... and the entire cite flies in the face of any attempt to classify it as having resulted from any understanding under English common law. I’ve thrown in the towel as far as trying to get this across to our very persistent FRiend.
The English common law would have every individual born in the realm a natural born subject. Waite casts doubt upon the very understanding that our FRiend would have us accept uncritcally as the very foundation of the term of art.
There was and clearly is still an element of heredity involved in natural born citizenship, in addition to birth within the Republic.
I’ve read alot of the court opinions, I have all of US reports on my machine. Sometimes they are very clear and somewhat dry and there is little melodrama.
But many times there are very subtle meanings and you would almost have to take a couple semesters of history to figure out whats up with the parties involved, or even other parties not involved but who may be affected by the decision.
This one looks crystal clear to me. He says DO NOT conclude as a question of law whether children born of alien parent(s) are citizens based on the findings in this case.
And as we have all pointed out time and time again, we MUST infer that there is some kind of difference between somebody generically being a “citizen” and the highest standard, somebody being a “natural born citizen”