That dubious distinction is your stock in trade.
It really amazes me, so many people claiming to value the Constitution. And they come on here and argue against Founding Fathers like James Madison, the Father of the Constitution.
Again you misstate. No one is arguing against Madison. What is being argued is that you are misrepresenting him, and overemphasizing his statement in support of your theory.
They ignore and revile the close associate of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
You mean Rawle, whom you apparently didn't realize was a British Loyalist during the War, and who received his legal training in London. This is not revilement, it is merely stating the facts accurately. Also, the fact that he associated with Washington and Franklin does not establish that he was of the same mind as they on this topic.
But now that you brought it up, I am beginning to suspect that Rawle may be Patient Zero in this whole twisted mess. I suspect many of the subsequent legal authorities were the victim of his British Law interpretation of American citizenship. The error in his manuscript very likely influenced countless subsequent legal authorities in their own understanding.
They try to make the Constitution say something that no court case has ever said it meant in the entire history of the United States.
And this is just wrong. Justice Marshall clearly stated the principle in "The Venus", and Justice Waite clearly stated the exact same principle in "Minor v Happersett." You just don't like these cases, so you refuse to acknowledge them.
And those of us who've actually read the Constitution, and read the court cases, and read the debates of the Constitutional Convention, and read the historical quotes, and who are representing them 100% ACCURATELY... well, we're "dipsh!t trolls."
Those of you who read it with a lazy eye.
Yes, dipsh!t pretty much sums it up.
I don't get his whole focus on Rawle. Kent came before him, and St. George Tucker came before that.
Tucker annotated Blackstone's Commentaries (of which his View of the Constitution is part), fought in the Revolutionary War, became a professor of William and Mary College and was appointed by Madison to the Virginia District Court.
Why would someone go all the way to Rawle?
Unless, of course, they aren't trying to find a conclusion to the facts so much as they're trying to find facts to fit a conclusion.
Of course you are. Madison acknowledged both jus soli and jus sanguinis, but said that when one was talking about citizenship, jus soli was WHAT APPLIED IN THE UNITED STATES.
In other words, he quite explicitly said that OUR NATION HAD ADOPTED THE BASIC JUS SOLI RULE FOR CITIZENSHIP.
This was an entirely explicit statement on his part. ANd you just brush it off as if it were nothing.
And this is just wrong. Justice Marshall clearly stated the principle in "The Venus", and Justice Waite clearly stated the exact same principle in "Minor v Happersett." You just don't like these cases, so you refuse to acknowledge them.
I've never refused to acknowledge either.
The Venus was clearly about DOMICILE, not citizenship, and certainly not natural born citizenship.
AND DOMICILE IS THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH VATTEL WAS QUOTED IN THAT CASE.
So you take a case in which Marshall produced a passage from Vattel because he found Vattel's opinion ON DOMICILE relevant. And you extrapolate from that, that Marshall must have also found Vattel's supposed opinion on citizenship relevant.
But Marshall himself NEVER QUOTED THE PASSAGE BECAUSE HE AGREED WITH VATTEL ON CITIZENSHIP, OR EVEN FOUND THAT OPINION RELEVANT.
In fact, Justice Marshall was a bit careless in this instance, because he used a badly-translated version of Vattel that silly birthers could pull up nearly 200 years later, to justify a pile of horse manure that Marshall himself almost certainly would have TOLD you was horse manure.
As for Minor v. Happersett, it doesn't matter how many times rational people point out: 1) the 2 or 3 sentences you quote were the very definition of "dicta," 2) they never said children of aliens weren't natural born citizens anyway, they said they didn't know and frankly didn't care, and 3) it would have all been overruled by Wong Kim Ark anyway.
Legally speaking, this is a piece of tissue paper. It is literally difficult to imagine a case with any less substance to it.
And as noted a few days ago by another poster here, AT LEAST ONE JUDGE HAS SPECIFICALLY RULED THAT THE CLAIM IS A PILE OF HORSE****.
Allen v Obama, Arizona Superior Court Judge Richard E. Gordon:
Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution, and this precedent fully supports that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution and thus qualified to hold the office of President. Contrary to Plaintiffs assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.Pima County Superior Court, Tuscon, Arizona, March 7, 2012
So you've even had at least one official judge tell you your pile of horse manure from Minor is horse manure.
That won't stop you, of course. Because you've got a wagon-load of Brown Gold.
Yeee-ha, boys! We got us some BROWN GOLD!!