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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
I think this has been explained to you before--I know I learned it in some discussion here. The original Clause 3 was superseded by the 12th Amendment. If you no longer count that one, therefore, what was Clause 5 is now Clause 4. That was clearly what the Indiana court meant--or do you really think they can't count up to 5?

If this were the court's only mistake, I might cut them slack. I cited three separate sources that identify the clause as the 5th, not the 4th. The Indiana court cites an Indiana law, so I suppose they are handcuffed to the stupidity of their own state's legislators. The court made other errors. One, they said the plaintiffs didn't argue about where Obama was born in one part of the decision yet they admitted that they did in another. They downplayed the intent of the authors of the 14th amendment as "quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century ..." and Vattel's Law of Nations (which has been cited frequently by the SCOTUS) as "an eighteenth century treatise." Then they claim without any logical basis that "the Court in Minor contemplates only scenarios where both parents are either citizens or aliens ..." Minor doesn't specify anything about BOTH parents being one or the other. It simply says people who are NOT born of citizen parents (plural) are distinguished from aliens or foreigners, which would categorically refer to those of mixed parents.

Because, unlike you, they can clearly see what the SCOTUS's reasoning was, even if they never said "WKA is a natural born citizen" in so many words.

The Indiana court misses the entire point. Gray could NOT declare WKA to be an NBC because he didn't meet its definition. The WKA decision had no problem attributing Virginia Minor's citizenship to a definition of NBC, so if it was the same, they should have no problem doing so for WKA. They did not.

In all that verbiage, you still haven't addressed (1) why Waite used the word "further," if he wasn't talking about an extension of the definition of "natural born citizen"; and (2) whether anyone ever successfully expressed doubts about the citizenship status of that second class. Who are the "some authorities" Waite refers to?

1) I did address it because the "further" is an addendum to the previous paragraph about how citizens could be added by birth or naturalization. It sets up TWO classes of citizens, but one has doubt. There's nothing in the construction that suggests anyone goes further in definining natural born citizen, which I also addressed. 2) The "some authorities" is probably a reference to individual states. You do understand that the ONLY authority that matters here is the SCOTUS itself?? There would be NO authority that trumps them.

No, they just said that women did not need the 14th Amendment to become U.S. citizens. That NBCs existed prior to the 14th Amendment does not mean that people to whom the 14th applied could not be NBCs.

Sorry, but this is exactly what Gray talked about when he said the SCOTUS was committed to the view that the children born in the country of citizens are EXCLUDED from the operation of the 14th amdendment. The very next paragraph goes right to the Minor decision specifically.

As someone once said: "Read it. Learn it. Understand it."

That was me and my advice still stands. You're hanging on to a "further" and "some authorities" and an Indiana state court decision that admits the SCOTUS did not to the same conclusion they divined from thin air. I've explained how those points have failed and have supported my points directly from these SCOTUS decisions. Read it. Learn it. Understand it.

325 posted on 09/13/2011 3:42:13 PM PDT by edge919
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To: edge919
Okay, so I spoke too soon. But here's the thing: you can write with a straight face that "there's nothing in the construction that suggests anyone goes further in definining natural born citizen." And I read the actual passage
At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts...
and it's obvious that "further" refers back to the previous sentence, with is discussing NBC. The construction makes that crystal clear--it's in the same paragraph, and the "there have been doubts" is an echo of "it was never doubted." You would have us believe that "further" skips over the sentence that comes immediately before and refers all the way back to the preceding paragraph. As I said before, no one would read it that way unless they were invested in having it mean something other than it plainly does.
326 posted on 09/13/2011 3:58:20 PM PDT by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: edge919
Except, as has been pointed out to you several times, Gray did not say that. He said they were not committed to the view.
328 posted on 09/13/2011 7:13:58 PM PDT by sometime lurker
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