[sometime lurker]

You say you can read, so why do you ignore that Waite specifically says...

You underlined the wrong part -

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 case was about whether Virgina Minor could vote, or the state could restrict voting to male citizens.

Gray quoted Justice Marshall in this instance to explain why the exceptions in the Slaughterhouse Cases were not to be presumed to be the ONLY exceptions to the 14th amendment.

Better go back and read it again - Gray quoted Marshall in reference to Miller's statement

"The phrase, 'subject to its jurisdiction' was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States."

Gray then proceeds to call this statement

" wholly aside from the question in judgment and from the course of reasoning bearing upon that question. It was unsupported by any argument, or by any reference to authorities, and that it was not formulated with the same care and exactness as if the case before the court had called for ..."

Then comes your claim based on a butchered quote, where the real quote says the opposite - the Justices did not understand the court to be committed to the view that either children born in the US of citizens or of foreign subjects were excluded from the 14th amendment.

When he gave a full quote from the Minor decision, it was for the definition of natural-born citizenship. Do you disagree that he did this???

Sure do, and the WKA decision, as well as Rogers v Bellei disagree with you as well. Justice Gray quoted several cases and authorities, many of which directly or indirectly specified children of foreigners born in the US as natural born citizens. Some examples

• Early on "The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law." [common law = jus soli]
• Gray cites Smith v. Alabama "There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history."
• United States v. Rhodes (1866) "All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . . We find no warrant for the opinion that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution."
• Garder v. Ward (1805), 2 Mass. 244, note. And again:"The doctrine of the common law is that every man born within its jurisdiction is a subject of the sovereign of the country where he is born, and allegiance is not personal to the sovereign in the extent that has been contended for; it is due to him in his political capacity of sovereign of the territory where the person owing the allegiance as born."
• The Supreme Court of North Carolina, speaking by Mr; Justice Gaston "The term 'citizen,' as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term 'subject' in the common law,"
• In 1871, Mr. Fish, writing to Mr. Marsh, the American Minister to Italy, said: "The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution declares that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' This is simply an affirmance of the common law of England and of this country so far as it asserts the status of citizenship to be fixed by the place of nativity, irrespective of parentage.

So I'll see your quote from Minor v. Happersett which explicitly said the case would not resolve the doubts, and raise you several cases or authorities quoted by Gray which affirm that the US follows English common law in this matter. (I've omitted all the English court cases Gray quotes, but there are several, all to the same effect - born in the country [exception for children of diplomats, ministers, occupying forces] makes a natural born subject.)

[edge919]

You're embarrassing yourself. In regard to Minor, no one argues that it wasn't about voting rights, but as I showed you, Virginia Minor's citizenship was framed as part of the argument. Instead of answering why you keep ignoring this fact, you just ignored it again and underlined a different part of the argument. That doesn't address to whole first half of the sentence.

Better go back and read it again - Gray quoted Marshall in reference to Miller's statement

... from the Slaugtherhouse Cases as I already said. Miller wrote the decision for that decision. I didn't realize you needed that spelled out for you because it was already understood since I was refering Slaughterhouse. You really need to pay attention. And I said it was about the exceptions in that case, which you promptly cited. You're making my argument for me.

Gray then proceeds to call this statement " wholly aside from the question in judgment and from the course of reasoning bearing upon that question. It was unsupported by any argument, or by any reference to authorities, and that it was not formulated with the same care and exactness as if the case before the court had called for ..."

Right. Again, you're making my argument for me. This is why Gray pointed out the Minor and Elk decisions. The exceptions or exclusions that were listed in Slaughterhouse were not comprehensive. What you're missing or intentionally left out is that the only part of the exceptions that Gray actually took exception to was that consuls were not the same as "foreign ministers." He accepted the other exceptions and added the exclusions from Minor (NBCs) and from Elk (Indians - subjects of foreign States); except that the latter, he argued, were "alien nations" and not "foreign states" (note that he quotes no authority for this declaration. Rather ironic after he criticized Miller for the same thing).

Then comes your claim based on a butchered quote, where the real quote says the opposite - the Justices did not understand the court to be committed to the view that either children born in the US of citizens or of foreign subjects were excluded from the 14th amendment.

My claim is NOT based on a butchered quote. The only thing that is "butchered" is YOUR understanding of what this quote actually says. This quote still says the Court was committed to the view that chidren born in the US of citizens or foreign subjects were excluded from the 14th amendment. That Miller did NOT understand two years ealier does NOT change the facts that he and the rest of the Slaugherhouse judges voted unanimously to exclude citizens from the birth clause of the 14th amendment. It's time for you to quit ignoring the facts.

Justice Gray quoted several cases and authorities, many of which directly or indirectly specified children of foreigners born in the US as natural born citizens.

Sorry, but this is factually untrue. Out of all your bullet points, only one specifically mentions the term natural-born citizens, but in that quote, it does NOT say anything about the children of foreigners. It's talking about the children of the inhabitants of the U.S. at the time of the founding of this country. It noted that persons born on U.S. soil could be either natural-born citizens (if born to parents who adhered to the U.S.) OR natural-born subjects (if the parents adhered to the crown. Under this citation, it makes Obama a natural-born subject of Great Britain/Kenya.

So I'll see your quote from Minor v. Happersett which explicitly said the case would not resolve the doubts, and raise you several cases or authorities quoted by Gray which affirm that the US follows English common law in this matter.

Sorry, but Gray affirmed the quote and definition of NBC from Minor. He only used English common law as a justification for the 14th amendment ... AND he specifically noted that the 14th amendment does NOT say who natural-born citizens are ... specifically by citing Minor. Read it. Learn it. Understand 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."

Do you understand?? When construing the 14th amendment (the Constitution) Gray acknolwedges that Justice Waite said the Constituion does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens. Gray says Waite used common law as an aid, but the definition of NBC used by Waite is NOT from English common law.

... 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.

By affirming that Virginia Minor was a citizen by virtue of being born in the country to citizen parents, Gray upheld the Minor decision and its NBC definition. Notice that he did NOT ever call Wong Kim Ark a natural-born citizen. He couldn't because he wasn't.