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To: Mr Rogers
Post 228 shows “sujects naturels’ can be translated natural born subject...what does it have to do with anything else? What do you think it proves? That in 1781, naturels was translated, by and for Americans, as "natural born" rather than as "natives". And by extension that "indigenes" should have been translated as "natives". And lo and behold, all the post 1793 published translations of Vattel say "The natives, or natural-born citizens" when translating "“Les naturels, ou indigenes". Now it's true that the word "citizen/citoyan" does not appear in the French, but the whole paragraph is talking about citizens. what else would "naturels" or "natural born" be referring to other than citizens?
313 posted on 05/16/2010 1:24:45 AM PDT by El Gato ("The second amendment is the reset button of the US constitution"-Doug McKay)
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To: El Gato

1 Part of the question concerning Vattel is, “When the writers of the Constitution wrote NBC, were they thinking of Vattel or common law?”

NBS was a standard legal phrase in English law, and multiple courts have found that the meaning of NBC was carried over from NBS.

Had they been thinking of Vattel, they would have written, “He must be indigenous...”, that being the phrasing used by Vattel.

2 Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Vattel was commonly translated NBC prior to the Constitution. One would still need to ask if NBC is rooted in common law as a legal term, or if one sentence in a philosophy book is the limit of what was intended. And to date, the courts have been pretty consistent in looking to common law - where it was an established phrase - rather than one sentence in a book.

Vattel never tried to address what it would mean if an alien father had a child by a native woman, and the child was raised as a native independent of the absent father. That wasn’t his purpose in writing.

Philosophically, a native or indigenous person is someone born in the country of native parents. He was trying to show that meant the natural allegiance was to that country. He wasn’t concerned with Indians, illegitimate children, anchor babies, tourists passing thru, etc. He didn’t need to be. He wasn’t trying to write law.

To remove Obama, you don’t need a little evidence, you need enough to overturn an election based on a fact that everyone knew, and no one with standing (legislature, state official, Congress, other candidates, etc) thought disqualifying.

To prevail in court, you need to show that Vattel was not AN influence, but the only possible source of meaning - and I think you will admit that is not the case. No court will touch it if they have an out. And they do - an interpretation prevalent for over 100 years, rooted in the common law that preceded the Constitution.


321 posted on 05/16/2010 7:17:00 AM PDT by Mr Rogers
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