Importance of the newly located Dunham/Obama Sr divorce decree in proving ineligibility
Tuesday, January 06, 2009 1:34:29 AM · 806 of 829 MHGinTN to Will88
The founders were concerned with people who had divided loyalties. The founders presumed this divided nature could come through fathers not American citizens:
The “natural born” Clause’s origins have been traced to a July 25, 1787 letter from John Jay to the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, George Washington. Jay wrote, “Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote Virginia’s birthright law of 1777 requiring the father to be a citizen. “We can say with confidence that a natural-born citizen of the United States means those persons born whose father the United States already has an established jurisdiction over, i.e., born to father’s who are themselves citizens of the United States.“
“The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society can not exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as a matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. THE COUNTRY OF THE FATHERS IS THEREFORE THAT OF THE CHILDREN.” Vattel, Citizens and Nations,” par. 212
From the Federalist Papers website:
The Supreme Court operates under the precedent of Marbury v. Madison, in which it asserted (without subsequent refutation by the legislative or executive branches) that it is the role of the Supreme Court to declare what the language of the Constitution means.
There are exactly zero decisions by the Supreme Court in the history of this country that are on point. No definition of the term “natural born citizen” has ever been provided. The founders of the country, and the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution, were more or less all well-versed in the major (read influential) philosophical and political texts of the day. These included de Vattel’s 1758 masterpiece “Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct and to the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns Congress or the Executive.
According to de Vattel, “[t]he natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” This provides a positive definition of the exact term “natural born citizen” that leaves no wiggle room, rendering it perfect for use in a founding document like the U.S. Constitution.
No wonder there is no discussion of what the term means. Each and every one of the founders was well aware of de Vattel’s apparently authoritative definition, such that no such discussion was needed. In the same passage, de Vattel also flatly states that if a person is born in a given country of a father who is a foreigner, “it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.” This provides a precise example of a person who does not qualify as a natural born citizen that, in the case of Barack Obama, is not only directly on point, but unfortunately for him, damning.
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Now, Obamanoid liberal professor, how about answering the questions posed to you.
Mister Polarik, do you have the images of those 'other' certifications of live birth from Hawaii which also show born in Honalulu, like the one for the famous Chinese fellow?
BTW, I use the same argument when debating with atheists who like to Jefferson on the supposed "wall of separation" of Church and state.
Furthermore, Virginia did not have a 3rd class of citizen. They just had two: natural born and naturalized. If you were not a natural born citizen, i.e. you were not born in Virginia to a US citizen father, you were not a Virginian citizen at birth and had to be later naturalized. This was overturned when the 14th Amendment was passed.
As to Vittel, his definition was hardly authoritative and not the only one in use at the time.
As to the courts, they recognize only two categories of citizen: natural born and naturalized. There is no third category.