Which is completely irrelevant to my point. Lies can be enforced, this does not make them "non lies" it makes them legally enforced lies.
I have already shown and documented that the Constitution was written using terminology from the English common law.
And if you have read it, you can see it was also written using terminology completely at odds with English common law. The question we are debating is whether the Framers intent for the term of art "natural born citizen" lies within English common law, or outside of it.
The Framers took the term natural born subject and adapted it to American usage, thus natural born citizen.
The evidence of which I am aware is against this claim. What evidence do you have to support such a claim?
Americans are citizens, but not subjects.
English common law does not deal with "citizens." In the English of that era, "citizen" meant someone who lived in a city. It did not mean "member of a nation". Only one place on earth at the time used the word "citizen" to refer to a member of a nation, and that place was Switzerland.
There are no subjects of the sovereign king of the United States. That is because the collective citizens are the sovereign and a king does not exist.
And this is precisely where and why "citizenship" breaks from English common law. English common law recognized (at that time) only "subjects." It had no conception for the term "citizen" other than as a "city denizen."
This is evidence that the origin for this term does not lay in English common law. It lays in "natural law" as conceived by Vattel's common usage of the term to refer to "citizens" (Citoyen) of Switzerland.
Switzerland was the only nation on earth at that time which used the word "citizen" to mean member of a nation, and if you look at their history, it becomes apparent why they used the word "citizen" to refer to members of their nation. The original Swiss confederacy was created by the Union of 8 Cities under the Charte des prêtres, (1370) which explicitly references:
"N'importe qui, étranger ou indigène, hôte ou citoyen d'une ville ou d'un pays, quel que soit son titre, doit pouvoir voyager dans tous nos districts et territoires, et aussi dans ceux des gens qui dépendent de nous, sans danger aucun pour sa personne et ses biens, et nul ne doit l'inquiéter, l'arrêter ou lui causer un dommage."
This matches with what Etymology Online says about the origins of the word.
"Sense of "freeman or inhabitant of a country, member of the state or nation, not an alien" is late 14c."
No instance can be produced in the English law, nor can it admit the idea of a person's being a natural subject and yet not owing allegiance.
Jefferson has that precisely right. "Subject" comes from English law. "Citizen" does *NOT* come from English law, it comes from natural law as explained by a member of the Swiss Republic where the usage of the word was common.
James Madison, address to Congress, May 22, 1789:
It is an established maxim, that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth, however, derives its force sometimes from place, and sometimes from parentage; but, in general, place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will, therefore, be unnecessary to investigate any other.
Ah, James Madison. I researched him quite a bit on this particular point, and he was defending William Smith's legitimacy as a member of Congress. He was a political ally of Madison. What I discovered about Madison is that he would tell people whatever best suited his interests at the time. In the Case of James McClure, Madison took the very opposite approach and claimed he was a subject of England because his Father had not naturalized prior to his birth.
Another example of Madison's willingness to be two faced was his contribution as a member of the committee which drafted Virginia's ratification statement asserting they had the right to take back their power. 30 years later Madison was disavowing such an idea when the possibility of secession was looming in the 1820s.
The term citizen predates 1776 by centuries. Jefferson was an eminent lawyer. Jefferson could have gotten the word citizen out of any dictionary.
The word had been around, but not the meaning it has now. In the 1760s, the dictionaries I have found only reference "dweller in a city". I have yet to see one that defines it as "member of a nation."
So please show me a dictionary from the time period that defines "citizen" as a member of a nation rather than "town dweller." I can show you several that define it only as "town dweller", with no mention of it representing membership in a nation.
The usage of it to mean "member of a nation" is Swiss. No other place (of which I have found so far) used it with that meaning. Not even France, where "Sujet" meant "Subject" and "Citoyen" meant "City Dweller."
German of course used nothing like that word. Variations of the word "Burghers" is what they used.
Court decisions are legally binding and enforceable.Which is completely irrelevant to my point. Lies can be enforced, this does not make them "non lies" it makes them legally enforced lies.
The problem is that your "point", so-called, is completely removed from United States law. Your point is your opinion, and you cannot discuss it in terms of effective United States law. You can only discuss it in term of legally meaningless birther babble.
Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) the Opinion of the Court observes:
II. The fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance, also called “ligealty,” “obedience,” “faith,” or “power” of the King. The principle embraced all persons born within the King’s allegiance and subject to his protection. Such allegiance and protection were mutual — as expressed in the maxim protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem — and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects, or to those who had taken an oath of allegiance, but were predicable of aliens in amity so long as they were within the kingdom. Children, born in England, of such aliens were therefore natural-born subjects. But the children, born within the realm, of foreign ambassadors, or the children of alien enemies, born during and within their hostile occupation of part of the King’s dominions, were not natural-born subjects because not born within the allegiance, the obedience, or the power, or, as would be said at this day, within the jurisdiction, of the King.
169 U.S. 656-658:
In Udny v. Udny, (1869) L.R. 1 H.L. Sc. 441, the point decided was one of inheritance, depending upon the question whether the domicil of the father was in England or in Scotland, he being in either alternative a British subject. Lord Chancellor Hatherley said: “The question of naturalization and of allegiance is distinct from that of domicil.” P. 452. Lord Westbury, in the passage relied on by the counsel for the United States, began by saying:“The law of England, and of almost all civilized countries, ascribes to each individual at his birth two distinct legal states or conditions: one, by virtue of which he becomes the subject of some particular country, binding him by the tie of natural allegiance, and which may be called his political status; another by virtue of which he has ascribed to him the character of a citizen of some particular country, and as such is possessed of certain municipal rights, and subject to certain obligations, which latter character is the civil status or condition of the individual, and may be quite different from his political status.”
And then, while maintaining that the civil status is universally governed by the single principle of domicil, domicilium, the criterion established by international law for the purpose of determining civil status, and the basis on which “the personal rights of the party, that is to say, the law which determines his majority or minority, his marriage, succession, testacy or intestacy, [169 U. S. 657] must depend,” he yet distinctly recognized that a man’s political status, his country, patria, and his “nationality, that is, natural allegiance,” “may depend on different laws in different countries.” Pp. 457, 460. He evidently used the word “citizen” not as equivalent to “subject,” but rather to “inhabitant,” and had no thought of impeaching the established rule that all persons born under British dominion are natural-born subjects.
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, in the same year, reviewing the whole matter, said:
“By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.”
Cockburn on Nationality, 7.
Mr. Dicey, in his careful and thoughtful Digest of the Law of England with reference to the Conflict of Laws, published in 1896, states the following propositions, his principal rules being printed below in italics:
“‘British subject’ means any person who owes permanent allegiance to the Crown. ‘Permanent’ allegiance is used to distinguish the allegiance of a British subject from the allegiance of an alien who, because he is within the British dominions, owes ‘temporary’ allegiance to the Crown. ‘Natural-born British subject’ means a British subject who has become a British subject at the moment of his birth.’ ‘Subject to the exceptions hereinafter mentioned, any person who (whatever the nationality of his parents) is born within the British dominions is a natural-born British subject.’ This rule contains the leading principle of English law on the subject of British nationality.”
The exceptions afterwards mentioned by Mr. Dicey are only these two:
“1. Any person who (his father being an alien enemy) is born in a part of the British dominions, which at the time of such [169 U. S. 658] person’s birth is in hostile occupation, is an alien.”
“2. Any person whose father (being an alien) is at the time of such person’s birth an ambassador or other diplomatic agent accredited to the Crown by the Sovereign of a foreign State is (though born within the British dominions) an alien.”
The real object of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution, in qualifying the words 'all persons born in the United States' by the addition 'and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the national government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases,—children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state,—both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law, from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. Calvin's Case, 7 Coke, 1, 18b; Cockb. Nat. 7; Dicey, Confl. Laws, 177; Inglis v. Sailors' Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155; 2 Kent, Comm. 39, 42.
The words 'in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' in the first sentence of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution, must be presumed to have been understood and intended by the congress which proposed the amendment, and by the legislatures which adopted it, in the same sense in which the like words had been used by Chief Justice Marshall in the well known case of The Exchange, and as the equivalent of the words 'within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States,' and the converse of the words 'out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States,' as habitually used in the naturalization acts.
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case, 7 Coke, 6a, 'strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject'; and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, 'If born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.' It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides, seeing that, as said by Mr. Webster, when secretary of state, in his report to the president on Thrasher's case in 1851, and since repeated by this court: 'Independently of a residence with intention to continue such residence; independently of any domiciliation; independently of the taking of any oath of allegiance, or of renouncing any former allegiance,—it is well known that by the public law an alien, or a stranger [169 U.S. 649, 694] born, for so long a time as he continues within the dominions of a foreign government, owes obedience to the laws of that government, and may be punished for treason or other crimes as a native-born subject might be, unless his case is varied by some treaty stipulations.' Executive Documents H. R. No. 10, 1st Sess. 32d Cong. p. 4; 6 Webster's Works, 526; U. S. v. Carlisle, 16 Wall. 147, 155; Calvin's Case, 7 Coke, 6a; Ellesmere, Postnati, 63; 1 Hale, P. C. 62; 4 Bl. Comm. 74, 92.To hold that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution excludes from citizenship the children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of other countries, would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.
The 14th Amendment establishes that ALL PERSONS born in the United States, and subject to te jurisdiction thereof, are born citizens of the United States. The words add no qualifiers about parents.
The Court has explicitly held that the children of foreign parentage born in the United states, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are born citizens of the United States.
Your total argument is that your opinion is the only thing that matters.
Natural law, Swiss law, Swiss philosophers, the Law of Nations, French law, German law, and all the other nonsense sharting from the birther collective mind do not affect the domestic authority to determine United States citizenship according to United States Federal law. You cannot cite the jurisdiction of any foreign law in a United States citizenship determination.
United States law is not perfect, but just about anything is better than the chaos of law by 330,000,000 different opinions, each equally valid.
The sovereign people created a constitution to create a government. It created and empowered a legislative branch to write laws. It required the legislative branch to create a judicial branch to interpret the laws.
While you may wish to take a foreign definition of citizen, created even before there was a United States, and enforce that definition upon the United States, in 2022, as in 1787, the United States had its own definition. Perhaps someone should try your argument in court. Oh, wait....
You should take your argument to an international court in the Hague or to a French court, or a court of natural law if you can find one, or to a Swiss court. Perhaps you would prefer that a Swiss court decree who are, and who are not, natural born citizens of the United States.
United States law is clear. You just do not like it. The author of the thread article had his lawsuit thrown out by the appellate court which found it to be "frivolous" and assessed the costs of the litigation against the thread author. That is a clear statement of the "merits" of this birther babble.