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Most critically, this philosopher based his doctrines on civil law descended from the decrees of Roman emperors.

British and US law is based on the common law, with entirely different precepts and doctrines.

Exactly. Vattel, the Swiss "philosopher" in question, was hostile to American concepts of citizenship. He believed in Government with a capitial G. He believed that the State had a natural right to prevent a citizen from leaving the country to work elsewhere:

"Those workmen that are useful ought to be retained in the state; to succeed in retaining them, the public authority has certainly a right to use constraint if necessary. Every citizen owes his personal service to his country; and a mechanic, in particular, who has been reared, educated, in its bosom, cannot lawfully leave it, and carry to a foreign land that industry which he acquired at home, unless his country has no occasion for him, or he cannot there obtain the just fruit of his labor and abilities. Employment must then be procured for him; and if while able to obtain a decent livelihood in his own country, he would without reason abandon it, the state has a right to detain him." - Vattel, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natiural Law, Book 1, Chapter 6, § 74

According to Vattel, if the State views the labor of a particular citizen as useful to the State, the State can constrain the citizen and prevent him from "escaping" to another country. This was Vattel's view of the "citizen." It was also the Soviet's view of the citizen and, until the Berlin Wall came crashing down, it was the East German view of the citizen. In America, we do not view our citizens as possessions of the State. Yet even today, long after the rest of the world trashed the communist philosophy, there exists here in America a handful of Vattel devotees who want to enslave the rest of us to Vattel's crackpot theories of citizenship.

Well, it's not going to work, not here in America!

Ted Cruz - 2016