[mlo]

"Vattel is used in context like a legal dictionary that the framers used so we can understand the terms they used in the legal context they viewed them from."

Vattel is not a legal dictionary. Context, sure.

"It isn't an end, but it is a means to an end, it gives the NBC argument (re two citizen parents) a legal base to start from."

But in fact Vattel doesn't provide that definition. Birthers get this wrong, like so much else. Vattel never used the term. And the passage birthers quote wasn't a definition Vattel was imposing, it was an observation about what various countries already did. But England wasn't one of those countries, as Vattel himself noted.

[mnehring]

Interesting, thanks

[edge919]

But in fact Vattel doesn't provide that definition. Birthers get this wrong, like so much else. Vattel never used the term. And the passage birthers quote wasn't a definition Vattel was imposing, it was an observation about what various countries already did. But England wasn't one of those countries, as Vattel himself noted.

This is completely disingenuous and extremely misleading. Vattel's definition was about what it means to be considered a native citizen of a country and how citizenship occurs naturally at birth. John Jay wrote a letter to George Washington that tells us what he thought it meant to be a natural born citizen, which was to provide a check against the admission of foreigners. This fits in with Vattel's Law of Nation's. He wrote, "The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners, who are permitted to settle and stay in the country.... Their children follow the condition of their fathers ..." which was the same circumstance used to define the natives ... the children naturally follow the condition of the fathers. To be a natural citizen at birth, or natural born citizen, you would have to be born of a citizen father, else you would be a foreigner. Again, Vattel says, "it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country."

The Supreme Court had no problem recognizing this term and definition, as it said in Minor v. Happersett (AND Wong Kim Ark) ... "At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners." Are you saying the Supreme Court is wrong?? If so, why??