I didn't say it was. But the only thing the court held with regard to natural-born citizens is that those born in the country of citizen parents are natural-born citizens. I've never heard a serious argument against that. But the court did not specifically hold that those born here to non-citizen partents AREN'T NBC. The only thing the court held is that, without doubt, as Virginia Minor was born in this country of citizen parents she was a citizen.
"B)You misunderstand what the court is saying when it says it is not necessary to solve these doubts. Its only talking about the doubts of whether the second class of persons are citizens or not.
On re-reading the case, I accept that the court in saying it was "not necessary to resolve these doubts" was referring to the second class of citizen. In this case, there is no doubt that Virginia Minor was a citizen under any possible definition of the term. That question, and the further question as to whether citizens, by being citizens, acquired the right to vote, were the questions to which the court addressed itself. The court did not address itself to defining NBC except to say that a person born in the US to US parents was certainly a natural-born citizen. It did not state that others were excluded from that class.It did not say that others COULD BE included in that class. It was not a question before the court and, hence, not decided.
The definition doesn't make sense if others can be NBC. Virginia Minor claimed to be a citizen by virtue of the 14th amendment, but the Minor court UNANIMOUSLY rejected that argument by virtue of the natural-born citizen definition. If it could be used for those born to noncitizen parents, then the court could have simply accepted Minor's arugment. They didn't.
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.
There is no doubt that women may be citizens. They are persons, and by the fourteenth amendment "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are expressly declared to be "citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But, in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position.
Pay note to the last part. It did NOT need the 14th amendment to make women citizens. Why??
Before its adoption the Constitution of the United States did not in terms prescribe who should be citizens of the United States or of the several States, yet there were necessarily such citizens without such provision.
So, we have citizens WITHOUT the birth provision of the 14th amendment. The court goes on to say the original citizens were those who declared Independence from England and then ...
Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides [n6] that "no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President," [n7] and that Congress shall have power "to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.
In the next paragraph, the court recognizes TWO classes of citizens at birth: one with doubt and one without doubt. You've admitted this. So if only ONE of those classes is characterized as natural-born citizens, how does that leave open the possibility that "others" could be in this class?? What is the point in characterizing the one class if that characertization could be applied to other classes? Keep in mind, the characterization of natives or natural-born citizens is a self-limiting characterization (it's a one-or-the-other description):
These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.
There's no basis left for presuming anyone else can be natural-born citizens. The only thing close is in the Nationality Act where it says children of citizens born abroad shall be "considered as" natural-born citizens. Where the chacterization applies, the court applied it.
Note too this court said:
Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.
In other words, the court's deliberate use of the term NBC means this is how it decided what the law was, not what it could be or should be.
Anyone who has foreign citizenship is a foreigner, even if they're also US citizens. By definition, using the legal dictionaries of the period, and specifically using the ones ordered by Madison for use at the Constitutional Convention.
Also, the Minor decision states that those who are born in the US to US-citizens parents form a citizenship class that is distinct from any others that don't satisfy all of the following conditions:
The explicit statement that those membership predicates form a distinct citizenship class does logically exclude anyone who doesn't satisfy the predicates from the class. The fact that the court names this class—and only this class—as "natural born citizens" excludes all those who don't satisfy those same membership predicates from being "natural born citizens."
And it was absolutely legally necessary for the Court to demonstrate that Mrs. Minor was a citizen solely by natural law, and not by statute or by the 14th Amendment, in order for the reasoning they used to justify their principal holding regarding the right to vote to be valid. In order to do that, it was absolutely necessary to correctly ascertain and enumerate the membership predicates of the class (set) of natural born citizens.
Without all the correct membership predicates of any set, it is not only impossible to prove that any missing predicates don't identify set elements missed by the incomplete predicate set, it's also impossible to prove that the missing predicates don't exclude set elements not excluded by the incomplete predicates. That's why the Court had to be certain that it had each and every membership predicate, and no others.
A quick read of attorney Irion’s argument which appears incorporated in Hatfield’s post-hearing filing seems to me to contain a flaw. He states: However, this statement is immediately followed by the clarification that there have “never been doubts” as to the narrower class of “natural born Citizen[s]. On its face, the lack of doubts may be true, but the court’s classification may have applied to children and not forms of citizenship. In any event, we will not have to wait long to see what status the ALJ gives to Minor.
We may also agree on the view I prefer: that Minor has an important role in the debate because it asserts there can be no doubt regarding the intent of the framers and ratifiers when they used the term NBC and executed the document. That 1787 intent, if it can be ascertained of course, is what is most relevant, not subsequent theories, misapplications, redefinitions, or misunderstandings.
It is possible to imagine Minor could well have said, if indeed it did not actually convey, “It is unnecessary for the Constitution to say who shall be natural born citizens, because at common law there was never any doubt that all children…(etc.)” In such a reading, Minor does not define but affirms 1787 usage.
You may know there is evidence that George Washington, Commander in Chief of our nation’s forces during the Revolution corresponded with John Jay, then President of the Continental Congress, about the desirability of sending him officers that were American citizens. Jay, of course, established himself as one of the nation’s leading intellects and later argued strongly in the Federalist Papers against the danger of foreign influences in our new government. Jay’s 1787 letter to Washington, then the chair of the Constitutional Convention, emphasizing that the Command(er) in Chief be a natural born citizen was almost certainly in furtherance of their prior correspondence.
It is not clear whether very preliminary drafts of the new constitution addressed presidential qualifications, but a August 22 report from the Committee of Eleven recommended the president be a citizen (similar to senators and representatives, along with 35 yrs of age and 21 years residency). Within a matter of days there appeared on September 4 the term NBC applicable solely to the president. Typically there was discussion and comment on most issues but there was none on this point. Perhaps more telling, no concern was expressed about whether that important and unique qualification extracted the highest level of allegiance and loyalty
Would Jay, a prominent thinker and lawyer have used an ambiguous term to qualify the CinC in order to extract the highest level of allegiance and loyalty? That is unimaginable. What other term was available to convey those attributes by virtue of parental citizenship? There is none, the term speaks for itself.
It seems to me the burden of proof is on those who would propose a different definition of NBC. In that regard, I believe the only persuasive rebuttal would come from the record of those notables who attended the convention and those who signed the document.