Thanks Edge. I was attempting to point out that a search of the Constitution confirms what Madison and James Wilson pointed out; framers of the Constituion intentionally did not include definitions in the document, assuming that definitions were to be drawn from the common language and common law familiar to the framers and residents in the 1780s.
So, while it is true that the term wasn't defined in the Constitution, that doesn't mean that the definition was left to posterity. It was easy to find the definition in contemporaneous writing, the most famous being the most cited legal authority in American jurisprudence between 1779 and 1821 (Grotian Society Papers), Vattel’s Law of Nations, the document commended by Hamilton and Washington as their most important resource on Law of Nations, which Mark Levin won't mention among the important resources to our founders and framers. Citizenship is one of, if not the most important, the essential elements when forming a nation. Washington opened his New York office on his first day as president with only one book on his desk, Vattel's Law of Nations (I qualified Law of Nations because Vattel was not the only author on the topic, just the most readable). Jefferson made Vattel the first required text in our first law school in 1779, at William and Mary. But our sages dismiss the importance of Vattel to our founders and framers.
There is one term defined in the Constitution, treason, perhaps because its application to a republic built upon laws is a little different than it application to monarchies? But natural born citizen, jus soli and jus sanguinis, was very well known. Citizens are mentioned in the Constitution, but because each state would use the term to select representatives based upon its statutes, and the decisions about naturalization belonged in the Congress where they could be debated, there is no definition specified or implied. Natural born citizens were defined, using language commonly understood, because the framers were so concerned with allegiance for the powerful president they had defined, both chief executive and commander in chief of the military.
Astrophysics illuminated Madison's choice for me. When looking at distant objects, one is looking back in time - very far back. A presumption that physics as we understand it applied 10 or 15 billion years ago is essential. Without that assumption of invariance in physical law our observations of distant spectra can have no meaning. Similarly, if the common-language of the framers is not assumed, held constant, the principles contained in the Constitution, the intentions of its framers, cannot be understood. So I infer that the framers defined a natural born citizen by using the words for which the glossary belonged to the society of the time, as Chief Justice John Marshall affirmed, when he cited Vattel as the most concise source for the definition, and Marshall, on the ratification committee, should know what he meant when he signed the Constitution.
That was a leap, but I can find no other definition in the Constitution for any citizen of the other of the the two classes, naturalized citizens - only the exortation to Congress to define, some day, what it means. The definitions are anything but static, even today, for who are citizens. But the definition of a natural born citizen has never varied, never been mentioned in US Code, and, while there have been several dozen amendments attempted, never been reinterpreted by the Supreme Court (The Indiana Supreme Court doesn't count!)
I do see that assuming a term in common usage might not be called a definition. But as citizens were defined, and were different in each state, the Constitution said, in effect “You states don't get to argue over the qualifications for the President. He must be born on the soil of citizen parents, a resident for 14 years and 35 years old.” When it became important to a case, the court confirmed that definition. Was it not a definition before Justice Waite told us it was never doubted?
Great discussion, and reassuring to see how many are becoming aware of our foundations. I suppose we have Obama to thank for our taking such an interest as to cause more and more to read the Constitution carefully and understand what our framers intended.
This is the money quote right here. Because we were a collection of states with different citizenship rules, the citizenship of the president had to be a type of citizenship that was without doubt and without potential foreign entanglement, such as through parents of differing nationalities, whether the marriage was legitimate or not. Vattel's definition is a perfect, neutral definition.
The other thing I like to emphasize is that the founders absolutely did not adopt English common law because it required perpetual allegiance and did not allow expatriation. The only way they could consider themselves to be U.S. citizens was by rejecting the common law definition of citizenship. What they ended up with has similarities, but it is not the same. Gray blurred this issue to give teeth to the 14th amendment, but he strictly avoided redefining natural-born citizenship. The latter he respected from the unanimous Minor decision: all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens. If this argument is made to the judge in Georgia, Obama is toast, regardless of his birth certificates, jpgs and layered PDFs.