Saw this a couple of days ago. I expect you will reject the point the author makes regarding subjectship.
Why would I disagree with this?
Maybe there are individual things in it that I didn’t fully recognize, but he talks about how Indians were not “subject to the jurisdiction therof” of the U.S. and therefore the 14th didn’t apply to them.
What am I missing, what is your hook? If you would like to discuss further this Imprimus let me know.
This seems to me like this Imprimus will just be another item you abandon like how you abandoned Raoul Berger’s book “Government by Judiciary” after you discovered that the book advocated for 14thoriginalism.
Saw this a couple of days ago. I expect you will reject the point the author makes regarding subjectship.
His 2008 anti-Obama rant runs into a common problem—it requires that the understanding of the law of the last two and a half centuries be overturned.
The transformation of subjects into citizens was the work of the Declaration and the Constitution.
This is just plain silly. If the Constitution transformed subjects into citizens, what were they from 1776 to 1788? Independence transformed the subjects into citizens, and that happened well before the Constitution.
We have somehow come today to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction. But this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous and without force.
This is gross misstatement/distortion. We do not believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction. The Senate debate on 14A made perfectly clear in words and intent that the children born to the families of accredited diplomats were not born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. There is nothing superfluous about the jurisdiction clause.
https://fam.state.gov/FAM/08FAM/08FAM030101.html#M301_1_1
[State Department, Foreign Affairs Manual]
8 FAM 301.1-1 INTRODUCTION
[excerpt]
d. “Subject to the Jurisdiction of the United States”: All children born in and subject, at the time of birth, to the jurisdiction of the United States acquire U.S. citizenship at birth even if their parents were in the United States illegally at the time of birth:(1) The U.S. Supreme Court examined at length the theories and legal precedents on which the U.S. citizenship laws are based in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). In particular, the Court discussed the types of persons who are subject to U.S. jurisdiction. The Court affirmed that a child born in the United States to Chinese parents acquired U.S. citizenship even though the parents were, at the time, racially ineligible for naturalization;
(2) The Court also concluded that: “The 14th 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 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.”
State v. Manuel, 4 Devereux and Battle 20, 24-26 (1838) [North Carolina Supreme Court]
According to the laws of this State, all human beings within it who are not slaves, fall within one of two classes. Whatever distinctions may have existed in the Roman law between citizens and free inhabitants, they are unknown to our institutions. Before our Revolution all free persons born within the dominions of the king of Great Britain, whatever their colour or complexion, were native born British subjects—those born out of his allegiance were aliens. Slavery did not exist in England, but it did exist in the British colonies. Slaves were not in legal parlance persons, but property. The moment the incapacity—or disqualification of slavery was removed—they became persons, and were then either British subjects or not British subjects, accordingly as they were or were not born within the allegiance of the British king. Upon the Revolution, no other change took place in the law of North Carolina, than was consequent upon the transition from a colony dependent on an European king to whom a free and sovereign state. Slaves remained slaves. British subjects in North Carolina became North Carolina, free-men. Foreigners until made members of the State continued aliens. Slaves manumitted here become freemen—and therefore if born within North Carolina are citizens of North Carolina—and all free persons born within the State are born citizens of the State.A few only of the principal objections which have been urged against this view of what we consider the legal doctrine, will be noticed. It has been said that by the constitution of the United States the power of naturalization has been conferred exclusively upon Congress—and therefore it cannot be competent for any state by its municipal regulations to make a citizen. But what is naturalization? It is the removal of the disabilities of alienage. Emancipation is the removal of the incapacity of slavery. The latter depends wholly upon the internal regulations of the State— the former belongs to the government of the United States. It would be a dangerous mistake to confound them.
It has been said that before our Revolution, free persons of colour did not exercise the right of voting for members of the colonial legislature. How this may have been, it would be difficult at this time to ascertain. It is certain however that very few, if any, could have claimed the right of suffrage, for a reason of a very different character than the one supposed. The principle of freehold suffrage seems to have been brought over from England with the first colonists, and to have been preserved almost invariably in the colony ever afterwards. In the act of 1743, ch. 1, (Swann’s Revisal, 171,) it will be seen that a freehold of fifty acres was necessary to entitle the inhabitant of a county to vote, and by the act of 2d Sept, of 1746, ch. 1, Ibid. 223, the free holders only of the respective towns of Edenton, Bath, Newbern and Wilmington were declared entitled to vote for members of the Colonial Legislature. The very Congress which framed our constitution, was chosen by freeholders. That constitution extended the elective franchise to every freeman who had arrived at the age of 21, and paid a public tax; and it is a matter of universal notoriety that under it, free persons without regard to colour, claimed and exercised the franchise until it was taken from freemen of colour a few years since by our amended constitution. But surely the possession of political power is not essential to constitute a citizen. If it be, then women, minors, and persons who have not paid public taxes are not citizens—and free white men who have paid public taxes and arrived at full age, but have not a freehold of fifty acres, inasmuch as they may vote for one branch and cannot vote for the other branch of our legislature, would be in an intermediate state, a sort of hybrids between citizens and not-citizens. The term “citizen” as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term subject in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people—and he who before was a “subject of the king” is now “a citizen of the State.”