Posted on 11/12/2010 4:53:42 PM PST by Retired Intelligence Officer
I need some help on this. I was reading where Bobby Jindal was born to immigrants here on visas. If he was born in Baton Rouge before they became naturalized citizens, wouldn't that make him ineligible to become President? I am in a heated argument at another website over this and I need answers to this controversy. Any help would be appreciated.
R.I.O.
A good description of your postings. I may also add that they are ignorant, dumb, stupid, and obtuse.
“Article II is meant to protect the sovereignty of the citizens and nation by ensuring political allegiance to a Sovereign Republic form of government by preventing a monarchy, because the original intent was that Article II should bar Titles of Nobility from attaining the office of President, which would create a Monarchy and not a Sovereign Republic”
This point is actually pretty solid, though I might add by turns too vague and too narrow-minded. Anyway, yes, one of the reasons for the eligibility restrictions was to keep out foreign aristocratic influence.
Well are you?
That’s not too helpful.
And those stricter standards are? Give us a description.
“If your citizenship IS dependent on the 14th amendment, you aren’t a natural born citizen.”
It doesn’t say that. If it did, posts on these thread would be filled overflowing with the quote.
“It’s why Justice Waite declared Wong Kim Ark to be a citizen of the United States by virtue of the 14th amendment, but clearly avoided declaring him to be a natural born citizen.”
Clearly avoided in the sense that it just wasn’t mentioned. But not in the sense that it’s unsaid because they know it’s too obvious to bother putting into words, or whatever it is you’re arguing. I still don’t get why they would avoid saying it. Why not come out with it?
Aside from the fact that it wasn’t at issue.
“Huh? Are you not claiming that Wong Ark is a natural born citizen?”
I am claiming that, yes. But I don’t claim it says that in the Ark decision.
“And my response was to WOSG”
Oh, sorry. Thought this was a forum.
“You guys are weak when it comes to logical inference”
Inference is a decent guess, a logically defensible guess. Not a baseless guess. You cannot infer from Obama’s refusal to release documents that he is not eligible (that is, on the basis of place of birth, not on the basis of parentage). Nor can you infer from SCOTUS not calling Kawakita and Ark natural born citizens that Kawakita and Ark weren’t natural born citizens. It doesn’t follow.
Sad thing is, from your point of view, all they’d have to have done was spell it out, in a few words, and no one could argue. Well, they could still argue SCOTUS was wrong, but they couldn’t argue there was no legal precedence for a third category of citizenship. If I were you, I’d be pissed at their silence.
All I see in those extracts is what we already know. That Vattel had some influence and that we shouldn’t overestimate the influence of Blackstone. Yawn. Doesn’t say Vattel was more influential than Blackstone. I will never believe otherwise.
That reference to Vattel inspiring the confederacy of states is thin. He was not the only commentator on international law, and there were far more important examples of confederacy, I’d think, from the Founders’ wide reading of ancient literature. We see this pop up a lot in the Federalist.
Once the seperate states amalgamated, by the way, they stopped being foreign to eachother. and the laws of nations no longer applied. We are a republic, not a confederacy. The states very clearly surrendered part of their sovereignty to the central government, which regulated commerce and other things between them according to its constitution. As we know, the relationship ended being, for better or worse, more one-sided and less apt to be compared to relations between quasi-foreign nations than the states’ relationship to the crown. Because of the altered nature of the relationship, if Vattel was an influence on their uniting, he ceased to matter the second they were united.
When it says the only English laws validly received into America came in the pre-revolutionary period, well, that’s a long period. Also, if Blackstone came too late to directly impact the actual development of English law in America, he tells us a lot about those laws. Certainly he had enough of an impact to warp Americans’ subsequent opinion of said laws, and furthermore, to impact the future development of distinctly American law.
For clarification’s sake, I wasn’t calling you or anyone in particular a “dummy.” I was putting that in the mouth of the the fictitious document that explains why Elg spoke to natural born status while Ark didn’t. In other words, anyone who doesn’t see that’s it’s so bleeding plain that Ark isn’t natural born that it’s not worth addressing is a dummy.
“You’re the dummy who originally agreed with r9etb that because there ‘are some around here’ who say that Gray did not say WKA was a natural born citizen therefore he was not, which r9etb followed up with - ‘...Which is hooey.’”
Then you exclaimed ‘Exactly.’”
Yes, it was hooey. Not saying someone is a natural born citizen is not evidence that he isn’t a natural born citizen.
“So again, if it is ‘hooey,’ then you agree that Wong Ark is a natural born citizen.”
Yes, I agree. Though, unlike you, I don’t maintain the decision (or lackthereof) proves my point.
“So you concluded that since Justice Gray was not ‘deciding presidential eligibility’ he therefore did not state or affirm Ark was a natural born citizen.”
Yes. Or, rather, not “therefore.” He could have affirmed or disaffirmed as he so chose, but didn’t have to do either, and in fact didn’t.
“I then showed you your premise is flawed because Elg was ruled to be a natural born citizen and she was not running for president or was her case about presidential eligibility.”
Just because they addressed it in her case (and she was found to be natural born) does not mean that every citizenship case wherein the plaintiff lacks her particular qualifications and that doesn’t address natural born status is automatically to be taken as denying said status. I bring you back to the original post, to which I added “exactly”:
“There are some around here who see this as inadequate, as it doesn’t say ‘natural born,’ so he must not be a natural born citizen.
Which is hooey.”
It IS hooey. Elg addressing it has no bearing Ark. I’m sure you can find ancillary issues discussed in the Ark decision that don’t come up in the Elg decision, which would tell us nothing in itself about the Elg case.
“A good description of your postings. I may also add that they are ignorant, dumb, stupid, and obtuse”
You too. [raspberry]
“And those stricter standards are? Give us a description.”
You know what they are. Citizen from birth, five years older, and longer residency.
“Well are you?”
No, or at least undiagnosed. I was interested how for you thought I fall below stupidity.
for = far
While I assume you meant to be polite, you were dead wrong for several reason.
While the reference to Article 1, Section 8 may be referring to the body of international common law known as law of nations, by far the most popular edition was Vattel’s, published in 1758, and in Benjamin Franklin's hands in 1762. The other famous authors of compendia of the law of nations, Grotius, Pufendorf, Bynkershoek, Wolff were not nearly as successful as Vattel, partly because some had a partisan religious positions and also because Vattel was particularly succinct.
Vattel’s Law of Nations was our nation's first law book, the core curriculum at our first law school, an important move because, in spite of claims by some Obama cadre, we firmly rejected British Common Law along with monarchy and King George. Thomas Jefferson converted some divinity curriculum to make room for law and mathematics at William and Mary in 1779. The first required text was Law of Nations.
In 1790, Alexander Hamilton, whose original specification for presidential eligibility didn't require a natural born citizen, but was changed at John Jay's suggestion in a note to Washington, said this about Vattel in a note to Washington on Sept 15 1790:
But Vatel, perhaps the most accurate and approved of the writers on the laws of nations, preserves a mean between these1 different opinions.
The Constitution is not a reference book. It is a book of principles and guidelines. To keep it relevant the Framers defined very little, wanting its meaning to be understood by all citizens and not doled out by mandarins in white wig's. It depends, intentionally, upon the common language and the common law of the time. Founder and Framer and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson talks about this at great length, dismissing any notion that our framers depended upon the loose collection of dicates writen to protect royalty called English Common law. In Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, Madison (p37) points out that unless we make the effort to understand the language of the framers, we will lose the protections, the guarantees in the Constitution.
The notions of jus sanguinis and jus soli, inheritance by blood and by having been born on the same sail, are discussed by Aristotle and Cicero at length, and quoted by James Wilson and Vattel. They are concepts from the natural law. It natural to most that man's morals, ethics, and allegiances, will be most strongly indicated by his parent's allegiances. To parents, this is a common idea, but a powerful one.
The U.S. was a new nation, but for over two hundred years before its emancipation, a trading nation. Many, perhaps most, though I haven't counted, of the early Supreme Court cases involved trade and the implications of citizenship. That was the subject of The Charming Betsy, and The Venus, both John Marshall cases. In the Venus Marshall, in 1814 quoted Vattel as the most concise source of the meaning of a natural born citizen. Obots will distract with arguments that Marshall used the French “native” and “indigene” but don't waste time over that. Marshall may have been showing off his French, because there were already over ten English editions of Vattel published in the U.S. and they all used “natural born citizen” in the translation associated with “born on the soil of citizen parents.”
The U.S. used Vattel more than any other legal reference. Between 1789 and 1820 there were 92 citations in pleadings to 14 for Pufendorf. The numbers for citations in testimony are similar. Those numbers are form an article on Law of Nations by F.S. Ruddy in the Grotian Society Papers of 1972. Vattel was U.S. common law, according to Justice Joseph Story, a founder, like Marshall and Wilson.
John Marshall pointed out that words in the Constitution are all effective. Article 1 Section 2: “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States.”
The Framers didn't require that Representatives be natural born citizens. If there were no difference the Framers would not have used the different term, “natural born citizen.” These men were not careless with their language or their logic. The distinction was, as expressly stated by Chief Justice Morrison Waite, based upon notions “At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar” clear, even to the only justice appointed by an ineligible president before Obama, Justice Gray of Wong Kim Ark fame. Gray repeatedly cites Minor, and then quotes the whole passage. Gray cites Marshall who quotes Vattel. There is no doubt that the the Constitution doesn't equate the two definitions, because the the 14th Amendment, and no Amendment, can alter the interpretation of another provision of the Constitution by implication. If a provision is to be amended, it must be done explicitly. So your correcton may have been wrong; for the U.S. law of nations and Law of Nations meant the same body of ideas. It is not unlike Wagner's Dictionery and Webster's Dictionery. We used Vattels refernce to law of nations. And your equivalence between citizen and natural born citizen is outright wrong. Even Pat Leahy gets that, when he agreed with Judge Michael Chertoff in Senate Res 511, Apr 2008, when Chertoff said:
“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied. “That is mine, too,” said Leahy.?
Excellent post. Thank You.
Thank You.
“’No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States.’
The Framers didn’t require that Representatives be natural born citizens. If there were no difference the Framers would not have used the different term, ‘natural born citizen.’ These men were not careless with their language or their logic.”
Who said there was no difference? It’s implied by the legth of citizenship qualification that it’s possible for naturalized citizens—the other category beside born citizens—to be representatives.
So after almost 450 posts, is there are consensus of whether he qualifies or not?
“we firmly rejected British Common Law along with monarchy and King George”
Even if I accept that proposition, it doesn’t mean that the Englishness that had already inserted itself into the American legal tradition disappeared.
I’d like to know, admitting the American common law tradition to be different, it just so happens that we (except for Louisiana) adopted a common law system ourselves. That is, if we were so free of the British example. What are the odds?
I’d also like to know how you international law nuts explain how thoroughly imbued were the minds of American rebels with the concept of “the rights of Englishmen,” as developed by common and constitutional law. Hard to explain the Declaration and Bill of Rights otherwise. I’m talking about trial by jury, habeas corupus, no peacetime standing army, right to petition, right to keep and bear arms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion (somewhat), due process, and on and on.
Surely, we cannot be saying that this all came from “natural law,” especially as it openly exists in the unofficial British constitution.
This elevation of Vattel and “the law of nations” over common law reminds me of people who were sick of “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” and suddenly switched to “Revolver” as the greatest Beatles album. I like it, but come on. Where’s the sense of perspective? Overrated or not, you cannot choose a new “greatest” willy-nilly.
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