Nothing in your post contradicts what I said nor does it prove that the court in Minor v. Happersett ever made a ruling on the supposed NBC clause in the Constitution. The court rejected her 14th Amendment argument only because they interpreted that her citizenship was not in question. The court in Ark did the very same. The court in Minor v. Happersett did however ignore the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th, wrongly IMO, and the 19th Amendment made the whole ruling moot when women were deemed to have equal protection under the 14th and were granted the right to vote.
The court deliberately used the NBC clause from Article II to reject Minor's 14th amendment argument.
The NBC clause in Article II does not state anything about the citizenship of the parents. It simply states:
“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.”
This clause was necessary at the time of ratification so as to allow all citizens, even those who were not born on US soil but even to those who became citizens before ratification the very same citizenship status and granted them all eligibility to hold the office of POTUS.
If the Framers had in mind and intended that a natural born citizen meant something other than having been born in the US, intended that there was some sort of “third” type of citizenship of those born here and predicated on the citizenship status of their parents, they would have clearly stated so.
Call me a Constitutional “purest” but I believe the Constitution says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t.
Furthermore, the 14th states 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.”
Note that the 14th defines citizenship in only one of two ways; born or naturalized in the United States. It does not say those born in the United States to non-citizen parents, excepting those born to foreign diplomats have to undergo some other sort of “naturalization” process or meet any other test of their citizenship.
If this were true, the citizenship part of the decision wouldn't have continued for the next six paragraphs. Second, they could have accepted her 14th amendment argument in which her citizenship also would not have been in question, yet they did NOT do this. Why not simply accept her argument??
The NBC clause in Article II does not state anything about the citizenship of the parents. It simply states:
Ummmm, the court explained what the term NBC meant according to the nomenclature of the founders. If the 14th amendment defined or redefined natural-born citizenship, then the court didn't need to go outside of the Constitution to define NBC, yet they clearly did:
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. 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.This clause was necessary at the time of ratification so as to allow all citizens, even those who were not born on US soil but even to those who became citizens before ratification the very same citizenship status and granted them all eligibility to hold the office of POTUS.
The Framers had just signed a treaty in 1783 with Great Britain that preserved British subject status for those persons born in the U.S. whose parents were loyal to the crown instead of becoming U.S. citizens. That's part of the reason for the "time of the adoption of this Constitution" clause. Not everyone who was in the U.S. automatically became citizens when the Constitution was adopted. This is confirmed in the Shanks v. Dupont and Inglis v. Sailors Snug Harbor rulings. Justice Story explains the concept nicely below. In the part underlined about "natives or otherwise"; natives would refer to those persons born in the U.S.
The Treaty of 1783 acted upon the state of things as it existed at that period. It took the actual state of things as its basis. All those, whether natives or otherwise, who then adhered to the American states were virtually absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; all those who then adhered to the British Crown were deemed and held subjects of that Crown. The treaty of peace was a eaty operating between states and the inhabitants thereof.
The next paragraph in this decision is instructive because it tells us where the court looks to for the citizenship status of those persons who are in question. It's not to the common law or to municipal law:
The incapacities of femes covert provided by the common law apply to their civil rights, and are for their protection and interest. But they do not reach their political rights nor prevent their acquiring or losing a national character. These political rights do not stand upon the mere doctrines of municipal law, applicable to ordinary transactions, but stand upon the more general principles of the law of nations.
See the last part where it refences the law of nations. This is where the Minor court got its definition of natural-born citizen. What you call a third type of citizenship is simply a class of naturalization. The Minor court told us specifically there are TWO classes of citizenship at birth. One is with doubts and the other, NBC, has no doubts.
As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first [class].Furthermore, the 14th states 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.”
The problem is that the Supreme Court decided unanimously in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark that the 14th amendment does not include NBCs, based on upholding the Minor decision:
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."
If the 14th amendment included NBCs, the Minor court AND the Ark court had a perfect opportunity to say so. Instead, they made a distinction between the classes of birth citizenship, one that was defined outside the Constitution and the other defined by the Constitution in the 14th amendment.
Note that the 14th defines citizenship in only one of two ways; born or naturalized in the United States. It does not say those born in the United States to non-citizen parents, excepting those born to foreign diplomats have to undergo some other sort of “naturalization” process or meet any other test of their citizenship.
Actually it does; that's what the subject clause is there for, and the court defined this in Wong Kim Ark as the parents having permanent residence and domicil in the United States. This was a stated factor of Wong Kim Ark's parents throughout the decision:
The question presented by the record is whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, ...
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for determination the single question stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States ...
Elsewhere in the decision, it talked about aliens being domiciled in order to satisfy British common law and later, the subject clause:
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 ...
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Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children, even of aliens, born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth.
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The same rule must be applied to both races, and unless the general rule, that, when the parents are domiciled here, birth establishes the right to citizenship, is accepted, the Fourteenth Amendment has failed to accomplish its purpose ...
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Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.
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Chinese persons, born out of the United States, remaining subjects of the Emperor of China, and not having become citizens of the United States, are entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here, and are " subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the same sense as all other aliens residing in the United States.
There's a a very specific emphasis on residence, which would on its face exclude temprorary visitors. In order to have residence, an alien must be accepted into a country for an indefinite stay. Obama's father was not a permanent resident in any sense of the word, and going by the Supreme Court's principle on femes covert, neither was Obama's mother. He fails not only to be a natural-born citizen, but also 14th amendment citizen ... but of course, he's never legally proven he was even born in the United States to begin with, so it would all be moot anyway.