Posted on 03/09/2013 8:04:06 AM PST by Cold Case Posse Supporter
You're meandering here. The vote is NOT a formal mechanism in terms of making a finding about a candidate's eligibility. The stuff about guilty verdicts is bizarre and irrelevant. Three questions will help prove why voting is not an eligiblity mechanism.
Is it possible for voters to vote for ineligible candidates?
Is it possible for electors to vote for ineligible canidates?
Is it possible for an ineligible candidate to get elected to an office?
The answer to any and all of these question is "yes." If there were a mechanism for voters/electors to make formal findings of eligibility, then the answers should be no to all three questions.
People in government write and say lots of things.
A preface, for "I don't have a real argument." People on discussion boards write and say lots of things too, but that's a not reason to discount statements that are supported by known legal precedents.
When you read a judicial opinion, it is important to read the end of the opinion where the court indicates what it has decided to actually do.
Sorry, but that's not the only part of a decision where a precedent is set. It certainly gives the action of the court, but the legal priniciples used for guidance can be in any part of a decision, or in some cases, expressed in the syllabus.
Assuming (as you do) that those two premises are correct, how do you account for the reality that in over four years, the Supreme Court has failed to find a means of correcting what must appear to you to be a monstrous and blatantly obvious constitutional crime?
Part of it is because several of the cases that have made it this far haven't properly cited Minor v. Happersett and Luria to show the court's historical precedent on the issue. Second, there's a known political divide within the court, and the issue has been effectively marginalized to the point where a lot of people are simply afraid to touch it.
How do you account for a Republican Chief Justice actually assisting in the commission of this monstrous and blatantly obvious constitutional crime by administering the oath of office (an act which is not required of a Chief Justice)?
A) It's not up to a Chief Justice to take invididual action against an elected candidate, and B) at the time Obama was first sworn in to office, the Supreme Court precedent was not cited properly, and C) there's still a formal protocol that should be followed to make sure the case is heard, and D) Roberts may simply have been blissfully ignorant, happy to perform a ceremonial function.
Do you think the time has come for you to consider the possibility that the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court might disagree with one or both of your premises? Is it perhaps time for you to reconsider those premises?
These questions are based on circular logic. The act of swearing in an ineligible candidate doesn't make the candidate eligible. The refusal of a court to hear a case doesn't make an ineligible candidate eligible. The Supreme Court citations I've given speak for themselves: all children born in the country to citizen parents ... these are the natural-born citizens. Obama was NOT born to citizen parents. We still don't know where he was born, but unless his father was a citizen, he is not and cannot be Constitutionally eligible for office. The failures of the courts to affirm and uphold their own historical precedent does NOT make Obama Constitutionally legitimate.
No, not exactly. Virginia Minor wasn’t making a claim that she was made a citizen based on the 14th Amendment as the 14th Amendment didn’t create any new citizens except to give the rights of citizenship to the former slaves who were born here, and not to force other changes in state laws, i.e. grant suffrage to women nor did the 14th Amendment say anything about who was a NBC under the Constitution, it only affirmed that “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”. Minor was not a former slave and was a citizen under the Constitution and prior to the 14th and the SCOTUS simply agreed with her that she was a citizen, that women could be recognized as citizens, that women always had been, but found in their ruling that citizenship alone did not grant all citizens the right to vote as defined by individual states, that individual states could define who among its citizens were allowed to vote, or even as the SCOTUS noted, that non-citizen (males) could vote in some States under certain circumstances including Missouri such as having only the “intent” to become citizens. Of course as I and other have stated, the 19th Amendment overturned the ruling in Minor v. Happersett.
Again for you “birthers“ and for those of you in Rio Linda, this was not a citizenship case but a voting rights case. Of course the Court had to first ascertain that Minor was a citizen but in doing so, they stated that any disagreements or “doubts” as to what constituted a “Natural Born Citizen” was not relevant to Minor’s claim of her denial of voting privileges under the 14th – “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.” As Minor was a child born of citizen parents, they had all they needed to ascertain that Minor was a citizen. The definition of citizenship of others or who was a NBC was not the question before the SCOTUS in Minor v. Happersett as it was merely sufficient to affirm that she was a citizen.
Again, you and others repeatedly misinterpret Minor v. Happersett as a ruling that defiantly defined who is a Natural Born Citizen. The Court didn’t. They deferred that question as irrelevant to this particular case as 1) Minor was a citizen even under the narrowest of definitions and so 2) whether she was a NBC or a naturalized citizen was not the question at hand in this case.
If Minor had become a legally “naturalized” citizen after the ratification of the Constitution, and either before or after the 14th amendment, she still would have legally been recognized as a “citizen”. The only impact of the 14th amendment on her citizenship status would have been if she had been a former slave and a male slave at that.
” 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. ”
It wouldn’t have mattered if she was a born citizen by whatever definition or even a naturalized citizen as the court case wasn’t about the State of Missouri denying her voting rights based on their claim that she wasn’t a citizen, but rather if the State of Missouri could, by its own State Constitution and legislation, define who among its legally defined or U.S Constitionally defined citizens was eligible to vote in Missouri. Her claim was that Missouri was in violation of Section 1 - Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment by denying her the right to vote being that she was a legally defined as citizen – whether she was a birth right citizen or a naturalized citizen or a citizen by subsequent statute or amendment was irrelevant not the question before the Court.
They were countering her argument, and natural-born citizen, in context, was used to exclusively characterize one class of birth citizens; those born to citizen parents. Doing this means they acknowledged at least TWO classes of citizens at birth. One were citizens with no doubt and they were exclusively characterized as natural-born. The other class had doubts, not about being natural-born citizens, but doubts about being citizens at all.
No. What the SCOTUS was saying was that there was no question that a person who was born in the U.S. of citizen parents were undoubtedly citizens and Natural Born Citizens. The “doubt” the court mentioned it the Dicta was whether a person, male or female born here regardless of the citizenship of their parents were “Natural Born Citizens”, not that they were not citizens at all. It was a Dicta as Minor was establishes as being a citizen and whether she was a NBC or not, was not relevant to the ruling.
But that shouldn't have mattered because there shouldn't be any doubts that Minor fit the court's 14th amendment definition of birth citizenship, unless the court was making a distinction. Almost all of the same members of the Minor court had ruled two years earlier about the only recognized exclusions to the subject clause of the 14th amendment. There wouldn't be any doubts for them about who could be citizens at birth, unless they were making a distinction that goes beyond the subject clause. And that's exactly what they were doing. V. Minro wasn't in any of the categories where there would be any doubts, so if they thought she was a 14th amendment citizen AND if they thought persons born in the country under the 14th amendment could be natural-born citizens, they could have immediately said so, WITH the list of exclusions per the subject clause. IOW, they had the ability to resolve those doubts, unless they were affirming that the doubts are outside of the subject clause.
Again, please read the 14th Amendment and show me where it defines who is or isn’t a Natural Born Citizen. You can’t because it isn’t there. It only states the following:
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.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
This isn't about what I have to consider dicta or not. The Supreme Court has already affirmed that the citizenship definition was part of the Minor court's holding in Wong Kim Ark and Luria.
“United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that virtually everyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.”
The question before the SCOTUS in United States v. Wong Kim Ark didn’t define who was eligible to be POTUS or who was a NBC, it simply and rightly ruled IMO and in the opinion of many Constitutional scholars, that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen by birth regardless of the citizenship of his parents. If Wong Kim Ark had decided to run for POTUS under a claim of being a NBC, that might have been an entirely different question or ruling before the SCOTUS as to what constitutes a Natural Born Citizen under the Constitution and as to the qualifification as to who is eligible to hold the office of POTUS, but he didn’t; he simply claimed that he was a U.S. citizen by birth under the 14th Amendment, and his claim was upheld by the SCOTUS in their ruling.
“There’s no reason to do this unless they’re making a point that there’s a difference between natural-born and 14th amendment citizenship at birth.”
There would only be a difference IF NBC required citizen parents, and Minor refused to explore that possibility. In WKA, the court took the issue up, and decided it did not.
Minor did not attempt to explore the meaning of NBC, since no one ever doubted that someone born in country to 2 citizen parents met the definition. The court went out of their way to say THAT issue wasn’t before them, and they didn’t need to settle it.
With WKA, they did. And in WKA, they determined that the 14th was a restatement of what had always been true of NBC - as Lynch had made clear, and many other cases. But then, WKA was a citizenship case, while Minor was a voting rights case. And with Minor, her method of citizenship was irrelevant. As a naturalized citizen, she still would not have a right to vote.
Well, this could be the root of our disagreement. I don't believe that there can be devised a system that will make it impossible for an ineligible candidate to occasionally get elected. Voters, electors and judges are all human beings with human limitations.
It is never possible to prove with certainty the qualifications of any candidate. Mistakes will always be possible. No judge or group of judges can protect you from uncertainty. In fact, one of the things of which you can be certain is that, no matter how we design our system, we are all destined to die without being certain of the qualifications of any of our presidents.
When it comes to a candidate's qualifications, some person or group of persons has to be empowered to decide. In the last 57 presidential elections, the voters and their electors have selected our president and implicitly approved their qualifications. I believe that our procedures conform with the terms of the Constitution.
I don't agree with your suggestion that we can avoid all possible mistakes by entrusting the Supreme Court to measure the qualifications of our presidential candidates. I don't think that the Constitution grants them that power and I don't think that the Supreme Court even wants that kind of power. I don't think any of our justices want to spend their time questioning whether a state's public records are false or fraudulent. I don't think that they want to spend their time trying to determine the real paternity of candidates. I don't think that any of them want to spend their time rummaging through utility bills and such in order to make sure that the residency requirement has been met. And, on and on and on and no one will be any more certain than before. And, no matter how they decide, particularly if they cannot unanimously decide, many will disagree.
After four years of very public "birther" investigations and legal research, Chief Justice Roberts accepted an invitation to administer the oath of office to Obama less than two months ago. As I previously indicated, the Chief Justice is not required to ever administer oaths to presidents. Neither he nor any of the justices are required to even attend a presidential inauguration.
I resist your suggestion that Chief Justice Robert's active participation in Obama's recent inauguration might be due to his being "blissfully ignorant" of your legal research and of your conviction that you have discovered the one and only true meaning of the term "natural born citizen" as used in our Constitution. (I won't ask you to tell me if you have ever met anyone who has actually read Vattel's eighteenth century historical theories in the language in which he wrote it.)
Like everyone else, I cannot offer you any certainty. However, I firmly believe that if Chief Justice Roberts agreed with your two premises ((1) that Obama is "clearly ineligible" and (2) that the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the decision of the voters and their electors), he would not have ratified the legitimacy of Obama's presidency by administering the oath of office. I also believe that if the other justices had agreed with your two premises, they would not have showed up at all. I think you ought to consider the implications of their conduct.
Good job. You managed to contradict yourself within the span of one (extremely long) sentence. The sentence you quoted says that all persons born or naturalized, etc., ARE citizens of the United States. It doesn't say all such persons have "the rights of citizenship." The court summarized Minor's argument here:
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 ....
She was claiming to be a citizen by being born or naturalized, etc., which is clearly from the 14th amendment. As a woman fitting the 14th amendment criteria, she is a citizen ... and the Minor court rejected this argument.
Of course as I and other have stated, the 19th Amendment overturned the ruling in Minor v. Happersett.
Not in defining natural-born citizenship.
As Minor was a child born of citizen parents, they had all they needed to ascertain that Minor was a citizen.
If the 14th amendment defined or redefined natural-born citizenship, they also would have had "all they needed to ascertain that Minor was a citizen." IOW, there's no reason to define NBC unless it's a competely different class of citizenship with a meaningful distinction or privelege.
The definition of citizenship of others or who was a NBC was not the question before the SCOTUS in Minor v. Happersett as it was merely sufficient to affirm that she was a citizen.
You're not helping yourself. If it wasn't the question, then there would be no point in bringing it up, as there would have been no point to talk about how citizens can become naturalized. There wasn't any question about her being naturalized either, but this paragraph goes into detail about it anyway:
As early as 1804 it was enacted by Congress that when any alien who had declared his intention to become a citizen in the manner provided by law died before he was actually naturalized, his widow and children should be considered as citizens of the United States, and entitled to all rights and privileges as such upon taking the necessary oath; [n10] and in 1855 it was further provided that any woman who might lawfully be naturalized under the existing laws, married, or [p169] who should be married to a citizen of the United States, should be deemed and taken to be a citizen.Again, you and others repeatedly misinterpret Minor v. Happersett as a ruling that defiantly defined who is a Natural Born Citizen.
Do you mean "definitely" or "defiantly." Both are probably true because the court defied Minor's 14th amendment citizenship argument, but I don't see the ruling as being defiant.
What the SCOTUS was saying was that there was no question that a person who was born in the U.S. of citizen parents were undoubtedly citizens and Natural Born Citizens.
There's no reason to talk about being born to citizen parents here, unless there's a distinction between classes of birth citizenship. That one distinction is that natural-born citizens fit Art. II presidential eligibility, which makes it clear why the Luria case in 1913 cites Minor and makes no mention of Wong Kim Ark in recognizing the Supreme Court's prior precedents on presidential eligibility.
They deferred that question as irrelevant to this particular case as 1) Minor was a citizen even under the narrowest of definitions and so 2) whether she was a NBC or a naturalized citizen was not the question at hand in this case.
They didn't need to define her citizenship by the "narrowest of definitons" unless that point is to show that such a definition is exclusively characterized as NBC. The court says the direct question is whether whether "all citizens are necessarily voters," so there's no reason to narrow the definition of citizens.
The “doubt” the court mentioned it the Dicta was whether a person, male or female born here regardless of the citizenship of their parents were “Natural Born Citizens”, not that they were not citizens at all.
Sorry, but it does not say this. Read it.
Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [p168] parents. As to this class there have been doubts, ...
This says included as CITIZENS, but with doubts. It doesn't say included as natural-born citizens. NBCs are citizens without doubt. Persons who are born in the country without reference to the citizenship of the parents are doubted to be citizens, so how could they be considered "natural-born"?? That would make no sense.
It was a Dicta as Minor was establishes as being a citizen and whether she was a NBC or not, was not relevant to the ruling.
It's relevant to the ruling because of the argument she was making. This is why the syllabus says:
women, of born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United States, as much so before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution as since ...
IOW, women born of citizen parents don't need the 14th amendment to be citizens ... BECAUSE they fit the court's definition of natural-born citizenship.
The question before the SCOTUS in United States v. Wong Kim Ark didn’t define who was eligible to be POTUS or who was a NBC, it simply and rightly ruled IMO and in the opinion of many Constitutional scholars, that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen by birth regardless of the citizenship of his parents.
You're not reading what I wrote. I said WKA affirmed the holding in Minor. Here it is:
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,
It affirm's Minor citizenship was based on being citizen parents, which comes in WKA, right after it quotes Minor's paragraph defining natural-born citizen. It is the last time in the WKA decision that it talks about NBCs, obviously because that definition could not be applied to Wong Kim Ark, and the Court had to come up with another type of citizenship that did.blockquote
Only becaused they already defined NBC exlusively and comprehensively. What they "refused to explore" is whether persons could be citizens if they were born without reference to the citizenship of their parents. In context, those persons were already NOT natural-born citizens. How could a person be "natural-born" if their basic citizenship is in doubt?? Think.
In WKA, the court took the issue up, and decided it did not.
Wrong. They cited and affirmed Minor's NBC definition. It's the last time NBC is discussed because that type of citizenship could not be applied to Wong Kim Ark. Instead, they went 25 more pages trying to find a way to make a Ark a citizen and justify defying a treaty to do so. NBC is nowhere to be found in those last 25 pages.
Minor did not attempt to explore the meaning of NBC, since no one ever doubted that someone born in country to 2 citizen parents met the definition.
This is really a stupid statement. Here's what Minor actually said:
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.
Why would they say resort must be had elsewhere and then follow that with a definition if they weren't going to attempt to "explore the meaning" of NBC???
The court went out of their way to say THAT issue wasn’t before them, and they didn’t need to settle it.
No, the issue that wasn't before them was whether persons born in the country without reference to the citizenship of their parents could be legally considered to be citizens. That was what was doubted. Since there's doubt they are citizens, there is NO DOUBT, that they are not and cannot be natural-born citizens. If they were, then the court COULD have said the Constitution DOES say in words who shall be natural-born citizens because the same members of this court had already decided who was excluded from the subject clause of the 14th amendment two years earlier.
With WKA, they did. And in WKA, they determined that the 14th was a restatement of what had always been true of NBC - as Lynch had made clear, and many other cases.
A) WKA never says the 14th amendment is a restatement of what has always been true of NBC, and B) Gray avoided giving any direct citations from Lynch because it went too far. Gray says the opposite about the 14th amendment:
when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens.
When construing the birth provision of the 14th amendment, it does NOT say who shall be NBC. Read it. Learn it. Accept it.
But then, WKA was a citizenship case, while Minor was a voting rights case.
So why did WKA cite Minor??
And with Minor, her method of citizenship was irrelevant.
Wrong. She based her right to vote on being a citizen through the 14th amendment. The SCOTUS rejected this argument.
As a naturalized citizen, she still would not have a right to vote.
Nobody argues otherwise. What's more important here is that according to the Supreme Court, her citizenship would have made her eligible for the office of president while Wong Kim Ark's did not. And thus, Obama is not. And the bottom line: You STILL cannot get around the SCOTUS's reliance on being born to citizen parents to define NBC.
Yet, you pretty sure of saying the system worked, yet here you admit there are obvious flaws. So how can you have certainty about the system??
I don't agree with your suggestion that we can avoid all possible mistakes by entrusting the Supreme Court to measure the qualifications of our presidential candidates.
I never said we could avoid "all possible mistakes" nor did I say anything about "entrusting" the Supreme Court. I gave what the Constitution says about the powers of the judicial branch, and I followed with citations on state laws that allow eligibility to be reviewed by someone other than the electors or by the voters through by way of a process other than casting a vote.
After four years of very public "birther" investigations and legal research, Chief Justice Roberts accepted an invitation to administer the oath of office to Obama less than two months ago.
This doesn't mean anything other than what I said: a protocol exists, and Roberts understood he cannot unilaterally do anything to interfere with or go ouside the legal process.
I also believe that if the other justices had agreed with your two premises, they would not have showed up at all. I think you ought to consider the implications of their conduct.
This is a ciruclar premise. That conduct doesn't make Obama eligible for office. It shows that these people have respect for protocol and the presumed responsibilities of their public offices.
The term would be Constitutionally ineligible, but that aside, I've never said anything about hoping the Supreme Court "intervenes." The legal system doesn't grand standing to average citizens and it's not up to the courts to unilaterally intervene on legal cases. The best "hope" is to educate the ignorant about what the Supreme Court has said over and over in regards to how the eligibility requirement is defined. That's also a tall order because many people prefer to wallow in their ignorance and/or they just don't respect our Constitution and will refuse to listen. t grand standing to average citizens and it
No. According to the Court in Minor V. Happersett, she was a citizen without benefit of the 14th:
“Other proof of like character might be found, but certainly more cannot be necessary to establish the fact that sex has never been made one of the elements of citizenship in the United States. In this respect men have never had an advantage over women. The same laws precisely apply to both. 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.”
Of course as I and other have stated, the 19th Amendment overturned the ruling in Minor v. Happersett.
Not in defining natural-born citizenship.
Nice try but the Court in Minor V. Happersett didn’t define natural born citizenship either.
If the 14th amendment defined or redefined natural-born citizenship, they also would have had "all they needed to ascertain that Minor was a citizen." IOW, there's no reason to define NBC unless it's a competely * different class of citizenship with a meaningful distinction or privelege *.
You're not helping yourself. If it wasn't the question, then there would be no point in bringing it up, as there would have been no point to talk about how citizens can become naturalized. There wasn't any question about her being naturalized either, but this paragraph goes into detail about it anyway:
As early as 1804 it was enacted by Congress that when any alien who had declared his intention to become a citizen in the manner provided by law died before he was actually naturalized, his widow and children should be considered as citizens of the United States, and entitled to all rights and privileges as such upon taking the necessary oath; [n10] and in 1855 it was further provided that any woman who might lawfully be naturalized under the existing laws, married, or [p169] who should be married to a citizen of the United States, should be deemed and taken to be a citizen.
The point the Court was making here was that women could indeed be citizens. The Court also pointed out how men could be citizens. However the distinction of how they became citizens was not relevant to this case because 1) Minor was a citizen prior to and without benefit of the 14th and 2) her court case was not about the 14th making her a citizen but rather that being a citizen, that under Section 1 - Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment, the State of Missouri was denying her rights of citizenship. The Court however found that while Minor was a citizen before the 14th, and the 14th – “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 Court found that the 14th women could not be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” but that did not grant women suffrage and that individual State laws could decide who among its citizen were eligible to vote without violating either the Constitution or the 14th Amendment.
Again, this was not a case to prove her citizenship; it was a voting rights case.
“Again, you and others repeatedly misinterpret Minor v. Happersett as a ruling that defiantly defined who is a Natural Born Citizen.”
Do you mean "definitely" or "defiantly." Both are probably true because the court defied Minor's 14th amendment citizenship argument, but I don't see the ruling as being defiant.
Spell checker is a b!tch isn’t is. Try it sometime and you will avoid misspellings like competely and privelege although sometimes spell check will autocorrect in unintended and humorous ways.
What the SCOTUS was saying was that there was no question that a person who was born in the U.S. of citizen parents were undoubtedly citizens and Natural Born Citizens (Fixed it for you).
There's no reason to talk about being born to citizen parents here, unless there's a distinction between classes of birth citizenship. That one distinction is that natural-born citizens fit Art. II presidential eligibility, which makes it clear why the Luria case in 1913 cites Minor and makes no mention of Wong Kim Ark in recognizing the Supreme Court's prior precedents on presidential eligibility.
They didn't need to define her citizenship by the "narrowest of definitons" unless that point is to show that such a definition is exclusively characterized as NBC. The court says the direct question is whether whether "all citizens are necessarily voters," so there's no reason to narrow the definition of citizens.
As Minor, if she had been a male citizen of Missouri – born or naturalized, would have been eligible to vote, it didn’t matter how she became a citizen. Are you saying that the Court in Minor v. Happersett was saying that “NBC’s” had different voting rights from say a naturalized citizen?
“The “doubt” the court mentioned it the Dicta was whether a person, male or female born here regardless of the citizenship of their parents were “Natural Born Citizens”, not that they were not citizens at all.”
Sorry, but it does not say this. Read it.
Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [p168] parents. As to this class there have been doubts, ...
This says included as CITIZENS, but with doubts. It doesn't say included as natural-born citizens. NBCs are citizens without doubt. Persons who are born in the country without reference to the citizenship of the parents are doubted to be citizens, so how could they be considered "natural-born"?? That would make no sense.
You are omitting the whole quote:
“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 [88 U.S. 162, 168] 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.”
Note that like the Framers, the Court used “native” and “natural born” to mean the same thing.
“It was a Dicta as Minor was establishes as being a citizen and whether she was a NBC or not, was not relevant to the ruling.”
It's relevant to the ruling because of the argument she was making. This is why the syllabus says:
women, of born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United States, as much so before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution as since ...
IOW, women born of citizen parents don't need the 14th amendment to be citizens ... BECAUSE they fit the court's definition of natural-born citizenship.
Yes and No. The Court said they were “citizens”.
“The question before the SCOTUS in United States v. Wong Kim Ark didn’t define who was eligible to be POTUS or who was a NBC, it simply and rightly ruled IMO and in the opinion of many Constitutional scholars, that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen by birth regardless of the citizenship of his parents.”
You're not reading what I wrote. I said WKA affirmed the holding in Minor. Here it is:
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,
It affirm's Minor citizenship was based on being citizen parents, which comes in WKA, right after it quotes Minor's paragraph defining natural-born citizen. It is the last time in the WKA decision that it talks about NBCs, obviously because that definition could not be applied to Wong Kim Ark, and the Court had to come up with another type of citizenship that did.blockquote
No. The Court in WKA simply affirmed that Minor was a citizen but Kim Wong Ark’s case, unlike Minor’s, was a citizenship case under the 14th and not a voting rights case; in particular a citizenship with respect to The Chinese Exclusion Act that was passed 14 years after the Fourteenth Amendment. The court held that the government cannot deny citizenship to anyone born within the United States, including Wong Kim Ark. Furthermore, if he was a citizen, then the Chinese Exclusion Act could not apply to him. Wong Kim Ark’s parents, in particular, were not engaged in any diplomatic or official capacity in the United States at any time.
Kim Wong Ark was not running for POTUS BTW. So the Court in KWA didn’t have to make a ruling as to Presidential eligibility. The Court in KWA mentions MVH as:
“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.”
And
“The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties were to present for determination the single question stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent 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. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.”
Order affirmed.”
As far as LURIA v. U S, 231 U.S. 9 (1913), that was a case involving certificate of naturalization was attacked as fraudulent. Their mention of MVH:
“Citizenship is membership in a political society, and implies a duty of allegiance on the part of the member and a duty of protection on the part of the society. These are reciprocal obligations, one being a compensation for the other. Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects, save that of eligibility to the Presidency. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 165, 22 L. ed. 627; Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, 101 , 28 S. L. ed. 643, 645, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 41; Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 827, 6 L. ed. 204, 225”
Note the word “native” is used, not “natural”.
I would also like to ask you a rather simple question, that is that if a person was born in the U.S. after the adoption of the Constitution but prior to the 14th Amendment, their citizenship not otherwise having been grandfathered in by virtue of having been residents of the U.S. at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, they were not slaves or native Indians, children of foreign diplomats – did those persons who were born here whose parents were immigrants and not naturalized citizens at the time of their birth and until sometime after said children reached the age of majority - were they ever required to become “naturalized” citizens? That should be easy to prove if they were. There should be records of many such U.S. born children of non-native, non-citizen parents who immigrated to the U.S. during those years, some sort of procedural documents detailing the process, but I can’t find any.
Another example for you. My father was born in Norway, he came to the U.S. when he was around 5 years old, his mother never returned to Norway, nor did my father, his parents were legal permanent U.S. residents, held jobs here, bought a house here. My father was not yet a naturalized citizen and he parents hadn’t yet become naturalized but considered himself an “American” when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during WWII (he tried to enlist but couldn’t because of he wasn’t a citizen but was a year later drafted anyway) and served with honor and distinction – several metals for valor in battle and two Purple Hearts. He came back home to NJ, met and married my mother (a native born – “natural” born citizen) and year later my older brother was born. Between the time he came home from the war, met and married my mother and had a son, he was trying to finalize his “naturalization” but thanks to U.S. government FUBARS in his paperwork his “naturalization” was delayed. As a result my older brother who was born in the U.S. had a father who was not yet a U.S. citizen.
So, in your “esteemed legal opinion”, was my brother born a citizen? Would he have been born a citizen prior to the 14th? Prior to the 14th, would my brother have had to become “naturalized”? If so, how would he have gone about doing so? What would have been the legal procedures in place prior to the 14th for him to do so? Is my brother not a “native” or “natural born” citizen whereas, since I was born after my father’s naturalization, I am? Or do you think that my father’s birth in Norway somehow makes me have a dual allegiance to Norway; a county I know little about, have no connection to, even a language I don’t even speak; that that precludes me from being a “natural born citizen” and ineligible for the office of POTUS?
My father earned his citizenship by fighting for and nearly dying for this Country. Am I more or less of a U.S. citizen that the children of U.S. NBC fathers who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War?
You need to think about this for a minute. Why would court suggest this?? All you're doing is trying to come up with a clever way of not saying that Minor "rejected" her argument. "A citizen without benefit"??? Really???
Nice try but the Court in Minor V. Happersett didn’t define natural born citizenship either.
Sorry, but it did so very clearly. It asked who the citizens of the U.S were and how they became citizens. It introduced the term NBC from Art. II and THEN it said: "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 ..." Yes, the quote is truncated but the sections before and after do not change that this IS a definition and a direct characterization of the definition with the application of the term "natural-born citizens." It also clearly said "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens." The 14th amendment is part of the Constitution. It does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens. This only leaves ONE class of citizens that fits the definition.
Again, this was not a case to prove her citizenship; it was a voting rights case.
Citizenship was a central part of the case. The court listed as part of HER argument, and this was affirmed more than 20 years later in WKA when it includes the establishment of Minor's citizenship as part of the holding:
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.
Do you NOT see the highlighted part above?? And your dismissal of Minor as a citizenship case is also disprove another 15 years after Wong Kim Ark in Luria v. United States:
Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects save that of eligibility to the Presidency. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 88 U. S. 165; Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U. S. 94, 112 U. S. 101; Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 22 U. S. 827.
That's 18 SCOTUS justices who affirmed that Minor was at least in part a citizenship case, but the Luria quotes proves it was a precedent on Art. II presidential elgibility while no citation of WKA is anywhere to be found on this issue.
As Minor, if she had been a male citizen of Missouri – born or naturalized, would have been eligible to vote, it didn’t matter how she became a citizen. Are you saying that the Court in Minor v. Happersett was saying that “NBC’s” had different voting rights from say a naturalized citizen?
No, I didn't say that at all. I said they didn't need to define her citizenship to define her voting rights, yet they did define her citizenship and they did reject the 14th amendment in conferring citizenship on her and others born in the country to citizen parents, both before and SINCE the adoption of the 14th amendment.
“The “doubt” the court mentioned it the Dicta was whether a person, male or female born here regardless of the citizenship of their parents were “Natural Born Citizens”, not that they were not citizens at all.”
They didn't say this. They said there was doubt that such persons could be considered as citizens. The sentence that mentions NBCs is used EXCLUSIVELY to characterize the first class of persons for who there is NO DOUBT they are citizens.
Note that like the Framers, the Court used “native” and “natural born” to mean the same thing.
Yes, and BOTH instances are defined as "born in the country to parents who were its citizens." This doesn't help your case.
Note the word “native” is used, not “natural”.
Yet in the cases that are cited (again notice the omission of Wong Kim Ark), native is only defined in Minor as "all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens." Again, this doesn't help your case.
Yes and No. The Court said they were “citizens”.
AND the court characterized her citizenship as being due to birth to citizen parents AND it exclusively characterized that as natural-born citizenship. Think about it this way: This court was willing to define Minor's (and all women born to citizen parents) as being eligible to the office of president, but they would not recognize a right for them to vote. If the 14th was controlling AND if it defined NBC, then there should have been no need to specify a definition of citizenship based on citizen parents. The question you need to ask yourself is why they did this unless it was material distinction.
No. The Court in WKA simply affirmed that Minor was a citizen but Kim Wong Ark’s case, unlike Minor’s, was a citizenship case under the 14th and not a voting rights case; in particular a citizenship with respect to The Chinese Exclusion Act that was passed 14 years after the Fourteenth Amendment.
You've already noted the court did not give Minor what you called the "benefit" of citizenship under the 14th amendment. IOW, you admit the decision is about defining her citizenship AND you admit the 14th amendment was not operative. The reason is because she was born to citizen parents, and you're not addressing the reason why they did this. Think about it.
Kim Wong Ark was not running for POTUS BTW.
Neither was Minor, but the court still went to Art. II to reject her 14th amendment citizenship claim.
I would also like to ask you a rather simple question, that is that if a person was born in the U.S. after the adoption of the Constitution but prior to the 14th Amendment, their citizenship not otherwise having been grandfathered in by virtue of having been residents of the U.S. at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, they were not slaves or native Indians, children of foreign diplomats – did those persons who were born here whose parents were immigrants and not naturalized citizens at the time of their birth and until sometime after said children reached the age of majority - were they ever required to become “naturalized” citizens?
This is a simple question?? I had to read it a couple of times. IIUC, I don't know what the residency and immigration laws were, but they weren't consistent from state to state. That was the benefit of the 14th amendment, but obviously it still left questions open, hence cases like Slaughterhouse, Elk, Minor, Wong Kim Ark ... etc.
So, in your “esteemed legal opinion”, was my brother born a citizen?
The SCOTUS cases say what they say. If your brother fit the 14th amendment, great. If someone needs the 14th amendment to be a citizen, that is fine, but as the court said, the 14th amendment does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens. I'm not going to further analyze you and your family's citizenship status because you're trying to use it as an emotional wedge to an argument that isn't in your favor.
Maybe this has been seen before, but I thought it was interesting on the question of dual citizenship.
“in the present cause, there being no proof, that Captain Talbot’s admission as a citizen of the French Republic, was with a view to relinquish his native country; and a man may, at the same time, enjoy the rights of citizenship under two governments.” Chief Justice Rutledge in Talbot v. Janson 3 U.S. 133
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0003_0133_ZO4.html
It would appear that in the 1790s the concept of dual citizenship was not unknown and was possible.
Yes, the concept of dual citizenship was recognized. Today, U.S. policy recognizes that dual citizenship is legal under international law because any sovereign nation has the right to determine whom are its citizens.
Thanks for posting that. It’s a new bit of illuminating information.
Such, I think, is the natural and indeed almost necessary meaning of the treaty [of 1783]; it would otherwise follow that there would continue a double allegiance of many persons -- an inconvenience which must have been foreseen and would cause the most injurious effects to both nations.
This is the ruling that U.S. v. Rhodes citing when it said one could either be a natural-born subject if born in the United States or natural-born citizen, but one cannot be both.
All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens.
It's an either/or proposition, not a dual allegiance proposition.
Late to this conversation and simply clarifying a single point: “Commissioners of the Code”
The Legislature enacts Acts by majority approval of bills and or resolutions. The governor approves those Acts or his veto is overridden and they become laws.
These Acts are gathered in seriatim ... not according to topic or subject, as approved.
A code takes approved, enacted statutes (existing law) and assembles them topically (thus the “Political Code”)
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