Posted on 10/25/2011 11:49:30 PM PDT by Danae
Minor's definition was given specifically to satisfy the meaning of the term as found in Art II Sec I, and that same definition was legally respected by the Supreme Court more than 20 years later. The court said neither the 14th amendment NOR the Constitution itself says who shall be natural-born citizens and it cites the Minor decision in defining the term as being born in the country to citizen parents. There was no way it could apply the term to Wong Kim Ark, and it avoided doing so despite the lower court citing a case of a similar person born of Chinese parents claiming to be a natural-born citizen. IOW, if the Supreme Court accepted that lesser standards could be used to declare natural-born citizenship as in that lower court ruling, they would have done so. That the court instead respected the Minor definition is an example of following a legal precedent, meaning that it WAS decisively ruled on in Minor.
Further, what makes Minor decisive is that it relied on this definition of citizenship to categorically reject 14th amendment citizenship for women as a class. Thus, the only people who need the 14th amendment to define their citizenship are those persons whose citizenship does not fit the definition of natural-born citizen. The syllabus for the Minor decision notes that this is true as much SINCE the adoption of the 14th amendment as was before.
The other thing that makes this compelling is the fact that Congress has made several attempts to redefine NBC and/or to change the NBC requirement for president. There would be no need to do this if the 14th amendment in any way redefined NBC. It not only gave a looser standard for citizenship at birth, but it Constitutionally equated citizenship through naturalization with birth citizenship. Minor and WKA are the stumbling blocks that make it necessary to amend the constutition or legally change the definition of NBC.
Sort of casts doubt on the whole mess really.
1) Apparently you have no sense of humour
2) Calling someone a chump really casts doubts on your objectivity. Why would you call him a chump?
The reference was a side discussion (dictum) because NBC was not an issue before the court; the court was not asked to rule on NBC, nor was its confirmation of NBC an essential part of, or pertinent to, its findings.
Rather the USSC was asked whether the Constitution or the 14thA bestowed on female citizen Virginia Minor the right to vote; the court found against her by reference to those two instruments. I.e., the court did not "hold" or "rule" on the elements of NBC.
Although the decision has enormous persuasive value regarding NBC, the fact later courts referred to Minor’s confirmation of the obvious does not convert Minor to a “ruling”.
I don't mind that you want to disagree, but you haven't given an accurate basis for disagreeing. The NBC definition was NOT a side issue. The court framed the petitioner's arugment as basing her voting rights on being a 14th amendment citizen. That argument was rejected on the basis of natural-born citizenship.
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.
In the underlined part above, V. Minor's citizenship is claimed on the basis of the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment. The court spent the next several paragraphs saying that women didn't need this amendment to be citizens, that they were already citizens and that all citizens before and after the 14th amendment did NOT have an inherent right to suffrage per the privileges and immunities of their citizenship. The court defined NBC to justify their rejection of the argument that was presented.
The Court in WKA recognized that V. Minor's citizenship was part of the finding ... and that her citizenship was due to being born in the country to citizen parents. That's NOT a side issue.
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.
WKA says she was a citizen of the states by being born of citizen parents within the United States. This DOES hold on the elements of NBC as you say.
You may be correct, so let’s test your principal assertion.
You have consistently argued that defining the NBC term was key to dismissing the 14thA.
1. If one removes section 2 of the syllabus - the only section that refers to born of parent citizens - does it damage the rationale or make the decision nonsensical? Of course not, NBC was not essential to the courts finding, citizenship was.
2. Reinsert 2. and ask: Would the type of citizenship held by Minor have made a difference to the court for dismissing applicability of the 14thA in her instance? Of course not, 2. merely states “citizen” and not NBC.
As a practical matter, the court was concerned with the provisions of the Constitution and the 14thA. It was sufficient that petitioner be even an ordinary citizen in order to start that inquiry.
I am not an expert on how the SCOTUS works but if a case is to be heard would it be because the law is not clear in the case before it. In other words if NBC is settled law, ie Minor v Happersett, then would not the court just refuse to hear it? (As it has) Do they need to tell us “Hey look at Minor for your answer....?”
Gee if you remove the parts that are inconvenient, then you can justify almost anything. It IS part of the syllabus, so why would it have to be removed?? Section 1 of the syllabus is also about citizenship, and citizenship IS included in the other four parts. The question revolves around whether the 14th amendment created a suffrage right related to the type of citizenship it created. In order to say that it did not do so, the court had to explain that there was no suffrage privilege for all citizens PRIOR to the 14th amendment, thus it had to explain how citizenship was determined as part of that rationale.
By defining NBC and rejecting the citizen clause of the 14th amendment for citizens, that definition is still necessary for the holding. It's why Gray included it in his summary of Minor. Keep in mind that nowhere in the Minoor decision does the court specifically say that Minor was born to citizen parents. Gray still read that decision and recognized that she had to have been born to citizen parents and thus included that element as part of the citation. It directly related to the point he was making that NBCs were excluded from the citizen clause in addition to exceptions to the subject clause that were identified in Slaughterhouse and within common law.
They DID tell us to look for Minor for an answer to how NBC is defined. That definition meant they needed to look at other criteria to determine whether or not WKA could be declared to be a citizen. Here's the question that Justice Gray said was before the court:
The question presented by the record is whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution,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.
In Minor the argument about being a citizen by virtue of the first clause of the 14th amendment was rejected because Minor fit the NBC definition. In the latter case, WKA does NOT fit the NBC definition, so it is left open that WKA can be declared a citizen under the 14th amendment, providing the birth and subject clause could be satisfied despite a Treaty that would suggest he could not be a citizen of the United States. Minor gave AN answer, but it did not give THE answer ... which was ultimately based on separate and distinctly different criteria.
granted I’m a dumb guy in these matters, but would not the stuff they messed with on justia also be published in hardback form like “Decisions of the Supreme Court” and be found in some public or law libraries? I also apologize if this has already been covered, I’m flying thru threads right now.
I hope it’s found this monster committed a
serious crime .. and is given his full measure of
justice deserved.
Danae, do you know the charge, if he were charged?
Is it a crime to tamper with Wayback Machine info
on your own site or is the crime the adulteration
of the publicly accessible judicial case law ?
He and that chick from the Chicago Law firm who has been preparing a defense against NBC claims need to be.....
You are among friends on this issue, but that ridiculous and non-responsive statement and its tone suggests you are overinvested in your position.
One thing we do agree on, if the current eligibility issue gets before the USSC (and it probably will will not absent impeachment proceedings) the court will likely cite Minor with favor.
yep.
The charge would be under: “False Writings Statute”, 18 U.S.C. 1018 http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/47/1018 its no joke. A year per count and a fine.
I don’t know that Wayback Machine has been tampered with. A company can ask to be excluded from the archive, and a company can itself place .txt robots on a given URL which will prevent Wayback from rendering the url information and snapshot record.
Most people just did a google search and hit the first free sites they could find. Findlaw isn't all that great, its not as easy to search.l Justia was and is easier to use. Because of it's ease of use, and its consistent high return results on Google, you got a lot of people citing cases or researching cases trying to find what was important and what wasn't. Well if Minor v Happersett wasn't on Justia’s site then search engines weren't going to find them so easily either.
This left the impression on a great many home PC researchers that the case wasn't that important. And coupled with flipping the Birth Certificate in front of people like a bullfighter's cape, this coverup was successful in minimizing the importance of Minor. Barry skated by with out being confronted by Minor v Happersett, and McCain wasn't going to bring it up either, given he had the same problem. So we got screwed. Justia isn't solely responsible for it, but for DAMN sure they played a role.
Ok, you explain the scrubbed cases citing Minor.
Let us know what you come up with.
.txt robots which essentially bounce the server requests back.
“it would not be accurate to say that the issue was decisively ruled on in Minor (particularly since the discussion was dicta, and because the discussion does not even purport to address the then-uncommon circumstance of people being born to one U.S. citizen parent and one non-U.S. citizen parent). “
This is incorrect, the phrases you quote are from the HOLDING. Second, The phrase which states: “For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.” can be stated: For the purposes of Wong Kim Ark it is not necessary to solve these doubts. That sentance was refering to deciding whether WKA was a Natural Born citizen or not, which was NOT the point of the case. The point was to establisn that WKA was a CITIZEN, so the court offered no HOLDING on that issue in THAT case.
Stop deliberately confusing people.
Which chick is that? which lawfirm?
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