The general rule that the applies to constitutional issues is that an Amendment only changes those aspects which are directly addressed by the amendment. Nothing gets changed by accident or inadvertently.
For Example, the 14th amendment granted citizenship to Slaves and the Children of Slaves who were born within the jurisdiction of the United States. It cannot be regarded as having overturned the "natural born citizen" requirement of Article II, because the Amendment did not specifically address that aspect of constitutional law.
Does that not conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment?
Did women being denied the vote conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment? We don't even have to wonder about this, because the Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Minor V Happersett that it did not. (Unanimous decision.)
Denying women the right to vote was *NOT* a conflict with the 14th amendment. Therefore it would seem reasonable to conclude that denying them the ability to pass on citizenship was also *NOT* a conflict with the 14th's equal protection clause.
RE:
1) The general rule that the applies to constitutional issues is that an Amendment only changes those aspects which are directly addressed by the amendment. Nothing gets changed by accident or inadvertently.
2) Did women being denied the vote conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment? We don’t even have to wonder about this, because the Supreme Court explicitly ruled in Minor V Happersett that it did not.
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I have a problem with that and so will many decent Americans of both liberal and conservative leanings.
If this is the case, then it binds us into agreeing that the Dredd Scott decision was in keeping with the original intent of the framers and entirely compatible with the declaration of independence’s statement saying “All Men are created equal”.
Although Chief Justice Taney hoped that his ruling on Dredd Scott would finally settle the slavery question, the decision immediately spurred vehement dissent from anti-slavery elements in the North, especially Republicans.
Many contemporary lawyers, and most modern legal scholars, consider the ruling regarding slavery in the territories to be dictum, not binding precedent.
I also have the same objection to Minor V Happersett.
The Nineteenth Amendment, which became a part of the Constitution in 1920, effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett by prohibiting discrimination in voting rights based on gender. But it cannot be said that prior to the 19th amendment, the SCOTUS decision on Minor v Happersett was the right decision.
If we gave the SCOTUS the final say on everything, then we might as well accept and be resigned to Anthony Kennedy’s decision on gay marriage or Blackmunn’s decision on abortion rights.
With these in mind, it can be argued that the key to this is the concept of “allegiance”-whether the individual has been born with allegiance to the king, or not.
Individuals born with allegiance to the sovereign are “natural-born” subjects; those lacking such allegiance are not. It is not a question merely of being born within the geographic confines of the country. James Madison known as the father of the Constitution,” stated, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.” ..
However I don’t think he is not suggesting that it is the only criterion, as he states unequivocally that the that the “established maxim” is that the ultimate criterion is “allegiance,” of which the place of birth is but one (albeit “certain”) criterion. “established maxim” is that the ultimate criterion is “allegiance,” of which the place of birth is but one (albeit “certain”) criterion.
The framers, more than anything else, were concerned with a person’s “allegiance”. They do not want a person with dual allegiance to the King/Queen of England and the United States of America.
Article I, section eight gives Congress the authority to “establish a uniform rule of Naturalization,” and thus identify, by statute, those who must to go through a naturalization process to obtain U.S. citizenship.
Those citizens who do not need to go through the naturalization process are “natural born” citizens. As former Solicitors General Neil Katyal and Paul Clement have recently noted in the Harvard Law Review Forum,
See here:
http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/
All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States. . . .
The Supreme Court has long recognized that two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms are British common law and enactments of the First Congress. Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.
i eagerly welcome a Supreme Court challenge to take on the Ted Cruz case. The available evidence suggests that if/when the Court ultimately must grapple with it, the evidence points strongly in Cruz’s favor.