Not every judge is Horace Gray, giving prattling, irrelevant tours of Western Civ trying to create openings to negate his own prior decisions, Mr. Rogers.
Horace appears to have been trying to legitimize Chester ... for appointing him to the unSCOTUS? Sure looks that way.
Her citizenship was a well established legal fact. Her contentions were that A) the 14th made her a citizen, and B) it gave her the exact legal rights of all other citizens.
Contention A was laughed at, since there was no legal basis for it anywhere in our history. Contention B was rejected as well. Since A was so totally insane, Minor is considered a voting rights case, establishing that not all citizens have a right to vote.
The court made no attempt to explore the limits of NBC citizenship, and expressly stated so. Had there been any possible legal question, they would have needed to do so - but they did not. Minor specifically did NOT rule on the meaning of NBC, and it said so in the decision.
No. Virginia Minor’s petition to the SCOTUS (actually her husband’s petition because as a woman, she could not petition the SCOTUS herself) was based on the Constitution AND the 14th Amendment, specifically the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th that states: “Section 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The 14 Amendment, as RegulatorCountry correctly states, did not make Minor a citizen as she already was a citizen before the 14th Amendment – something the SCOTUS affirmed to be true. However Minor’s claim was not actually that she was made was a citizen by 14th Amendment but that the 14th Amendment’s Privileges and Immunities Clause made the State of Missouri’s denial of voting rights to her, a violation of both the Constitution AND the 14th Amendment.
The opinion (written by Chief Justice Morrison Waite) first asked whether Minor was a citizen of the United States, and answered that she was, citing both the Fourteenth Amendment and earlier common law. Exploring the common-law origins of citizenship, the court observed that "new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization" and that the Constitution "does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens." Under the common law, according to the court, "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." The court observed that some authorities "include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents"—*but since Minor was born in the United States and her parents were U.S. citizens, she was unquestionably a citizen herself, even under the narrowest possible definition, and the court thus noted that the subject did not need to be explored in any greater depth.
“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.
That is why any discussion in the ruling pertaining to Natural Born vs. any other definition of citizenship; either by statute or common law, by naturalization, via parentage, was a Dicta *, **, (1) in this case as the SCOTUS found that such further explorations were irrelevant to Minor’s case as her citizenship was ruled, even under the most narrow of definitions, not in question. Thus the actual question in Minor v. Happersett was whether the Constitution as amended by the 14th, Section 1 in particular, granted her as a citizen, suffrage and whether the Missouri State Supreme Court was correct in upholding the Missouri State Constitution clause that stated that only men could vote and whether this was in violation of the U.S. Constitution as amended by the 14th – Something the ruling found (on some rather specious grounds IMO) did not.
(1) dictum - n. Latin for "remark," a comment by a judge in a decision or ruling which is not required to reach the decision, but may state a related legal principle as the judge understands it. While it may be cited in legal argument, it does not have the full force of a precedent (previous court decisions or interpretations) since the comment was not part of the legal basis for judgment. The standard counter argument is: "it is only dictum (or dicta)." - See also: dicta obiter dicta”
The court then asked whether the right to vote was one of the "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption in 1868. Citing a variety of historical sources, it found that it was not. The court reasoned that the Constitution of the United States did not explicitly give citizens an affirmative right to vote and that, throughout the history of the nation from the adoption of the Constitution, a wide variety of persons—including women—were recognized as citizens but denied the right to vote. For example, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, none of the original Thirteen Colonies gave all citizens the right to vote, all attaching restrictions based on factors such as sex, race, age, and ownership of land. The opinion continues that "it cannot for a moment be doubted that if it had been intended to make all citizens of the United States voters, the framers of the Constitution would not have left it to implication. So important a change in the condition of citizenship as it actually existed, if intended, would have been expressly declared”.
” The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her. That she had before its adoption.”
”If the right of suffrage is one of the necessary privileges of a citizen of the United States, then the constitution and laws of Missouri confining it to men are in violation of the Constitution of the United States, as amended, and consequently void. The direct question is, therefore, presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters. ”
The Court then went on to say:
”The amendment did not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen. It simply furnished an additional guaranty for the protection of such as he already had. No new voters were necessarily made by it. Indirectly it may have had that effect, because it may have increased the number of citizens entitled to suffrage under the constitution and laws of the States, but it operates for this purpose, if at all, through the States and the State laws, and not directly upon the citizen. ”
”It is clear, therefore, we think, that the Constitution has not added the right of suffrage to the privileges and immunities of citizenship as they existed at the time it was adopted. This makes it proper to inquire whether suffrage was coextensive with the citizenship of the States at the time of its adoption. If it was, then it may with force be argued that suffrage was one of the rights which belonged to citizenship, and in the enjoyment of which every citizen must be protected. But if it was not, the contrary may with propriety be assumed. ”
The Court then went on to point out all the various State voting laws, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and since; some that placed State residency requirements on “freemen” or imposed taxpaying or land owning requirements on them, none of which BTW, granted suffrage to women (NJ once did grant suffrage to women but that was later withdrawn in 1807).
The Court also pointed out that one didn’t even necessarily need to be a citizen in order to vote in some States:
” Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be found in the constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.”
So contrary to many of the “birther’s claims, the SCOTUS in Minor v. Happersett did not rule on what constituted a “Natural Born Citizen” either under the Constitution or as amended by the 14th. The ruling however found that neither the Constitution nor the 14th Amendment granted women the constitutionally enumerated and protected right to vote that could not be abridged or denied via State law.
Oh, and BTW, a little thing called the 19th Amendment overruled Minor v. Happersett anyway, so the whole argument is moot.
And ironically if Virginia Minor had in Minor v. Happersett, asked the Court if she was eligible to run for POTUS, they most likely would have ruled that she was, but that under the Court’s interpretation at the time, she would not have been entitled to vote for herself or for anyone else. If the 19th Amendment had never been passed, the same would apply to Sarah Palin.