Posted on 02/23/2019 6:05:26 AM PST by Rummyfan
You said:
For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.
The case, Minor v. Happersett, does not resolve the parentage issue. The case law states “Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.”
Not definitive. The court did not resolve the definition. They said they didn’t need to. That’s what the phrase “it is not necessary to solve these doubts” means.
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That is a misrepresentation of Minor. The doubts that it expressed were about whether a child born in the U.S. to alien parents was a “citizen” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment which presented a different question from whether someone was a natural born citizen. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), which was decided by virtually the same Court as the Minor Court except for Chief Justice Chase who had since passed away, that a child born in the United States to alien parents was not a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment. Still, Minor acknowledged that some “authorities” still contended that such a child was a “citizen” of the United States.
Minor had already defined a natural born citizen and so under that definition, a child born in the U.S. to alien parents did not qualify as a natural born citizen. At the beginning of its decision, the Court had already explained that Virginia Minor did not need the Fourteenth Amendment to demonstrate that she was a citizen and set out to show how that was so. It was not necessary for the Court to resolve the Fourteenth Amendment doubts because Virginia Minor was born in the United States to U.S. citizen parents and being a natural born citizen, she was a priori a “citizen” of the United States and therefore entitled to all the privileges and immunities that came with being such a citizen.
It was Wong Kim Ark in 1898, presented with a case of Wong who was born in the United States to alien parents, that finally was compelled to address and remove the Fourteenth Amendment doubts expressed by Minor. In that process, with Wong not being a natural born citizen as was Virginia Minor, the Court had to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment, something that Minor did not have to do because Virginia Minor was a natural born citizen. The Court cited and quoted Minor’s common law definition of a “natural-born citizen,” which common law was not the English common law but rather a law that came from the law of nations as found in Vattel’s Section 212 of his The Law of Nations. But with respect to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court used the old English common law to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship sentence. The Court then went beyond the English common law which did not look to whether alien parents were domiciled or permanent residents of the King’s dominion and held that such a child born in the United States to domiciled and permanent resident alien parents was a “citizen” of the United States from the moment of birth but only by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, the Court said that such a child was as much a “citizen” as a natural born child born in the U.S. to U.S. citizen parents which statement demonstrates the distinction Wong Kim Ark made between a “citizen” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment and a “natural born citizen” of the United States at common law.
But then they say "It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens." They didn't bother saying "natural born citizen" in that sentence, because they didn't consider (or had doubts) that citizens could be anything other than natural-born as they earlier defined?
If that's true then you are correct.
and so under that definition, a child born in the U.S. to alien parents did not qualify as a natural born citizen.
Did not qualify as a citizen at all (or there were doubts about it). No bearing on natural-born, an irrelevant qualifier.
You said: “In Minor they first specify two classes: born and naturalized.” The reason that you put forth that little statement is so that you can argue that if one if born a citizen one is not a naturalized citizen and therefore one must be a natural born citizen. There are two major problems with your argument.
First, the court did not say there were only two classes. Rather, Minor said:
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.
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Minor, at 167.
Second, Minor also explained 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.” Id. Hence, if one was not a “natural born citizen,” which the Court defined, one was an “alien or foreigner” and therefore in need of naturalization.
So, what the Court is referring to is how more “citizens” may be made. For sure, they can be made by birth or by naturalization. The Court said that anyone who was not born in the country to citizen parents was an alien or a foreigner and in need of naturalization and suggested that anyone made a citizen by a naturalization Act of Congress is naturalized. Hence, anyone who may be an alien without a naturalization Act of Congress but who is made a “citizen” of the United States “at birth” by a naturalization Act of Congress is still a naturalized citizen. Second, regarding its reference to natural born citizens, of course, those citizens are made at the time of their birth. But the Court did not suggest that all born citizens are natural born citizens. Rather, it only suggested that all natural born citizens are born citizens.
All this demonstrates how you make a fallacious argument regarding who is a natural born citizen. We can readily recognize that the following argument is fallacious:
All poodles are dogs.
Pebbles is a dog.
Therefore, Pebbles is a poodle.
Wrong, because Pebbles can be a beagle.
But still, you and many others like you, make the following argument and fail to see how it is as fallacious as the dog argument above. Here is your fallacious argument:
All natural born citizens are born citizens.
X is a born citizen.
Therefore, X is a natural born citizen.
Wrong, because X can be a “citizen” of the United States “at birth” by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment or naturalization Act of Congress.
So, we can see how your lack of understanding of the definition of a natural born citizen and misreading of Minor leads to your fallacious argument which is to be rejected.
You quoted me saying “and so under that definition, a child born in the U.S. to alien parents did not qualify as a natural born citizen.” Then you asked: “Did not qualify as a citizen at all (or there were doubts about it).?”
There were no doubts that he did not qualify as a natural born citizen and there were doubts whether he qualified as a “citizen” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment. There were doubts whether a child born in the United States to alien parents was a citizen at all even under the Fourteenth Amendment which required not only birth in the United States, but also that that child when born was “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. And the doubts were whether that person qualified as a “citizen” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment, not whether he was a “natural born citizen” of the United States. Under the Court’s definition of a natural born citizen, there was no doubt that he did not qualify as a natural born citizen. But given the new Fourteenth Amendment, there were doubts whether he was a “citizen” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The fact of the matter is there are no cases yet to decide the issue because nobody obtained standing to challenge Obama, which is practically the only time it has mattered so far (other than one other president).
And finally there's the case of Big Bill Lias who was judged to be "natural born" in a manner of speaking. That manner of speaking was judged by you to be imprecise and not relevant. But that argument applies to all of your cases. They use natural born, then native, then citizen (no qualifiers) all within the same case talking about the same people.
Definitions are the basis of our logic. Once we know what things are, we can draw inferences about those things.
We have definitions of mammals, dogs, and poodles. Having defined those terms, we can make logical arguments therefrom. For example, we know that all poodles are dogs which are all mammals because of our definitions of those terms.
The definition of a natural born citizen comes from several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that I cited. Minor v. Happersett (1875), provides the Framers’s common law definition of the term which is a paraphrase of Vattel’s definition of the “natives, or natural-born citizens” as found in Section 212 of The Law of Nations (1758) (1797) and is very much on point. That definition creates the logic that I set out in my previous comment.
Accepting the definition of a natural born citizen as provided by Minor, we can make logical arguments that come from that definition as we can from definitions of dogs. I have shown in my previous comment how your argument that all born citizens are natural born citizens is fallacious. I will not repeat it here.
Pleading ignorance or confusion will not win the day for you. The Framers made a constitutional distinction between a “Citizen” of the United States and a “natural born Citizen” of the United States. Those terms must be given meaning. See Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 174 (1802) (”It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect, and therefore such construction is inadmissible unless the words require it.”). I have set out the meaning of both terms, showing that a natural born citizen is a child born in a country to parents who were its citizens and that all the rest of the people are aliens or foreigners in need of naturalization either through the Fourteenth Amendment, naturalization Act of Congress, or treaty which laws make those who qualify thereunder “citizens” of the United States, either “at birth” or after birth, as the case may be. You have not produced anything to refute my position.
I truly don't care what you "set out". The definition has to come from case law. I gave you a case with a plaintiff declared to be natural-born without the benefit of citizen parents. In your cases many of the plaintiffs did not have citizen parents (Venus) or it was unknown (woman of Minor).
In a case like Minor they are deciding whether the women are citizens. So in that specific case it didn't matter whether they defined natural born or not. If they had not included their definition, the case would have been decided the same way. The definition was incidental to the case.
You are adding nothing else to your position and at this point, you are just repeating yourself just to be able to have the last word. I guess will just have to agree to disagree and go our separate ways.
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