If Obama's father was a Kenyan then how could Hussein be eligible to be POTUS?

8/26/2009 | Kellynla

[Technical Editor]

Nobody’s denying Ben said what he said. But Vattel loses the contest against English common law when it comes to the meaning of natural born citizenship.

Not one single reputable lawyer or scholar agrees with you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/17th.asp

[Technical Editor]

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/17th.asp

The above is for your general reading and enjoyment.

Take care, y’all. I just stopped back to post that link, which a friend told me about.

Our country’s legal heritage clearly comes from England and not from a Swiss philosopher.

I won’t return to this thread. Take good care and I hope to see you after the Joker has been dealt with.

[GizmosAndGadgets]

But Vattel loses the contest against English common law when it comes to the meaning of natural born citizenship.

Okay. If English common law is so overpowering, then the son of a British subject will, himself be a British subject, regardless of his location of birth. Obama Sr. was a British subject, so what application of "common law" makes his son both a British subject and "natural born citizen" of another country?

The link you provided is very interesting and I scanned a variety of pages. However, I have not yet discovered anything that clearly explains a reliance on English common law. Can you be a little more specific?

Also, I am still interested in a link to any documentation you have that explains the U.S. Constitution's NBC definition, as it was understood by the authors.

BTW, do you have a legal background? I wondered if this was part of the basis of your knowledge of law. I'm a (non-practicing) English teacher, so much of my viewpoint is based on reading documents and expecting them to mean what they say.

[Technical Editor]

“Also, I am still interested in a link to any documentation you have that explains the U.S. Constitution’s NBC definition, as it was understood by the authors.”

***

The following from Wong v. Ark is the clearest statement I have yet to find:

It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.

III. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.