Multiple Instances Of Historical Scholarship Conclusively Establish The Supreme Court’s Holding In Minor v. Happersett As Standing Precedent On Citizenship – Obama Not Eligible.
Recently, the New York State Board of Elections was caught trying to amend the US Constitution with an eraser by listing POTUS eligibility as available to any person “born a citizen”. (Please review Pixel Patriot’s excellent analysis on this issue, “New York State BOE Web Site Cover Up“.) The Constitution states that only a “natural born Citizen” may be president, a much more stringent requirement than simply being “born a citizen”. This effort in New York is part of a much larger effort nationwide to falsely revise history (in this case by scrubbing the very words of our Constitution). The tactic contributes to an insidious pattern of behavior being perpetrated just so Obama will be allowed to occupy the White House despite US Supreme Court precedent which states directly that he is not eligible. (This report assumes Obama was born in Hawaii.)Other instances of gross intellectual dishonesty documented at this blog include the recent attempt by Justia.com to rewrite American history by scrubbing links in subsequent cases which establish that Minor v. Happersett has been cited multiple times as precedent on citizenship issues as well as voting rights.
Another instance of this misleading practice was the revision of a Michigan Law Review article by well-known legal scholar, Professor Lawrence Solum, wherein his original analysis – that only a person born in the US of citizen parents was beyond question eligible for POTUS – was scrubbed to include as eligible those born of only one citizen parent.
The citizenship issue decided in Minor v. Happersett has been documented as precedent by multiple sources of legal scholarship. (See also my previous two reports analyzing Minor v. Happersett, here and here.) Below, I have assembled multiple quotations from various published literature which cogently establish that the Supreme Court issued two holdings in Minor; one on citizenship and the other on voting rights. That the citizenship issue is precedent, and not dictum, has never been questioned in our national history until now, just as the very words of the Constitution are being scrubbed. My research indicates unequivocally that for over a century before the appearance of Obama, Minor was recognized and cited as precedent on the definition of federal citizenship.
We turn now to an esteemed legal scholar and Government attorney who specialized in citizenship law. He will provide unquestionable clarity on the issue of why Minor v. Happersett is precedent on citizenship as well as voting rights.
FREDERICK VAN DYNE, ASSISTANT SOLICITOR US DEPARTMENT OF STATE
The source in question is Frederick Van Dyne who, while holding the office of Assistant Solicitor for the US Department of State, published analysis that the citizenship decision in Minor v. Happersett was precedent.
Van Dyne argued that persons born of foreign parents on US soil were “native-born citizens” of the US prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the adoption of the 14th Amendment. But Van Dyne, while discussing the holding in the New York case of Lynch v. Clark (not binding on the Federal Courts), failed to endorse that case’s opinion that all native-born citizens of foreign parentage were natural-born citizens. In his famous treatise, “Citizenship of the United States” (Lawyers Co-Operative Publishing Co., 1904), Van Dyne only went so far as to state that such persons were “native-born citizens”. (See Van Dyne’s treatise at pgs. 6-7.)
Where the US Supreme Court in Minor differs from Obama eligibility propaganda is that the former regards being “native-born” as just one element necessary to meeting the natural-born citizen standard of POTUS eligibility, whereas the latter incorrectly argue that it is the only element. As you will see below, Van Dyne directly recognized that the US Supreme Court’s decision in Minor was precedent on citizenship, and that the holding therein defined natural-born citizens as those born in the US of citizen parents.
In the following passage, Van Dyne argues that previous American cases recognized that persons born on US soil were US citizens regardless of the citizenship of the parents. However, Van Dyne also points out that a statement by the Supreme Court in the Slaughter-House Cases appears to contradict this theory. But Van Dyne’s analysis stresses that the contradictory statement in the Slaughter-House Cases is dictum.
He then refers to the “decision” in Minor v. Happersett on citizenship in order to counter the “dictum” from the Slaughter-House Cases. Van Dyne clearly recognized the Minor Court’s decision on citizenship as precedent which outweighs the dictum of the Slaughter-House Cases. In doing so, Van Dyne quotes (see pgs. 12-13) the Minor Court’s definition of a natural-born citizen as one born in the US to citizen parents:
“The decision in this 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 elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.” (Emphasis added.)
The “decision” in Minor is twofold: 1) woman are equal citizens to men;
2) voting is not a right of citizenship.
The first point is still good law. This may seem obvious now, but in 1875 it wasn’t. Virginia Minor did not accept that citizenship without voting rights was equal citizenship. She argued that women were being treated as “halfway citizens” and she directly petitioned the Court for a determination which stated that women were equal citizens to men.
The Court in Minor, referring directly to Article 2 Section 1, and specifically avoiding the 14th Amendment, held that women, if born in the US to citizen parents, were citizens and that their citizenship was equal to men. The Court further stated that this “class” of persons were “natives, or natural-born citizens”.
The Court also held that while women were equal citizens to men, the Constitution did not provide a right to vote to anyone, male or female. This part of the holding was later erased by the 19th Amendment, but the citizenship determination remains as good law today. Therefore, the Court’s decision in Minor operates against Obama being eligible, since his father was never a US citizen.
Van Dyne examines the Slaughter-House dictum carefully since it is a statement made by the highest court in the nation which contrasts his view that all persons born on US soil are native-born citizens. In classifying the Slaughter-House statement as dictum, Van Dyne notes that determining the citizenship of persons born on US soil to alien parents was not an issue before the court in that case. He then points to the “decision” on citizenship from Minor to contrast the Slaughter-House dictum, and in doing so Van Dyne makes clear that Virginia Minor’s citizenship was an issue directly before the Court in Minor.
Note the following crucial passage from Justice Waite’s opinion again, paying particular attention to the punchline:
“[T]he Constitution…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’…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. The words ‘all children’ are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as ‘all persons,’ and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.” (Emphasis added.)
Current propaganda attempting to sanitize Obama in light of the Supreme Court’s precedent in Minor mis-directs that Minor’s citizenship was not an issue directly before the Court. But in the passage above, the Court’s unanimous opinion clearly states that “the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.” So, squarely before the Court was the issue of whether women were equal citizens.Also consider the name of Van Dyne’s treatise, “Citizenship In The United States”. As to the soundness of Van Dyne’s treatise, the following review appears in The American Journal Of International Law:
“The author of this work now occupies an important post in the American Consular Service. Three years ago, while holding the position of assistant solicitor of the Department of State, he published a work on citizenship of the United States, a work which was at the time highly commended by competent critics and which those who have since used it have found to be an excellent manual.”
Van Dyne stressed that the decision in Minor contradicted the earlier dictum in the Slaughter-House Cases. And Van Dyne specifically quoted the natural-born citizen definition from Minor (taking no issue with it) just before announcing the Court’s “decision” that women born in the US to citizen parents were citizens.Again, the 14th Amendment was not necessary in determining Virginia Minor’s citizenship since the Court was able to rely upon a direct construction of Article 2 Section 1 instead. The Court held that Minor was in the “class” of persons who were designated as natural-born citizens, whereas those whose citizenship faced doubt due to alien parentage required help from the 14th Amendment.
And such help came in 1898 when the Supreme Court held that Wong Kim Ark was a US citizen under the 14th Amendment. Since Minor was a natural-born citizen, the 14th Amendment need not be construed. But Wong Kim Ark was not in the class of natural-born citizens (previously defined in Minor), and therefore the Supreme Court was forced to directly construe the 14th Amendment to resolve citizenship doubts pertaining to the “class” of persons born in the US to alien parents.
It is crucially important to recognize that Wong Kim Ark’s citizenship could not be established without the 14th Amendment since he was not a natural-born citizen. If he had been in that class, the Court would have established his citizenship under Article 2 Section 1 as the court had previously done for Virginia Minor.
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An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
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