Page:Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement.pdf/30

 It is general knowledge that the Dred Scott decision has widely and commonly been described as the “worst” and most vilified Supreme Court decision in the history of the United States. The ruling in that case, not only because of the enactment of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, but also because of its specious constitutional and legal reasoning, has been reduced to an “historical curiosity.” As explained by historian and professor James Kettner in his work, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870: "In seeking to derive consistent exclusionist principles from an ambivalent legal tradition, Taney could only succeed by distorting history and making “bad law.” … In making national citizenship exclusively the effect of naturalization or pedigree, he disregarded volumes of judicial precedents emphasizing place of birth without regard to ancestry. Taney’s opinion rested instead on the social fact of prejudice and discrimination."

Within a few years of the Dred Scott decision, in 1862, the Attorney General of the United States, Edward Bates, issued a formal legal opinion to a federal department on the question of “citizenship” of those born within the geographic boundaries of the United States which clearly demonstrated the weakness in the legal reasoning of the Court in Dred Scott. This opinion is significant because it preceded the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and was thus based on the then-existing state of the law, constitutional precepts, and common law principles derived from English law, and clearly expressed the legal and constitutional reasoning concerning “citizenship” in the United States underlying previous federal court precedent (other than and ignored by the majority in Dred Scott) as well as the foundational principles in subsequent Supreme Court determinations over the next 150 years. The formal opinion of the Attorney General concluded that those who were “natural born” citizens were those who were U.S. citizens “by birth:” We have natural-born citizens, (Constitution, article 2, sec. [1],) not made by law or otherwise, but born. And this class is the large majority; in fact, the mass of our citizens, for all others are exceptions specially provided for by law. As they became citizens in the natural way, by birth, so they remain citizens during their natural lives, unless, by their own Rh