by Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
October 10, 2011

You have got to love Obama’s enablers. They have a web site called, “A Place to Get the REALLY Right Answers About Natural Born Citizenship,” accessed at http://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/a-place-to-get-the-really-right-answers-about-natural-born-citizenship/. Clearly, the title of this web site refers this web site, “Natural Born Citizen – A Place to Ask Questions and Get the Right Answers,” accessed at http://puzo1.blogspot.com/ , which I created in December 2008.

Before I start, I must advise you of two things: first, you will rarely find an Obama enabler who will ever admit that he or she is a lawyer (most of those who admit it have been outed by citizen researchers). The reason for that is that operating under the blanket of anonymity, they get free reign to say whatever they want without any legal or ethical accountability. And they have said some pretty bad things in the past until many of them were outed and so now they are “perfect gentlemen.” Hence, the first thing the owner of this blog tells us that he or she is not a lawyer. Now it may be true that the owner of that blog is not a lawyer. But what about all the other enablers who feed at that blog under the cover of anonymity? So, we do need to ask ourselves whether these so-called “owners” are just straw owners who take on such tasks to provide cover for Obama’s enabler lawyers who operate in the background under the cloaking device of anonymity.

Second, before I started explaining that there is a difference between an Article II “natural born” Citizen and a Fourteenth Amendment or Statutory “born” Citizen, we hardly saw the clause “natural born” Citizen in the Obama enablers’ arguments. At that time, they were simply content with telling us that Obama was a “Citizen” of the United States or a “native-born citizen,” whether under U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Fourteenth Amendment, or any Congressional Act. Now, no matter what case or statute they are speaking about, for these enablers its all “natural born” Citizen. The only citizens they have spared from this label are citizens who are naturalized after birth. I guess they figured that the clause would lose whatever little meaning they have given to it if they pushed it that far.

Let us now examine what Obama’s enablers are peddling on this blog. They must and do attack the Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) decision on two fronts. First, they argue that the definition of a “natural-born citizen” given by the Court is dicta and therefore not binding precedent. But they are wrong. In Minor, the U.S. Supreme Court had to decide whether Virginia Minor, a woman, was a “citizen” in order to determine whether as a “citizen” she enjoyed a constitutional right to vote under the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV. So the Court reasoned that once she was shown to be a “citizen,” it did not matter that she was a woman, unless Missouri could still disqualify a woman from voting because being a “citizen” did not guarantee any person the right to vote. It does not matter whether the Court chose to say that Minor was a “natural born Citizen” or just a “citizen.” Either way, Virginia Minor would advance to the next step in the analysis which was whether as a “citizen” she had the right to vote which Missouri could not abrogate. The Court chose the “natural-born citizen” path. It thoroughly analyzed and considered what a “natural-born citizen” was and after saying that it is a child born in the country to citizen parents, found that Virginia Minor was a “natural-born citizen” and therefore also a “citizen.” After the Court told us what a “natural-born citizen” was, it then made the comment about there being doubts as to whether a child born in the country to alien parents was even a “citizen.” The Court said that it was not necessary for it to decide that question and it did not because Virginia Minor was a “natural-born citizen” which necessarily also made her a “citizen.” So the focus of the Court’s decision regarding citizenship was in defining who the “original citizens” and the “natural-born citizens” were. The Court did not and did not have to answer the question about who was a “citizen” under the Fourteenth Amendment which in the question that it raised involved deciding whether a child born in the jurisdiction of the United States but to alien parents was born “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” We know that this latter question concerning who was a “citizen” under these circumstances was answered by U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898 which also confirmed Minor’s definition of a “natural-born citizen” and analyzed whether such a child was born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment.

So as we can see, Minor’s analysis and discussion about citizenship was central to the Court’s answering the question of whether Virginia Minor was a “citizen” which it answered by telling us that she was a “natural-born citizen” which automatically made her a “citizen” also. Hence, Minor’s discussion and decision on what a “natural-born citizen” is was central to the Court’s holding regarding citizenship (as I explained the other holding concerned whether voting was a privilege and immunity originally guaranteed by the constitution’s privileges and immunities clause) and not dicta.

Virginia Minor was not a naturalized citizen. Hence, the Court thoroughly discussed the definition of a “natural-born citizen” which it was compelled to do to decide whether Virginia Minor was a “citizen” and as such entitled to privileges and immunities under the Constitution one of which Mrs. Minor contended was the right to vote. The Court’s definition of a “natural-born citizen” was therefore essential to its holding that voting was not a privilege and immunity originally guaranteed by the Constitution and that Mrs. Minor, a woman, even though she was a “natural-born citizen,” did not have a constitutional right to vote. Minor’s definition of a “natural-born citizen” is therefore binding precedent which to this day has not been changed.

Click HERE to read the rest of Mr. Apuzzo’s outstanding essay.