Also, the text in Minor v. Happersett that states “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. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words ‘all children’ are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as ‘all persons,’ and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea”
is also dictum and as such has no real weight behind it.
It had plenty of weight behind it. The definition of NBC was given to satisfy what the term means within the Constutition in Art II Sec I, and it was given in rejecting Virginia Minor’s argument of being a citizen by virtue of the 14th amendment. It was then quoted and affirmed more than 20 years later in Wong Kim Ark, where Justice Gray noted that the Minor decision unanimously excluded children born in the country of citizens from the citizen clause of the 14th amendment. Virginia Minor was declared in Gray’s citation as a citizen by virtue of BOTH jus soli and jus sanguinis criteria. It was strong enough that Gray could NOT declare Wong Kim Ark to be a natural born citizen and instead had to find other means in which to say that Ark had become a citizen at birth. IOW, Ark was the type of citizen for which there was doubt. For NBCS, as Minor states, there was NEVER doubt.