Replies

I'm going to save your excellent explanation. Trying to learn more of the history of Law of Nations, I got too fascinated with Leipniz’ history, and haven't found my way yet to law of the Roman Republic. I think FR needs to build a list of authoritative resources. I see too that you are new here as a blogger, and very welcome.

I will guess at your background, and mention that I've read seven or eight law review articles by presumably credible academics which assiduously avoid both supreme court case law, as well as even a reference to Vattel or Law of Nations. I'll point to one by Associate Dean for Research at Univ. of Illinois, another editor of the Harvard Law Review, only Lawrence Solum has actually published “Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause”. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1263885

Solum acknowledges the Vattel definition, but sets up a straw dog by asserting that it is indeterminate because it depends up English Common law, with "subject" mucking things up. Solum never mentions John Marshall or or The Venus, or Minor or Bingham. He appears to be writing about “Originalism”, and mentions Scalia a number of times, dancing completely around the dozens of references in supreme court decisions to Vattel, and the several very explicit direct quotations in decisions citing Vattel. He also uses the Obama supporter ploy of quoting the 1790 Naturalization Act without noting that is was replaced. There are another half dozen such law review articles which, while not at written with quite the style, follow the same pattern.
Is this pay-to-play, the constitutional lawyers provide talking points should the issue become germane or viral?

Solum appears to be quite worthless. because he is obviously fixated on the English common-law while largely disregarding or marginalizing the immense body of Latin, French, and other precedents of law our Founding Fathers were well acquainted with.

Contrary to some of the seeming treatments by some academics, the Founding Fathers were not some gigantic intellects creating mysteries for the Ages, as some of the professors would appear to imply with the complexities of their papers. They were often well educated men, fluent quite often in French and/or other languages in addition to English, and they necessarily were practical enough to usually evade the hangman's noose during the Revolutionary War and trade (smuggle) goods to keep body, soul, and country together. This quite often involved less than scrupulous care with respect to consistency in spelling, terminologies, and uniformity. They did nevertheless exercise an acute and often aggressive awareness of status, privileges, rights, duties, and sworn oaths which inconsistencies in terminologies were of naught influence. Consequently, it would be a grievous error to wrongly assume they did not have an immediate understanding of the natural born citizen, free born, free born citizen, and other terminology and pretty much exactly how it related to the allegiance and duties owed to the United States.

For the Founding Fathers of 1787, the meaning of natural born citizen was so obviously a matter of being born with an allegiance, it was entirely unnecessary to treat it as a new term of art requiring an explanation.