And when I do that with the likes of Swift, Kent, Tucker, Rawle, and Story, you ignore them. 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.
wift does not seem to be listed as a member of the Constitutional convention . . . 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.