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To: edge919; sometime lurker
Wow, If your response passes for birther legal analysis, I now understand why the birthers have lost every lawsuit they have been involved in since 2008. Try reading the 1st paragraph of the Minor opinion where it states that the only issue before the court is the woman sufferage issue. Do you know the definition of legal dicta? You complain that Scotus ignores Minor in the Rogers citizenship case, when if understood legal precedent and the definition of dicta it would be obvious to you why Minor was not cited. You realize that any attorney who cites Minor regarding a citizenship issue in a case automatically loses the case and the judge goes back to his chambers and breaks out ROTFLOL.
Rogers is not the only citizenship case that ignores Minor, every other case in the last century does the same. Does it ever occur to you that the language you keep butchering and quoting from Minor has zero precedential value and no court from the lowest immigration court up to and including SCOTUS will never use your language or your legal argument. It is obvious from your post that you cannot find a single natural born citizen case in the last century that cites Minor. There are thousands that cite WKA. WKA is one of the top 10 cited cases in SCOTUS history and the holding in Minor was overruled by the 19th amendment and has not been cited approvingly by a single court in 90 years. That should tell you something about your bogus theory.
BTW, a syllabus to a SCOTUS case is NOT part of the court's opinion and is never cited as authority. Again, an attorney who cites the syllabus will be laughed out of court. But I guess the birthers are well aware of that reaction to their legal arguments.
248 posted on 10/10/2011 6:47:37 PM PDT by ydoucare
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To: ydoucare
Try reading the 1st paragraph of the Minor opinion where it states that the only issue before the court is the woman sufferage issue.

Sorry. I didn't realize you were profoundly challenged. Have you NOT read the actual FIRST paragraph?? Here:

The question is presented in this case, whether, since the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, a woman, who is a citizen of the United States and of the State of Missouri, is a voter in that State, notwithstanding the provision of the constitution and laws of the State, which confine the right of suffrage to men alone.

Minor's citizenship is PART of the question. Citizenship comes BEFORE the right of suffrage wihin the "question." The SECOND paragraph presents Minor's 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 citizenship question is covered in the next 12 paragraphs. I've shown you specifically how citizenship was the No. 2 bullet point in the syllabus. Citizenship is also No. 1 in the syllabus as well.

1. The word "citizen" is often used to convey the idea of membership in a nation.

Further, the terms citizen and citizenship are used in the next rest of the bullet points in the syllabus. The opinion of the court wraps things up nicely in the third-to-last paragraph:

Certainly, if the courts can consider any question settled, this is one. For nearly ninety years the people have acted upon the idea that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage.

For the court to make this appraisal, it had to determine when the Constitution conferred citizenship, which it did by defining natural-born citizens: all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens. Anyone else who was a citizen was made so through naturalization.

You complain that Scotus ignores Minor in the Rogers citizenship case, when if understood legal precedent and the definition of dicta it would be obvious to you why Minor was not cited.

The Minor definition IS legal precedent and it has been cited as such in the Wong Kim Ark decision. The court in that case determined that the Minor decision excluded NBCs from the citizen clause of the 14th amendment. It acknowledged the definition of natural-born citizen comes from OUTSIDE of the Constitution. So-called "native-born citizenship" is an invention OF the Constitution, so the court, using the precedent of Minor made a distinction between two classes of birth citizenship. Further, the court acknowledged specifically that the Minor decision recognized citizenship on the basis of BOTH jus soli and jus sanguinis criteria. If that was NOT controlling precedent, there was NO need to say anything about citizen parents. Wong Kim Ark was NOT born to citizen parents. The SCOTUS could NOT declare him to be a natural-born citizen, and IN FACT, the court did not do so. In its dicta, the last time that the term "natural-born citizen" is used is when the definition is cited from Minor.

You realize that any attorney who cites Minor regarding a citizenship issue in a case automatically loses the case and the judge goes back to his chambers and breaks out ROTFLOL.

Nonsense. Let's see your proof of this. Your own example shows otherwise.

Rogers is not the only citizenship case that ignores Minor, every other case in the last century does the same.

Are you really this stupid?? Rogers didn't ignore Minor. It was cited. It did ignore part of the Minor decision. The question is whether that was on purpose or out of ignorance. That part that was ignored just happens to be the same part that was quoted verbatim in Wong Kim Ark and that the court was compelled to abide.

It is obvious from your post that you cannot find a single natural born citizen case in the last century that cites Minor.

Sorry, but you keep making yourself look more and more stupid. Minor was cited in the case you mentioned. Plus the point of this thread is that Obots and apologists cited a couple of cases that they thought supported their misunderstanding of what NBC means. I've pointed out that these cases do NOT support their misinterpretation beyond the acceptance of a face value claim. The actions of the court belie the claim of natural-born citizenship.

BTW, a syllabus to a SCOTUS case is NOT part of the court's opinion and is never cited as authority.

This would mean something had I not cited several paragraphs directly from the decision. I noticed you've failed to address any one of those citation, and have resorted to fallacies and ad hominem nonsense. You make this too easy for me. Thanks for conceding the point.

256 posted on 10/10/2011 9:59:41 PM PDT by edge919
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