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."
These ARE Gray's words, not mine. If you have a problem with his holding that the 14th amendment doesn't say who NBCs are, you need to take it out on his descendants.
As for the Minor decsion, the court said it is not necessary to solve doubts about CITIZENSHIP of people who are not born to citizen parents. If they were born to citizen parents, then they are NBCs and there would be no doubts. Thanks once more for helping to prove this point.
As to an American Law Review entry on Minor, it neither disproves nor supercedes that Justice Gray cited and affirmed the Minor definition of NBC in the WKA decision. Gray's words are self-explanatory:
That neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices 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 is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench, in which Chief Justice Waite said: "Allegiance and protection are, in this connection" (that is, in relation to citizenship),
reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other: allegiance for protection, and protection for allegiance. . . . 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 [p680] 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, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.
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."
Then you stop. Why don't you go to "elsewhere: and see WHERE elsewhere is. And at ELSEWHERE, what the judges find. Then see what they say about what they find, and how it related to the case and the issue. But you don't. You just skip down 50 pages, find a sentence with some language you like and take it out of context to support your theory.
That is why YOUR theory does not seem to be shared by anybody but a few other Vattle Birthers and why the wonderful case you think decides what NBC is, gets less than 2 lines in the book from 1876, under women not having a right to vote. It is why Jerome Corsi didn't say a word about the two citizen parent stuff in his 2008 book,Obama Nation. Because the whole theory was made up AFTER that date. It is recycled losing cases from 1844 and 1898. so, that is why the case that this whole thread is about, the immigration case posted by YOU, has federal judges calling the kids of illegal aliens "natural born citizens." Not to mention a whole lot of other problems.
Sooo, maybe you don't think people notice these holes in your theory, but I bet a lot do. If you are the guy who is eating your own brains, then stop now, and quit being a Vattle Birther.