"Natural Born citizen" isn't even a subject addressed in common law. Common law addressed the birth of a 'subject' to alien parents, but that would not be relevent, since a subject could not become a monarch.
Here is a discussion of the use in the constitution, and the origin of the term.
Edwin Meese, Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, 2005:
Under the longstanding English common-law principle of jus soli, persons born within the territory of the sovereign (other than the children of enemy aliens or foreign diplomats) are citizens from birth. Thus, those persons born within the United States are "natural born citizens from birth.
So I went to Britannica and came across a more general definition of common law (since we are all on the path to becoming lawyers). Common law:
Body of law based on custom and general principles and that, embodied in case law, serves as precedent or is applied to situations not covered by statute. Under the common-law system, when a court decides and reports its decision concerning a particular case, the case becomes part of the body of law and can be used in later cases involving similar matters. This use of precedents is known as stare decisis. Common law has been administered in the courts of England since the Middle Ages; it is also found in the U.S. and in most of the British Commonwealth. It is distinguished from civil law.
So common law is what the supreme court uses when they decide cases. The difference between citizen of the US, native born, naturalized and natural born citizen has been repeated here literally hundreds of times. It is our common law. That's my point.
The DMZFrank summary of natural born citizen should be placed in a FR book of common law. There is much more, of course, but he has said what is essential.
[From Surveyor] "Natural Born citizen" isn't even a subject addressed in common law. Common law addressed the birth of a 'subject' to alien parents, but that would not be relevent, since a subject could not become a monarch. Here is a discussion of the use in the constitution, and the origin of the term.
Well from my last post, I would say (in jest) to editor-surveyor that I have represented a bunch of surveyors and engineers over the years and it is clear from his post that he, unlike BP2, is not a lawyer. But I don't really mean that as a personal insult--and I don't want to discourage productive thought; there is some merit in what he is saying which also leads to another legal argument that has received wide circulation (on Texas Darlin's site among other places).
The Law of Nations is an important work and is gaining some importance with the judicial doctrine seeking to expand the class of legal reference to which the courts would look as a basis for developing US law--I don't agree with the view on which that doctrine is based but on the other hand wouldn't hesitate to cite the reference if it supported my client's position.
But it isn't really dispositive of anything here. The Common Law doctrine of "natural born subject" precedes the work by hundreds of years. The author's comment that "[m]any have said that de Vattel’s Law of Nations . . . . " is speculative and argumentative. It's probably fair to believe that most of the participants in the drafting of the Constitution were familiar with the document and that it had some influence. But who and how much is just unsupported speculation.
I view the line of thought that "editor-surveyor" advances here based on the work as particularly misleading in the Obama setting. The Two Parent argument is just ducky--but I can tell you with a fair degree of assurance, that if it came out that Obama was born in Hawaii (he wasn't), he is going to win no matter what else you prove--even if you prove his father was a Russian bear imported from Siberia.
I believe, although I haven't looked specifically at the legal issue, that one would probably find common law support for the (Two Parent) argument also. What does the king do with the person who is born to the wife of a visiting dignitary from another king? How about the prince that is born to the Queen while she is visiting her parents in the realm where her father is king? Probably weren't common occurrences but I assume Blackstone or some other historical author will have thought if it.
But the most important point to draw from this discussion pertains to our legal system. The engineer surveyor mindset tends to view these legal questions like mathematical calculations of the line location--they aren't.
The current Orly birth certificate may be the best evidence at the moment, but if any reasonable trier of fact looked at the entire record of information available here, even including the Hawaii COLB which I believe the Hawaii authorities have now repudiated, the trier of fact could come to no other conclusion but that he was born in Kenya. That has been true for a long time. It was true when he ran for the Senate. But it didn't make any legal difference.
And proving facts today that show him to be ineligible does not get him out of office either. At the moment, Orly has a good judge in Santa Ana--but it appears that her proceeding may be a little defective; it may be an argument that can't be decided on these pleadings until after he is out of office.
Maybe Orly gets over the problem; maybe she doesn't. A lot depends on what the judge says.
"We are going to decide this on the merits"? When? What relief? Subject to what kind of appeal? Judges say lots of stuff they are later forced to eat. Life goes on.
At present, the most important forum is not the legal forum, it is the public political forum. That is why the Opposing Forces (the "OF") are exerting so much effort to shut down Lou Dobbs and others who are making this a mainstream issue. The legal forum is important to that question because one of the OF arguments is that this has been looked at by the courts which throw it out. So it's good if Orly can do no more than keep her judge from kicking the case out.
But when and if the American people discover that he has been lying to them all this time; that he was really born in Kenya; that he was really not born in Hawaii; there will be consequences. At that point, the legal system will be involved.