Defining Natural-Born Citizen: The Debate Over Who Qualifies To Run For President

In the Minor vs. Happersett case, the Court noted that Mrs. Minor was born in the US to parents who were citizens. The Court stated that such persons were “natural-born citizens”. The Court also stated – as to such persons – that their “citizenship” was never in doubt. By recognizing Mrs. Minor as a member of the class of persons who were natural-born citizens, they established her citizenship which was required before they could get to the issue of whether she had the right to vote. By so doing, the Court in Minor directly construed Article 2 Section 1 of the US Constitution.

A clear undeniable holding and binding precedent established by the highest Court of our nation specifically defines an Article 2 Section 1 natural-born citizen as a person born in the US to parents (that’s plural, meaning both Father and Mother) who are citizens.

This US Supreme Court precedent was established by the case of Minor vs. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875). The precedent stated in Minor is consistent with other US Supreme Court cases – both before and after Minor – which discuss the natural born citizen issue. The definition of “natural-born citizen” – with regard to Article 2 Section 1 of the US Constitution – is STILL binding upon all lower courts to this day.

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens, therefore, resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain the meaning of that term. 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 (plural, meaning BOTH parents, Father and Mother) who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.

A common misconception of those who argue in favor of Obama’s, Cruz’s, Rubio’s and Jindal’s eligibility is that if one is, at the time of their birth, a US citizen, then that person is also automatically a natural-born citizen. This is totally FALSE! The Minor case does establish that not all “born citizens” are “natural-born”. This was unequivocally established by the majority holding in Minor, which states:

“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.”

To those who think this appears to provide a neat little workaround for Obama, Cruz, Rubio, Jindal supporters, it does NOT. They take the above quote out of context, because the Court’s opinion goes on to state:

“Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided…that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens. These provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since.”