The Minor v Happersett decision said, in part: “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. 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.”
Both sides in the Obama eligibility debate have used this citation. Pro-Obama uses the first part and anti-Obama uses the later sentences.
Thank you.
I had always glossed over the main part of the text and just mentally filed it under its last sentence.
We use the whole thing, and I just explicitly used the first part in my previous message. Once again, by noting the definition of "natural born citizen" is not the 14th amendment definition of "citizen", the court informs us that clearly the one is not the same thing as the other.