[WXRGina]

Our founders might indeed have understood Vattel in the way this thread suggests. That’s not what they said in plain text. Incorporating Vattel by inference is NOT strict construction. If our founders meant that both parents be should be citizens, they should have explicitly said that. Both Jindal and Rubio are eligible to run. Even if you could have made an argument otherwise before, Obama sets the precedent that NBC means citizen at birth, period. The NBC argument has been settled. Vattel lost.

Thinking such as yours is why our Constitution is deader than fried chicken.

Those of us who cherish it, like the author of this excellent piece, will continue to fight to return it to authority.

[Campion]

Balderdash.

Vattel is not the law. The constitution -- as written, not as informally amended by FR posters, statutes, treaties, and court decisions of the US are. Persuade a Federal court that NBC must be understood as Vattel describes it, then get back to us.

Until then, the operating precedent is English common law, which recognizes jus soli as sufficient for NBC status, and and the Wong Kim Ark decision, which incorporated that common law precedent into American jurisprudence.