An Article II “natural born Citizen” Is Not the Same...

A Place to Ask Questions to Get the Right Answers ^ | 5/18/2010 | Mario Apuzzo

[patlin]

A “natural born subject” under English common law could never renounce his or her allegiance. Mannie Brown explained the “old common-law doctrine Nemo potest exuere patriam by quoting Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case: “Ligeance is a true and faithful obedience of the subject due to his Sovereign. This ligeance and obedience is an incident inseparable to every subject; for as soon as he is born he oweth by birth-right ligeance and obedience to his Sovereign.” Mannie Brown, Expatriation of Infants, University of Toronto Press 97 (1939). But as we have seen above, in his 1799 citizenship law Jefferson wrote that a person could exercise his “natural right of expatriating himself” “whensoever” he saw fit to do so. Jefferson included in his law a right in a person to relinquish his citizenship in a manner prescribed by law. This right was known as the right to expatriate which was not only alien to English common law but forbidden by it. Jefferson’s idea that a person could renounce allegiance to the country of his or her birth was so accepted by early Congresses and society that Congress codified this right by passing the Naturalization Act of 1795 (1 Stat. 414, c. 20), which provided persons naturalizing in the United States to absolutely renounce and abjure all allegiance to any foreign prince or state and to support the Constitution. Over the years, there continued a debate in the courts whether an American citizen could expatriate himself or herself. The matter was finally settled in 1868, when Congress passed the Expatriation Act of 1868 and Representative Woodward of Pennsylvania proclaimed that by doing so Congress had driven feudalism from our shores.

[Seizethecarp]

“Going to have to reread it because I took it different.”

See my #28 in this thread.

Mario said:

“I submit that both Wong Kim Ark and Obama’s supporters are wrong in concluding that a ‘natural born Citizen’ is the same thing as an English common law “natural born subject.”

My reply to Mario begins:

"I have the highest respect for you and your work, but may I modestly suggest (not being a lawyer) that WKA did NOT totally equate NBC and NBS."