Posted on 05/14/2015 8:44:18 AM PDT by Josh Painter
Ex post facto court rulings won't change the correct meaning or intent of a document written in 1787. They won't even give you a good insight into it.
To get a good insight, you need to look at rulings close to that period, especially if made by people who participated in the convention/ratification discussions.
I understand and respect your position. We are in uncharted waters now. It is anybody’s guess as to what would be best for us now.
You have your theory and I have mine. That’s still allowed in America?
My theory is based on the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause not changing anything in Article II, Section 1 but rather further defining it. Since 1868 there are only two types of U.S. citizenship: born and naturalized. Born citizens can be president or vice president and naturalized citizens cannot. The modern day term for the 18th century term “natural born citizen” is “Citizen of the United States At Birth.”
This is consistent with the point of view of the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison who said in 1789: “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other.”— House of Representatives, May 22,1789 which was just two months after the Constitution went into effect.
Unless and until someone proves otherwise to Congress or in a court of law, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii because the state of Hawaii says so. The Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1) gives states the right to determine their own records and have those records accepted in other jurisdictions.
U.S. law states that a person born outside the U.S. to a U.S. citizen parent and an alien parent qualifies as a Citizen of the United States At Birth as long as the citizen parent had lived in the U.S. for five years after the age of 14.
Since Ted Cruz’s mother, the former Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson, was a U.S. citizen born in Wilmington, Delaware, who had lived for at least a decade in the United States, he qualified for U.S. citizenship at birth under this condition.
Original intent can be gleaned from the first Naturalization Act which was adopted in 1790 and which excepted children born overseas to citizens from needing naturalization.
Senator Cruz is a natural born citizen because he was never naturalized and needed no naturalization.
It’s right there in the article posted upthread.
Actually I quoted one of those discussions in a post yesterday. The discussion came from a Supreme Court ruling.
James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention confirmed that
in the constitutional convention, it was objected to that no number of years could properly prepare a foreigner for the presidency; but the counter argument was that men of other lands had spilled their blood in the cause of the United States, and had assisted at every stage of the formation of our institutions. So on the seventh of September, it was unanimously settled that foreign-born residents of fourteen years who should be citizens at the time of the formation of the Constitution are eligible to the office of President.”
Therefore it was length of time (14 years) of living in America that was the original intent of the Founders with regard to presidential eligibility as well as being “jus soli” (born here ).
Corroboration for the statements above (which are taken from George Bancroft’s 1882 publication History of the Formation of the Constitution...) are to be found in Vol. 5 of Johathan Elliott’s “Madison Papers,” page 462, 507, 512 and 521, and in Vol. 3 of Henry D. Gilpin’s “Madison Papers” pages 1398 , 1437 and 1516)
And I have one, too. That’s also allowed, right?
My theory doesn't necessarily conflict with yours, if you accept mine along with yours.
My theory is that the natural born clause in Article II is not intended as a definition of a type of citizen, as that would belong in Article I section 8. Instead, it is a only a qualification for the office, along with the age and residency qualification. Using the common understanding of the terms at the time, and coupling this with the intent stated in the Preamble that the Constitution was established to secure liberty to the People and their Posterity, it makes sense that the Frames meant the Presidency only for the Posterity of We the People.
This is a tighter requirement than simply citizen or naturalized citizen, just like citizen at least 35 years old is a tighter requiremeet than just citizen. So, natural born is an understood requirement for office, not a Constitutional definition of who is a citizen.
That's my theory. Don't bother with the retort of getting a court to agree with me. No court post-Obama ever would. Who knows what a pre-Obama court might have done.
-PJ
That's a tricky use of original intent, because it ultimately did not pass. It was the intent of some, but not the body-at-large.
That's like the current SCOTUS declaring that the original intent of Congress was for federally subsidized exchanges, even though that was negotiated out of the final bill to get it passed. It was the intent of some, it was the intent of Democrats, but it was not the intent of the body-at-large that passed the bill.
-PJ
By “original intent” I meant in reference to the Founders and Framers of the Constitution.
It DID indeed pass and become part of the Constitution in Article II, Section 1:
“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been FOURTEEN YEARS A RESIDENT within the United States.”
I have no problem at all with anyone having their own theory and using it as a guide for who they believe is eligible to be president or vice president and who is not eligible.
Your theory is in line with the U.S. government’s position in the landmark Supreme Court decision from 1898, U.S. v Wong Kim Ark. The government’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court: “Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution the exalted qualification of being eligible to the Presidency of the nation, conferred by the Constitution in recognition of the importance and dignity of citizenship by birth? To hold that Wong Kim Ark is a natural-born citizen within the ruling now quoted, is to ignore the fact that at his birth he became a subject of China by reason of the allegiance of his parents to the Chinese Emperor.”—Government’s Briefs US v Wong Kim Ark
My point is that it doesn't matter what anyone intended in private, what is passed by vote is what was intended.
-PJ
My theory is not that literal. Posterity of We the People does not mean the direct descendants of the original citizens.
"We the People" is a term of art to represent the citizens at large - at any time. The Posterity of We the People means the children of citizens. A foreign-born naturalized citizen becomes one of the body of We the People, and then their future children (their posterity) are natural born citizens.
-PJ
You are entitled to believe anything you want, but this does not make you correct.
My theory is based on the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause not changing anything in Article II, Section 1 but rather further defining it.
As that is changing it, and therefore I regard that as an invalid theory. Changes must be explicit, not accidental.
Since 1868 there are only two types of U.S. citizenship: born and naturalized. Born citizens can be president or vice president and naturalized citizens cannot. The modern day term for the 18th century term “natural born citizen” is “Citizen of the United States At Birth.”
"Born" is not "natural born." You can be a "born" citizen according to a statute, yet not be a "natural" citizen. All the Anchor babies are "born" citizens according to the modern courts.
This is consistent with the point of view of the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison who said in 1789: “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other.”— House of Representatives, May 22,1789 which was just two months after the Constitution went into effect.
We've been through this. Madison also noted that the man's ancestors had been citizens of South Carolina for generations, William Smith cited Vattel himself in support of his claim.
Madison said what he needed to say to get support for his friend and political ally, but when he had a chance to actually *ACT* on this opinion, he did the exact opposite.
You are well familiar with the James McClure episode, but what you don't know is what Madison was doing as Secretary of State before he became President. He was demanding that everything possible be done to weed out the false claims of American Citizenship by British subjects. You should read some of his letters between him and Monroe. It was a major problem of that time. British agents were constantly showing up with Seaman Papers and claiming to be American, and the Napoleon government was getting pissed about it. They suspected the US was collaborating with the British to spy on them.
No, Madison subsequently took a very different approach to dealing with the issue. Mere birth on the soil wasn't good enough for President Madison or Secretary of State Madison.
Unless and until someone proves otherwise to Congress or in a court of law, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii because the state of Hawaii says so.
They also say they will give birth certificates to people who aren't born there, and there is nothing to compel them to speak the truth in this regard. As a matter of fact, looking at the huge numbers of efforts they have made to avoid stating anything plainly, I believe it ought to convince any reasonable person that they are lying about this particular example.
Nobody uses so many conditional statements unless they are hiding something.
Original intent can be gleaned from the first Naturalization Act which was adopted in 1790 and which excepted children born overseas to citizens from needing naturalization.
And here you go with that upside down backwards double flip with a half twist logic.
This obviously doesn't sound ridiculous to you, but I think you would have a tough sell with that one even among the people who mostly agree with your position.
You are alleging that the target of a "Naturalization Act" are the people who do not need naturalization. Well who is getting naturalized then? Nobody? Why call it a "naturalization" act, if nobody is getting naturalized?
I just shake my head and bemoan the fact that your opinion carries as much weight as my own with the uninformed.
I saw that, and intended to look up those references. I’ll have to remind myself to do it.
What I believe and think bears little resemblance to what you thought I was saying.
Let me try to restate my premise. Original intent of the Founders and Framers is expressed via the Naturalization Act of 1790 which said: “the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States”.
It was 19th century historian George Bancroft, who had been a Secretary of the Navy and the founder of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis who wrote in his book: A History of the Formation of The Constitution of the United States of America, which was published in 1882 that the constitutional convention voted unanimously that foreigners who had lived in the United States for fourteen years at the time of the ratification of the Constitution could be eligible to be president/vice president. Bancroft states that the reason for the Framers voting that way was the realization that foreigners had shed their blood and died in the fight for American freedom and the establishment of the new republic.
They didn’t mean it literally either. “Descendants” does not imply only direct descendants.
Excellent!
George Bancroft’s book, History of the Formation of the Constitution... (Volume 2) can be read online: https://archive.org/details/historyofcons02banc
Totally agree. Natural Born Citizen is the level of purity of citizenship not a "type" of citizenship. Also the historical record for the definition of NBC is born to two citizen parents.
People keep looking for laws and court cases to support a completely illogical position. Someone born of one citizen parent on foreign soil or someone born and raised by two citizen parents in Dallas Texas are clearly not the same thing. Both are citizens at birth but not even close to the same level of purity.
“You are entitled to believe anything you want, but this does not make you correct.”
Well that will certainly make the job easier. I don't even have to hunt for it. Thanks for that. I'll look at it directly.
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