“All else is either dicta”
Yet you birthers quote Minor, which didn’t even try to determine citizenship, other than to note the woman was a citizen before the 14th Amendment passed!
The “dicta” in WKA is a recital of court cases starting from the time of the colonies, showing how NBC was used in the law. It isn’t making a decision, just showing why no one had questioned it before.
Minor held that Virgian Minor was a citizen. One reason we know that is because it was stated in the syllabus. That's not done for dicta.
And per the Ogilvie holding, Minor's definition of NBC cannot be dicta, because the Minor Court relied on that holding to hold that the 14th Amendment had not granted the petitioner citizenshp, since she was an NBC and so didn't need the first clause of the 14th Amendment to have that status. And that, too, must be a holdiing, because the Court relied on it in order further hold that citizenshp did not automatically entail the right to vote.
And that citizenship holding all by itself sets a precedent that the citizenship granted by the 14th is not the same as "natural born citizenship." As does the Marbury requirement that every Constitutional clause must have substantive effect. Which would not be the case if all those born in the US (excepting the children of ambassadors and such) were "natural born citizens" per the 14th, since the words of Article II, section 1 already grant Constitutional citizenshp to whomever is an NBC. To interpret the definition of NBC as precisely the same as the citizenship definition given in the first clause of the 14th is a violation of the interpretive rule set by Marbury vs. Madison, since in that case, removing the first clause of the 14th Amendment would make no change to the law whatsoever.
The “dicta” in WKA is a recital of court cases starting from the time of the colonies, showing how NBC was used in the law. It isn’t making a decision, just showing why no one had questioned it before.
The Constititional Convention didn't include a definition of "natural born citizen" precisely because they didn't see themselves as in the dictionary business, and because their understanding of the law of nations meant that there was a natural definition of that term which was (in their view) based on reason and first principles, and which their ethic impelled them to leave in that state. Putting the definition in the Constitutiion would have contradicted the concept "natural."
The US has a Constitution. The UK does not. In the US, it is crucial to distinguish between rules and/or definitions established by the Constitution versus those established by Congress. There is no such issue or distinction in UK law. In British law, it is meaningless to speak of a "Constitutional" natural born subject versus a statutory one. That's a crucial reason why one cannot simply use the British legal term "natural born subject" in US law as though they were analogous.
Another reason is because the British at the time used "natural born subject" in a way that was perfectly synonymous with the American usage of the term "citizen." Only later did the British adopt the term "citizen" themselves when applied to the nation as a whole (as opposed to a city, for example.) Over time, they de-emphasized the term subject, so that now no more new subjects are created, only citizens. But they still have multiple classes of citizens, with some having rights that others do not. Such as the right to residence in Britain.
The point isn't that modern British citizenship law applies in any way to the US. The point is that the definitions of legal terms cannot be comprehended or correctly used outside of the culture, society and legal system in which they evolved. And the differences in the US and British legal systems were fundamental from the inception of the US, and in ways that directly and severely impacted issues of citizenship.
Them same problem exists with US State laws, where it also crucial to distinguish between the provisions of the State's Constitution and the statues enacted by its legislature.
The legally and semantically correct translation of "natural born subject" into US legal terminology is "citizen." To see that, consider the following passage from Blackstone's Commentaries:
To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband's consent, might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants. But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king's ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.
In the above quote, it makes perfect sense in the context of US law if and only if one substitutes "citizen" for every occurrence of "natural born subject" in the original. It makes no sense at all, and appears as a logical contradiction or else as bizare word play if one instead substitutes "native born citizen" (or "born a citizen") in place of each occurrence of "natural born subject."
You’ve been pwned on this argument several times. The SCOTUS rejected Virginia Minor’s argument that she was a citizen via the 14th amendment. They rejected her argument because the court said women born in the country to citizen parents did NOT need the 14th amendment to be citizens. The Wong Kim Ark ruling affirmed this decision as it related to citizenship and followed that precedent. Justice Gray had to find different criteria to find Wong Kim Ark to be a citizen and in doing so, he affirmed a legal difference between natural born citizenship and 14th amendment citizenship by birth.