Contributing To The Delinquency Of Minor and Happersett!!! (Un-Natural Born Acts???)

Virginia Wanted To Do What Only Men Had Been Allowed To Do!!!

Well, this Internet Article is not quite as racy as it sounds. Actually, Virgina Minor just wanted the right to vote, and in 1874 Missouri, women were not allowed to vote. Sooo, Virginia Minor sued Happersatt, the registrar of voters. This was 6 years after the passing of the 14th Amendment, which not only provided that all persons born in America, with a few exceptions, were citizens, but also insured “No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

Since men could vote, Virginia Minor wanted the same privilege. The Minor judges said NO, basically because the 14th Amendment created no extra citizenship rights for Virgina Minor, because she had been a  native born citizen since her birth in 1826.  This was before the 14th Amendment passed in 1868.  Since being a female citizen did not give her the right to vote before the passage of the 14th Amendment,  it did not give her the right afterwards, either.

Here is a link to the very short Supreme Court case, MINOR v. HAPPERSETT 88 U.S. 162;  21 Wall. 162

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/minorvhapp.html

Sooo, you may be asking yourself, what does this Women’s voting rights case have to do with any Birtherism issues???  Well not much unless you are a Vattle Birther. (I intentionally mis-spell Vattel as a form of satire.) And, if you are a Vattle Birther, then this case is the one which proves their two citizen parent theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yep.  I kid you NOT!!! This case supposedly proves that to be a natural born citizen, and eligible for the presidency, you must have two citizen parents.  Here is the language that throws the Vattle Birthers for a loop, with some bolding by ME:

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 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.

Now, to most people, it reads like the Minor Judges did not make any ruling on whether or not children of foreigners were natural born citizens if born here.   And, to the rest of The Free World, when a court says in a particular case that “it  is not necessary to solve these doubts” , well,  uh. . . it means they are not going to solve the doubts.  BUT,  the Vattle Birthers have a little reading comprehension problem caused by the fact that later court cases, like Wong Kim Ark , in 1898, do go on to resolve these doubts, and NOT in a way the Vattle Birthers like.  Sooo, Minor vs. Happersett 1874 is like a retreat to the womb for the Vattle Birthers.  It is a place to be warm, and safe, and not have to deal with that troublesome Big Kid known as REALITY.  They can lay there, all comfy cozy in a fetal position, thumbs in their mouths, and pretend away those bolded words above.

What is even more ironic, is that 24 years later, the Wong Kim Ark judges did quote the Minor case, but not for any supposed definition of natural born citizens. They quoted it to show that the Court had to resort to common law to determine what natural born citizen meant, and that there were only two kinds of citizen, people born citizens and people naturalized as citizens. And, the Wong Kim Ark judges said:

. . . aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject. . .The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.13

Ooops!!! That is not good if you’re a Vattle Birther. Sure enough, if you debate the Vattle Birthers, you will see them avoiding Wong Kim Ark 1898 like the plague.  Sometimes, they are nice enough to do it in court where everybody can enjoy it.  In a 2009 case, which you can find at this website as “The Case The “Two Citizen Parent” Birthers Just HATE!!!“, the Judges, after quoting very heavily from Wong Kim Ark, noted:

The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority [Wong Kim Ark]  in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise [Emerich de Vattel, I bet!!!] and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court‟s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs‟ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

That same court also said:

Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [] natural-born citizens.”15

Sooo, if you hear somebody carrying on about how Minor vs. Happersett 1874 decided the whole issue of natural born citizenship, well . . . now you know the rest of the story.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

NOTE: I do a lot of Internet Debating with Vattle Birthers, and they will just go on forever and twist words all over the place to try to make the Minor case say the opposite of what it does.  Here is a example of something I told one of them to make it clearer for him, and also for the normal people reading it. It is a very age appropriate example for the Vattel Birthers:

The Case of Virginia Rabbit Versus Happersett (1875)

The Court:  At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all rabbits were mammals, and their children were mammals, too. These were mammals, or common sense mammals, as distinguished from critters like platypuses or weird animals. Some authorities go further and include as mammals, platypuses. 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.

Vattle Birthers: See!!! This PROVES platypuses are NOT mammals!!!

Rational People: Uh. . .No.  Because  the case was about a rabbit,  they didn’t have to deal with platypuses at all.

(Yes. We really do have to deal with issues that are this simple and obvious.)