Posted on 02/02/2016 4:36:59 PM PST by 11th Commandment
Quit with the spam, nothing you posted address your original post, and my response to it
Swift does not seem to be listed as a member of the Constitutional convention, though it is stated that he was a member of congress in 1787. He's a maybe.
Kent was not a member of the Constitutional convention nor a state ratifying convention.
Tucker was not a delegate of either the Constitutional convention or a ratifying convention.
Rawle was a British Trained lawyer who was surrounded by other lawyers who flat out told him his theories on citizenship were nonsense. (google "Rawle" with "revolutionary forceps.") He was not a convention delegate to either the Constitutional convention or a state ratifying convention, and he kept trying to assert that English common law freed the slaves. (Which was not true at all.)
Story was too young to have been privy to any of the deliberations.
Rawle was appointed by George Washington. You find that same provenance significant with Lewis, but then pooh-pooh it with Rawle.
Watch how you do this. You first point out that Rawle was Attorney General, and so I say "big deal, so was Lewis, and prior to Rawle."
You then characterize the exchange as me making a big deal out of Lewis being Attorney General, and that is not at all what I have done. My position is that to the extent that this matters for Rawle, it matters just as much for Lewis. In the larger perspective, I don't think it matters with either of them. You don't learn what was the intent of congress by being attorney general, you do it by being privy to the deliberations occurring in the legislative bodies that are enacting the law.
Your inconsistency is amusing.
Your constant efforts to portray things as being inconsistent is mildly unsettling.
And this is the reasoning and argument I held up to you when you tried insinuating John Bingham was stating a rule on citizenship at odds with his "learned friend" James F. Wilson who was citing Blackstone and Wm. Rawle
John Bingham states the Parent rule twice. His understanding appears to be not only historically correct, but the far more sensible (from the perspective of governing a nation) position.
Of course, you never attempted to explain that one.
It isn't worth the slightest effort to explain. Rawle polluted the water, and foolish people drank of it.
The status of those born here doesn't hinge on a statute, so that question is simply outside the stated scope of the work.
As a matter of fact, the status of about 100,000 people born here after 1776 and prior to 1783, did hinge upon an English law statute, made by Queen Anne, if I remember correctly. But this is beside the point. The fact remains, Roberts (trained solely by William Lewis, a Pennsylvania delegate) prominently attributes to four judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, (all State convention delegates) the work he published in his book, complete with a clear and unequivocal statement that citizenship in Pennsylvania is based on Vattel, and most certainly not based on English common law.
The point you are refusing to address is that such an act is impossible without the tacit approval of William Lewis and these Judges of the Supreme court of Pennsylvania.
He is articulating this position as THEIR position, and were it not so, he would have been injuncted from publishing this book. That it sat in Pennsylvania and other Law Libraries for over half a century (it was republished again in the 1847) demonstrates that this was the accepted position of the Pennsylvania legal system during this time period.
You cannot spin this, and it is a testament to your childishness that you insist on trying.
If you completely discount the presence of that pesky little word "citizen". Yeah, all but for that little piece, everything points to English law... except for the fact that what we did in creating the nation was a deliberate rebuke of it.
On second thought, NOTHING points to English law regarding American citizenship. NOTHING.
I keep arguing that he couldn't have effected the usage of the word "citizen" because he did not use the word "citizen." :)
So that European writers used "citizen" whereas English writers used "subject" isn't a very significant distinction given that it's recognized that Jefferson (like many other Colonists) read and drew upon writer from both England and the Continent.
And so we chose to follow the writers that used the word "Citizen". Again, the word itself steers you to the source of the concepts it embodies.
Your straw man mischaracterizations get rather tedious.
How cute. You think i'm making a straw man when I am really just mocking you. :) Here's a tip. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously when I suggested Rousseau was a source of English law. :)
Rousseau and Vattel were each European writers who influence Jefferson and whom Jefferson drew upon when writing the Declaration. Both used the term "citizen."
Okay, so i'll bite. Did Rousseau define citizenship? Did he explain what it was, rather than say what rights citizens ought to have? Vattel did.
Therefore, you can't blithely just waive your hand and proclaim that Jefferson's use of "citizen" stems from Vattel.
In the absence of a Rousseau definition, it seems eminently reasonable to do so.
I have an Ace. You have to pony up an Ace to even make it a contest. Is Rousseau an Ace? Show me his definition of citizenship that supports your position.
Your mind is made up and you won't entertain counter-proof.
Well we won't know whether that is true until some is actually presented. I'm still waiting. :)
And a contemporary source (Otis) who give equal credit to Locke and Vattel (listing Locke first) you simply highlight the part about Vattel and ignore the equal credit he gives to Locke.
Locke died in 1704. For some reason, the movement to independence didn't pick up any speed until 1764, coincidentally, after Vattel's book had made it over to the Boston debate club. :)
But, again, my puropse here is not to convince you; it suffices for me to show that your positions and arguments are objectively unreasonable.
I'm sure that is your goal, but you will actually have to make some progress in that direction before anyone will take you seriously.
I quoted where Bingham termed Rep. Wilson his "learned friend" with whom he had frequent discussions on these topics. If you would give Wilson the credit Bingham gives him, perhaps you wouldn't remained mired in ignorance.
Yes, we should all hinge our understanding of history on the flattering deference that one politician gives to another on the House floor. I believe this is the sort of pleasantries nonsense that conservatives are furious is still being pushed by the likes of Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell and John McCain.
Bingham's position gives us a governable nation without anchor babies or birth tourists, and No President Obama. The English Law idiocy gives us "anchor babies", "birth tourists", and "Precedent Obama."
No, ignorant one, I have done that repeatedly. You just ignore it. Here's the learned John Bingham:
"Who does not know that every person born within the limits of the Republic is, in the language of the Constitution, a natural-born citizen." Rep. Bingham, Cong. Globe, 40th Cong, 2nd Sess, p. 2212 (1869)
Yeah, he clarified his position earlier. It rebukes yours.
That's the jus soli, English common law based rule of "natural born citizen," straight and clear out of the mouth of John Bingham.
And posted above is Jus Sanguinus, Vattel based Natural Law, straight and clear out of the mouth of John Bingham.
The difference between your position and mine is that my position can incorporate yours, but your position cannot incorporate mine. John Bingham easily lives within the framework of my position.
Franklin and Adams wrote "natural born subject" into state constitutions.
They also wrote "citizen." My framework can incorporate the occasional mistake of using the word "subject" when they mean "citizen", but your framework cannot allow the usage of the word "citizen" when your definition means "subject."
Julia Lynch's parents had been in New York for 4 years prior to her birth.
A sh*t I do not give about the consequences of a state court ruling under the premise of "default" law. Stupid points should be given for every citation of Lynch.
And the SCOTUS in WKA cites Lynch favorably 3 times for much the same proposition -- that all persons born in the U.S. were native citizens at birth had been recognized without controversy since the Constitution was enacted.
The premise being that State Law modifies Federal Law. No thanks. It requires too much brain damage to accept that premise.
So, I asked you once before: given that Lynch is cited favorably within the 39th Congress and the SCOTUS as exemplary of the common law on "natural born citizen," why should anyone give a rat's a** what the NY legislature later did?
I probably considered the question so ignorant as to be unworthy of reply. Come to think of it, I still do.
But just to hold your little hand why you try to grasp these tough concepts, the Lynch decision was based on the fact that New York didn't have a statute to address the issue, therefore the Judge did what Judges of the time always did. They applied English Common law.
They should have applied American Common law, and then the Legislature would not have had to create a statute to fix the stupidity they caused.
Takahashi involved a person born outside of the U.S. who later came to the U.S. with the hope of becoming a citizen. So the case is irrelevant to the question of the status of a person born in the U.S.
In 1898 the question of the status of a person born in the U.S. to parents of foreign nationality was addressed. In that case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the court rule that the phrase "born . . . in the U.S., and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the 14th Amendment took its meaning from the common law meaning of "natural born citizen," which in turn derived from the English common law term "natural born subject." In that case, the U.S. government and dissenting justices urged application of Vattel. Vattel was rejected as being a source of the applicable rule.
Is there some point you're trying to make? OK, that was the 1883 edition, sec. 212. And in 1898 it was argued that what Vattel says there be applied to the case of a child born in the U.S. to Chinese national parents. That argument lost.
Vattel was kicked to the curb as inapposite to U.S. birth citizenship. The Court analyzed that our U.S. rule traces back through the common law rule of "natural born citizen" and that it was that rule that was embodied in the 14th Amendment.
By the Liberal majority.
"Democracy" is not really a valid method to obtain the truth. Witness the "Gay" Marriage nonsense.
This is what Cptn @$$hole doesn't seem to grasp. He's late to the party, and much information of which we used to have compiled, many of us have simply lost track.
It is simply no longer worth the effort to hunt through the forest of bookmarks looking for quotes and incidents to rebut him with.
Much of what I throw at him simply comes from what I remember of the topic from my previous interest in it, and I really don't bother to try very hard at it anymore.
Still managing to kick his @$$ though. :)
Except for pertaining to several million Indians. :)
Again, in the absence of your producing any evidence that the meaning of "natural born citizen" was discussed at all within the Convention (or the ratifying debates), being at the convention (or not) wouldn't affect a person's understanding of the term. So I consider your repeated "he wasn't at the convention" line to be meaningless and mere side-stepping to avoid the fact I've simply WAY more authorities to cite.
And as far as the historical record on this topic goes, that these attorneys served in that capacity doesn't seem to have mattered to or impressed anyone else.
Rawle was a British Trained lawyer who was surrounded by other lawyers who flat out told him his theories on citizenship were nonsense. (google "Rawle" with "revolutionary forceps.")
OK, I googled that, and it pulled up the case of M'Ilwaine v. Coxe, a citizenship case in which Rawle won.
You are once again refuted by the very authorities you cite. Amusing, that is.
You don't learn what was the intent of congress by being attorney general, you do it by being privy to the deliberations occurring in the legislative bodies that are enacting the law.
Again, your method here is to assume there were deliberations on the term "natural born citizen" and that persons who attended the Convention or ratifying conventions thus can be considered to hold a superior understanding of the "original intent." Again the rule is "Your claim, your proof." We have a record of controversy and discussion over many topics. But the record is devoid of any suggestion that "NBC" was discussed in the least. Mere presence in Philadelphia in 1787 doesn't result in some superior understanding about a concept that wasn't discussed.
John Bingham states the Parent rule twice.
But he doesn't say the parents must be citizens. You are reading that into his words to force-fit him into your Vattel paradigm.
That it sat in Pennsylvania and other Law Libraries for over half a century (it was republished again in the 1847) demonstrates that this was the accepted position of the Pennsylvania legal system during this time period.
Though you still lack an example of a (white) person born in PA to alien parents who was described as an alien. The book appears to have sat on the shelf with no one actually applying the supposed rule.
Rawle polluted the water, and foolish people drank of it.
Your question-begging methodology persists unabated.
You have yet to establish that before Rawle there was any clear-water consensus that the rule was other than he states. I've demonstrated much evidence to the contrary -- how Adams and Franklin retained the English common law terminology ("natural born subject") in their respective state constitutions, how Swift, Tucker, and Kent (writing prior to Rawle) espoused the same view. Zoltan has added another with Rep. Hillhouse:
"If we pass the present amendment, the construction must be, that an alien, after residing in this country, abjuring his allegiance to his own, offering to become a citizen of, and taking the oath of fidelity to, the United States, is in the possession of the rights of a privileged order to which he may have belonged; and further that their rights are hereditary, unless he shall, agreeably to the amendment, come forward and renounce them. But what will be the consequences of him not renouncing? Most clearly that he retains and possesses them. A nobleman, then, may come to the United States, marry, purchase lands, and enjoy every other right of a citizen, except of electing and being elected to office. His children, being natural born citizens, will enjoy, by inheritance, his title, and all the rights of his nobility and a privileged order he possessed, an idea which ought not, either explicitly or impliedly, to be admitted." Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 3rd Congress 2nd Session, January 2nd, 1795 page 1046.
Do tell. Where's the hue and cry from the Pennsylvania delegation (or anyone else) that such is NOT our law? That Congress in 1795 was comprised of many who were at Philadelphia in 1787 and/or on their respective state ratifying bodies. Consider the words spoken:
"Were this statement by [Hillhouse] false [they] would have all said to him: "You stupid twit! Don't you know that [Emmerich de Vattel] is the basis of citizenship?"
Are you here going to disavow your own argument and dive ever deeper into your muck of inconsistency?
The point you are refusing to address is that such an act is impossible without the tacit approval of William Lewis and these Judges of the Supreme court of Pennsylvania.
I accept that is a possibility. Though I think it also possible they accepted the point was outside the scope of the project, that Roberts in that footnote was largely offering his opinion, and that given they acknowledge up front that the work doesn't carry the weight of judicial precedent, that it wasn't a point that warranted editing.
The children of non-naturalized German immigrants in Pennsylvania were later recognized seemingly without question to be natural born citizens. So either the supposed Vattel rule was never applied or it mysteriously changed (how?). Holes in your theory abound.
You cannot spin this, and it is a testament to your childishness that you insist on trying.
It really burns you, doesn't it, every time I take one of your sacred cows and skewer it? This is but another example.
Lynch states what the common law on citizenship was. The 39th Congress was tasked with taking the existing law (the common law) and giving force and equal protection effect to that, which the Congress did via the Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment. And Lynch was held up within the Congress as being exemplary of the common law rule prevailing in the United States. The SCOTUS in WKA viewed the case the same way.
Your hallowed piece of later NY legislation is IRRELEVANT when the question is "what is the common law rule in the U.S.?" Statutory law is NOT common law (which is judge-made law or case law). Your ignorance here is at the most fundamental level of legal knowledge.
Here's a little trip down memory lane for you. And a refresher on history.
Alexander Hamilton (Constitutional Convention member, co-author of The Federalist Papers) was one who applied the same rule as Horace Gray would a century later:
"But how is the meaning of the Constitution to be determined? . . .[W]here so important a distinction in the Constitution is to be realized, it is fair to seek the meaning of terms in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived [i.e., England]" On the Carriage Tax, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Vol. 8.
The Framers consciously borrowed English law terminology and jurisprudence and stated "look to English law for better understanding of our Constitution"
Pray tell, how is this a "rebuke" of English law?
Was Hamilton another, along with Franklin and Adams, who "didn't get the memo" that our Constitution (and Declaration) is but an incorporation of the natural law of Emmerich de Vattel?
The exceptions to your theory just keep coming and coming. . . .
Here I'm not sure what ballpark you think you're playing in.
I've already shown you that the SCOTUS kicked Vattel to the curb on the question of birth citizenship. Are you trying to suggest Tucker took a Vattel-oriented view on that topic? He didn't.
In his "Blackstone's Commentaries," Tucker set forth this line from Blackstone:
The children of aliens, born here in England, are generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such." (And that is a summary of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case.)
Tucker then drops a footnote (footnote 10):
10. L. V. Edi. 1794, c. 110. L. U. S. 1 Cong. c. 3. 7 Cong. c. 28. accordant. Link
The references are to three items of U.S law: 1) Laws of Virginia of 1794 (the citizenship law for the Commonwealth originally drafted by Jefferson); 2) The Naturalization Act of 1790; and 3) the 1802 Naturalization Act.
Of these Tucker states U.S. law is "accordant" -- meaning in agreement with Blackstone. So Tucker is indicating that American law is in agreement with the jus soli view of Blackstone.
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