Replies

This is how come you will not ever “get it.” You are reading the words but you have no idea what they are talking about. You are NOT able to learn what they are talking about because you have a pre-conceived idea that is based on who knows what, but not what the judges say.

That whole discussion you are pulling stuff from is about whether the 14th Amendment is just about slaves, or is also about children of citizen parents and children of foreigners who are born here.

“neither . . .who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment. :

If they are NOT excluded, then they are in. Plus, the judges here are not saying their own words, but quoting Minor, which did not deal with kids of foreigners. Up above the Wong Kim Wong judges, USING JUST THEIR OWN WORDS, said:

“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.

PLUS, and here is something I just found, that I have NOT seen any people talking about is that the Supreme Court came right out and said that citizenship is NOT based on parentage for people born INSIDE the United States:

“Here is nothing to countenance the theory that a general rule of citizenship by blood or descent has displaced in this country the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within its sovereignty.

So far as we are informed, there is no authority, legislative, executive or judicial, in England or America, which maintains or intimates that the statutes (whether considered as declaratory or as merely prospective) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion. Even those authorities in this country, which have gone the farthest towards holding such statutes to be but declaratory of the common law have distinctly recognized and emphatically asserted the citizenship of native-born children of foreign parents. 2 Kent Com. 39, 50, 53, 258 note; Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sandf.Ch. 583, 659; Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356, 371.

Passing by questions once earnestly controverted, but finally put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, it is beyond doubt that, before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the adoption of the Constitutional [p675] Amendment, all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.

Sooo, quit giving people bad legal advice about this stuff, and how people like Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal can’t run for president. I have been learning a whole lot of stuff in the last few weeks just by reading these cases, and if you put aside your pre-conceived stupid idea that the 14th Amendment is different from the natural born stuff in the big Constitution, maybe you could learn stuff, too.

Sorry, but this only applies to your own mindset. I've given a multitude of direct citations. You've done nothing to show how anything I've posted is wrong or incorrectly summarized.

That whole discussion you are pulling stuff from is about whether the 14th Amendment is just about slaves, or is also about children of citizen parents and children of foreigners who are born here.

The quote says very clearly that the court was committed to the view of excluding children of citizen parents and children of foreign subjects. This makes sense in context because it cites Minor for the former and Elk for the latter. That's exactly what both decisions said.

If they are NOT excluded, then they are in.

They ARE excluded. this doesn't say anyone is NOT excluded. It only says that Miller didn't understand this commitment at the time the Slaughterhouse Cases were written.

Up above the Wong Kim Wong judges, USING JUST THEIR OWN WORDS, said:

Wong kim WONG????? Sorry, but two Wongs don't make you right. Not even close. The common law argument is what ydoucare refers to as obiter dicta. Gray was resorting to common law to try to give more teeth to the 14th amendment. There had already been three cases that rejected how far it extended: Slaughterhouse, Minor and Elk. Under the principle of stare decisis, courts are expected not to overturn its own precedents unless there is a strong reason to do so, soooo Gray worked very deliberately to find a way to declare Wong Kim Ark to be a citizen without overturning the court's own precedents. He did that by applying a domicil and residence criteria to satisfy the subject clause of the 14th amendment. It's all there. Take the time to read it and educate yourself.

I have been learning a whole lot of stuff in the last few weeks just by reading these cases, and if you put aside your pre-conceived stupid idea that the 14th Amendment is different from the natural born stuff in the big Constitution, maybe you could learn stuff, too.

Sorry, but this isn't a preconceived idea. Originally, I thought Gray was equating native-born with natural-born, but the more I read the decision, I started to see how he deliberately made a distinction. Again, this was so he could respect earlier decisions and not overturn them. I'm not the one who made the distinction between natural-born and citizenship by birth via the 14th amendment. He did. Here are HIS words once again. Read it. Learn it. Comprehend it.

In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that."

Think about this for a minute. Gray says Waite construed the birth provision of the 14th amendment and said that the Constitution does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens. IOW, Gray is telling us specifically by citing this passage that the 14th amendment does NOT define natural-born citizenship.

Contrast this to the later part of the decision when Gray defines what he calls "citizenship by birth." Note that he does NOT have to look elsewhere for a defintition. The definition for this term is found specifically in the Constitution — via the 14th amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in the declaration that

all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,

contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law. But citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution.

This entire section is in direct refence to the 14th amendment. He says that IT contemplates two SOURCES of citizenship (note that it is not two TYPES, but two SOURCES). One source is naturalization, which is NOT defined in the 14th amendment, but defined by "under the authority and in the forms of law." This means naturalization is controlled by Congress. In contrast, what he calls "citizenship by birth" (note: he does NOT uses the terms "native-born citizen" nor "natural-born citizen") is defined, not by Congress, but by the 14th amendment itself: "under the circumstances defined in the Constitution." The ONLY circumstances that define any citizenship at birth in the Constitution are from the 14th amendment, which is dependent on the subject clause.

So there you have it. These are two distinct terms for citizenship and two distinct definitions. NBC is defined OUTSIDE the law and OUTSIDE the Constitution. Citizenship by birth is defined BY the Constitution through the 14th amendment.