We have Horace Gray, author of the majority opinion, a buddy of Brandeis, Holmes, and other noted court activists and a big fan of paper money.

We have Yalie David Brewer, founder of the American Society of International Law, peace advocate, and judicial activist toward using the court to supersede State laws.

We have Yalie Henry Brown, , author of Plessy v. Ferguson!!!, and a huge fan of the use of Admiralty Law as a regulatory means (even though he hired a substitute to serve in the military for him in the Civil War).

Lovely bunch.

Now, in your discussion, it is notable that you neglected to cite the dissent. Allow me to correct what must be an unintentional oversight on your part:

We have Chief Justice Melville Fuller, a big fan of Thomas Cooley’s Treatise on Constitutional Limitations and property rights, but by no means a corporate shill.

Finally among the dissenters, there is John Marshall Harlan, who had the temerity to oppose broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and opposed Plessy v. Ferguson.

Justice McKenna did not participate as he was newly confirmed.

So far, I like my team better, so let’s take a look at that dissenting opinion.

If the conclusion of the majority opinion is correct, then the children of citizens of the United States, who have been born abroad since July 28, 1868, when the amendment was declared ratified, were and are aliens, unless they have or shall, on attaining majority, become citizens by naturalization in the United States; and no statutory provision to the contrary is of any force or effect. And children who are aliens by descent, but born on our soil, are exempted from the exercise of the power to exclude or to expel aliens, or any class of aliens, so often maintained by this court,-an exemption apparently disregarded by the acts in respect of the exclusion of persons of Chinese descent.

It is an admirably clear construction of the modern consequences of the ruling, all your protestations notwithstanding.

Chief Justice Fuller goes on with this elegant argument equating your preference with feudalism:

The English common-law rule, which it is insisted was in force after the Declaration of Independence, was that 'every person born within the dominions of the crown, no matter whether of English or of o reign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning in the country, was an English subject; save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England.' Cockb. Nat. 7.

The tie which bound the child to the crown was indissoluble. [169 U.S. 649, 707] The nationality of his parents had no bearing on his nationality. Though born during a temporary stay of a few days, the child was irretrievably a British subject. Hall, Foreign Jur. 15.

The rule was the outcome of the connection in feudalism between the individual and the soil on which he lived, and the allegiance due was that of liege men to their liege lord. It was not local and temporary, as was the obedience to the laws owed by aliens within the dominions of the crown, but permanent and indissoluble, and not to be canceled by any change of time or place or circumstances.

How charming. Maybe he’s done? Not quite, and by a long shot.

You see, citizenship appertains exclusively to the allegiance of parentage, else the choices and preferences of those parents, AS LEGITIMATELY EXERCISED UNDER LAW, including changing citizenship by naturalization, is not something so easily superseded unless you think the State has a claim on the baby, the parents allegiances notwithstanding. So, I take it that you are anti-family in your stance too!

Allegiances of parentage are not so easily transgressed in law as you would suppose either. Back to the dissenting opinion:

Twiss, in his work on the Law of Nations, says that 'natural allegiance, or the obligation of perpetual obedience to the government of a country, wherein a man may happen to have been born, which he cannot forfeit or cancel or vary by any change of time or place or circumstance, is the creature of civil law, and finds no countenance in the law of nations, as it is in direct conflict with the incontestable rule of that law.' Volume 1, p. 231.

It’s really quite an opinion; you ought to read it. Of course if you had, then your post relegates from probably contractual interest to one of singular dishonesty.

Fuller goes on to cite Story, Taney, and any number of opinions from within the Department of State, proving that Gray et al. could in no way honestly be citing historical precedent within the US as regards common law in this instance. He includes citation to the Federal Convention as well, indicating that the issue was raised and disposed in opposition of the majority opinion.

When he’s done with court and general pre-war precedent regarding citizenship, then Fuller looks to the essential precedent to the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed a mere TWO MONTHS before the drafting of the Amendment:

The civil rights act became a law April 9, 1866 (14 Stat. 27, c. 31), and provided 'that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians [169 U.S. 649, 720] not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.' And this was re-enacted June 22, 1874, in the Revised Statutes (section 1992).

The words 'not subject to any foreign power' do not in themselves refer to mere territorial jurisdiction, for the persons referred to are persons born in the United States. All such persons are undoubtedly subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and yet the act concedes that, nevertheless, they may be subject to the political jurisdiction of a foreign government. In other words, by the terms of the act, all persons born in the United States, and not owing allegiance to any foreign power, are citizens.

You will also note that citizens of a foreign country are usually expressly prohibited from taking other citizenship without having renounced their native allegiance. It is patently illogical that their children would be allowed by that foreign power to do otherwise.

He completed his treatise addressing treaties between China and the US as well.

As to Mr. Howard's oratory in chambers (as opposed to written work), whether it should have included an "OR," frankly, that you find it necessary to make a Constitutional distinction between the children of diplomats and those of invaders and travellers is to render our treaty understandings with those countries and their jurisdiction over their citizens laughable. It is to show NO RESPECT for any other nation on earth and flies in the face of our nation's understanding of equal protection under the law.

Thirdly --

"Alien" DOES NOT MEAN "ILLEGAL ALIEN". It is a normal and ordinary synonym for any "non-citizen."

Silly me. As if I didn't know that. My point in all this detail is that the children of LEGAL aliens aren't legitimate 14th Amendment citizens either.

But I’m not done with you.

"Subject"?? Subject is not a noun in this case!!! If you are "subject to the jurisdiction" it means you are within the control of the jurisdiction. Why on earth would you want illegal aliens to be exempt from our laws? (See 1. above)

If I'm driving in Europe, I have to obey their traffic laws because I am WITHIN their jurisdiction. That doesn't make me a European SUBJECT.

I take you to Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, most applicable to the understanding of the word, “subject,” common at the time the Amendment was drafted and ratified (you know… the law):

SUBJECT, persons, government. An individual member of a nation, who is subject to the laws; this term is used in contradistiction to citizen, which is applied to the same individual when considering his political rights.

2. In monarchical governments, by subject is meant one who owes permanent allegiance to the monarch. Vide Body politic; Greenl. Ev. §286; Phil. & Am. on Ev. 732, n. 1.

Fancy that. You are either igonorant of the mid-19th Century term, "subject," or the misconstruction you offered is intentional. If you were in my employ, I'd withhold the check. If you are a lawyer, you'd best ask for a refund on my tuition as this engineer has made hash of your arguments.

Welcome to FreeRepublic, where people take the original intent of laws rather seriously, else they become rubber legislation with no meaning at all.