"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,"in Minor v. Happersett (1875)
Without first coming to that determination, the court could not have determined if Virginia Minor was a "citizen" who had the right to vote.
The reason Barry sites in the Oval office today, is not due to not knowing who a "natural born Citizen" is...but rather, due to fear and political expediency. Nobody in a position of power to do anything wanted to rock the boat on the first (half) "black" President, potentially loosing their job, their broadcasting license or worse. It became the 3rd rail.
Sorry, it is not settled law.
OK, I had promised myself not to go through this again, since pointing out what Minor v. Happersett actually says has been roundly ignored by those who are dead set in their opinion that the U.S. Congress does not have the power to legislate regarding birthright citizenship of the U.S., but I’ll try once again.
The case involved a woman who was born in the U.S. to citizen parents. The Court was saying that there is no doubt that the term “natural-born citizen” would extend to such a person. However, the Court did not say that the term *only* extended to such persons. In fact, the Court wrote, right after rxsid ended his quotation: “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.”
So the Court was not limiting “natural-born citizen” to those that were citizens under both jus soli and jus sanguinis, it was saying that such persons, which included the plaintiff, were undoubtedly natural-born citizens. The silly theory that Minor v. Happesersett limits natural-born status to U.S. born children of two U.S. citizens is tantamount to claiming that when a court has to rule on whether someone used “hard drugs” pursuant to a code of conduct, and such court says “we don’t need to decide whether cocaine is a hard drug, because this guy was using heroin, which clearly is a hard drug,” that “hard drugs” means ONLY heroin.
That proponents of what I believe is an overly restrictive view of natural-born citizenship are misreading the Minor v. Happeersett Court is further evidenced by the fact that the Court goes on to cite approvingly of Congress passing legislation as early as 1790 making foreign-born children of citizens “natural-born citizens.” The Court clearly did not believe that the term “natural-born citizen” meant only “what Blackstone said was a natural-born British subject”; the Court used the term “natural-born citizen of the U.S.” in contradistinction to the term “naturalized citizen,” as it said earlier in the Chief Justice’s opinion of the Court:
“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 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,” 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.”
The Minor v. Happersett Court speaks of two types of U.S. citizens: those who are citizens by virtue of birth (which the Court equated with “natural-born citizen” as used in the Constitution when discussing presidential qualifications) and those who become citizens by naturalization. That’s actually pretty good support for my position (and that of most constitutional scholars), which is that persons who are U.S. citizens at birth under laws in effect at the time of their birth (which would exclude those given citizenship retroactively to their birth) are natural-born citizens, in contradistinction to naturalized citizens. And at the very least, Minor v. Happersett does not refute my position.