The only way to define natural born citizenship is as Constitutional citizenship. If there was any question as to what that entailed right after the founding, that question was put to rest with the 14th Amendment. A natural born citizen is one born under the full and complete jurisdiction in regards to the soil and not owing allegiance to any other nation by blood.
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If there was any question as to what that entailed right after the founding, that question was put to rest with the 14th Amendment. When it was debated in Congress in 1866 and adopted in 1868, the 14th Amendment was aimed at African American and their rights as citizens. For example, if a black man was born in Africa, then brought to the US to be enslaved, he could become a US citizen under the 14th Amendment, equal (eventually) to a white man and a NATIVE-born American black man. Note ALL THREE MEN would have more rights than a woman of ANY race in the US - women not gaining the right to vote until 1920 with the 19th Amendment. So much for the Liberal argument that there were only 2 classes of US citizens (and the rights they wielded). Nowhere in the language of the 14th Amendment is "natural-born Citizen" addressed, or "re-interpreted" from subsequent SCOTUS rulings - especially in regards to Presidential qualifications! It's about citizenship, not "natural-born Citizen"-ship (see Section 1 of the 14th Amendment) If you look back into the Congressional Records of 1866, you'll see that the 14th Amendment is about AFRICAN AMERICANS and Citizenship! It did not address, in any way, who possessed "Constitutional eligibility" to be the ONE leader of the Executive Branch - a very sensitive issue to Colonists under the rule of King George III in 1776. Furthermore, IF the 14th Amendment put even simple naturalization Citizenship "to rest," there would have been no need for the SCOTUS to "interpret" in Elk v. Wilkins in 1884, Wong Kim Ark in 1898 and numerous other cases since - it would have been clear cut and not had to go to the SCOTUS at all! There also would have been no need to extend the equal protection clause in Plessy v. Ferguson, Milliken v. Bradley, and others. On a side note, most people do not know that for Hernandez v. Texas - when the SCOTUS held the 14th Amendment extended protections beyond whites and "negros," to Mexican Americans - the oral arguments were lost. L-O-S-T. I dare say that if a Constitutional scholar got his/her hands on those LOST notes from the 1954 case, and compared them to the original intent of the 14th Amendment in 1866, some of today's subsequent SCOTUS interpretations may likely be overturned. Not because other races should be excluded, rather subsequent arguments from the 1954 case may not fully correspond with the original intent of the 14th Amendment - there's no way of knowing what they discussed! Going strictly by judicial action - Mexican Americans did NOT "officially" fall under the 14th Amendment until adjudicated as such in this 1954 SCOTUS case. So much for the 14th Amendment putting the question "to rest," taking nearly a century to secure those rights for other groups in America.
Visualize the issues facing the Colonists of 1776: The 14th Amendment of 1868 is about none of these, nor is it about "natural-born Citizen" and presidential eligibility! |