[T]he sovereignty of the nation is in the people of the nation, and the residuary sovereignty of each State in the people of each State . . . .
[A]t the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among us may be so called) and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty. . . .
Sovereignty is the right to govern; a nation or State-sovereign is the person or persons in whom that resides. In Europe the sovereignty is generally ascribed to the Prince; here it rests with the people; there, the sovereign actually administers the Government; here, never in a single instance; our Governors are the agents of the people, and at most stand in the same relation to their sovereign, in which regents in Europe stand to their sovereigns.
Jay‟s articulation of the opposition between subjects and citizens is confirmed by Justice James Wilson‟s opinion in Chisholm. Wilson noted that with the exception of Article III, the Constitution refers to “citizens” and “persons,”35 and not subjects: “[t]he term, subject, occurs, indeed, once in the instrument; but to mark the contrast strongly, the epithet „foreign‟ is prefixed.”
Both Jay and Wilson‟s opinions suggest that usage in the founding era reflected a significant conceptual distinction between the words “subject” and “citizen”—a distinction that was strongly associated with the ideas about the nature of sovereignty.
The term “citizen” reflects the notion that individual citizens are sovereign in a republic, whereas the term “subject” reflects feudal and monarchical conceptual of the monarch as sovereign and the individual as the subject, owing a duty of allegiance and duty to the monarch. This conceptual distinction may be relevant to the original understanding of the phrase “natural born citizen” which was used instead of “natural born subject,” the phrase that served as a term of art in English legal usage. The notion of a natural born subject may reflect a feudal understanding of political obligation: those born in the kingdom owed a natural duty of allegiance to their king and were his natural subjects.
Given a republic theory of popular sovereignty, citizens are sovereign and the notion of a “natural born subject” would be anathema(a vehement denunciation). This leaves a gap in the theory of citizenship—a gap that the Constitution fills with the concept of a natural born citizen.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1263885
Yes, there is a distinction. It is covered in Wong in at least two places:
The Supreme Court of North Carolina, speaking by Mr; Justice Gaston, said:
Before our Revolution, all free persons born within the dominions of the King of Great Britain, whatever their color or complexion, were native-born British subjects; those born out of his allegiance were aliens. . . . Upon the Revolution, no other change took place in the law of North Carolina than was consequent upon the transition from a colony dependent on an European King to a free and sovereign [p664] State; . . . British subjects in North Carolina became North Carolina freemen; . . . and all free persons born within the State are born citizens of the State. . . . The term “citizen,” as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term “subject” in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people, and he who before as a “subject of the king” is now “a citizen of the State.”
2 Kent Com. (6th ed.) 39, 42. And he elsewhere says:
And if, at common law, all human beings born within the ligeance of the King, and under the King’s obedience, were natural-born subjects, and not aliens, I do not perceive why this doctrine does not apply to these United States, in all cases in which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary. . . . Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.
(I left out one place because it is talking about something not being an exception to the English law, which some of the people here (yes bp2, I’m talking about you!) would look at, and think “Gotcha!”, and then would post that in bold letters with a picture of monkeys or something, and they would be all wrong, but trying to explain it to them wouldn’t do any good, but they are too busy talking to listen and learn, like many young Grasshoppers)
parsy, the helpful Drone