Posted on 03/18/2010 12:24:55 PM PDT by Polarik
From Barack Obama's own website, Fight the Smears, a statement as to his citizenship status embodied in the masthead and email to forward:
Your problem is that common law is on my side, not yours. Under common law (Blackstone) all persons born within the land ruled by the King were considered to owe him allegiance, unles they were foreign diplomats or met other minor exceptions.
This common law principle is usually evaded by dragging in Vattel, a Swiss who had nothing at all to do with common law, working instead from civil law based on the dictatorial law of Roman emperors rather then the customary and more democratic common law.
it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.
I don't doubt it either, and I don't think anyone is disputing it. The question is whether ONLY people who meet this criteria are "natural born." The limited judicial precedents are on not on your side.
Last I heard, we don't have a King in the United States.
The limited judicial precedents are on not on your side.
Actually, they are on my side. Wong Kim Ark was NOT declared to be a natural born citizen. Ankeny admitted it and contorted a rationale for thinking otherwise. They made a case that being born in the United States would make one a natural born citizen, but stopped short of declaring Obama to be a natural born citizen. Pretty good trick.
True. He also was not declared to NOT be a natural born citizen. The court did not address the issue directly as it was not in contention. Apparently Mr. Wong wasn't runing for president at the time. :)
However, FWIW, one of the dissenters made it quite clear he considered the decision a mistake because it would make someone like Wong eligible to be president. IOW, at least this one justice thought it was recognizing him as natural born.
I'm trying, but I can't think of a less relevant comment. Everyone knows that the sovereignty and allegiance owed under common law to the King was transferred to the State or Union (depending on your POV) by our revolution. In this, as in some other ways, American common law varies from English common law.
Blackstone sold more copies in the new United States than in Britain because the Americans were apparently able to mentally replace King with State when they read it.
IN any case, Blackstone was without any doubt the most common lawbook studied by the founders. When they used a legal term without defining it, we can assume they had in mind Blackstone's definition of the term.
The American people have always fallen for con men, and then they call the government to “help” them in their folly.
Doesn't really matter. People have argued that Wong Kim Ark declared him to be a natural born citizen and clearly it does not. Another court isn't going to come along and use your contorted reply to try to go back and say that he was and therefore others like him are too. The courts would still be bound by the extraconstitutional definition cited in Minor.
However, FWIW, one of the dissenters made it quite clear he considered the decision a mistake because it would make someone like Wong eligible to be president.
What dissenters?? The Indiana Court of Appeals only hears cases in three-judge panels. The other two judges concurred.
“Doesn’t matter what’s in the U.S. code. NBC is defined extraconstitutionally in line with Vattel’s definition that one must be born of citizens in the country of the father.”
Ah, yes, who needs US law when we have...some Swiss dude.
I was referring to a dissenter in the Wong case. Supreme court.
“Natural born citizenship is a subset of native born”
Actually, it’s more like “native born” is a subset of natural born.
“If the universe is a 4D sphere, then time can be interpreted as changes in the 4D structure of that manifold.”
But I thought time was one of the D’s.
Granted, there are a lot of similarities between English common law and U.S. law, however, the Constitution was influenced by Vattel's Law of Nations, as explained here: http://east_west_dialogue.tripod.com/vattel/id4.html and you can find several essays and sources online that back this up:
"Other scholars and statesmen further developed the basic rules of international law, among them the Dutch jurist Cornelis van Bynkershoek and the Swiss diplomat Emmerich de Vattel whose Le droit des gens (1758; Law of Nations) exercised great influence on the framers of the U.S. Constitution." source: http://autocww.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/LawAndCourts/InternationalLaw.html
Plus, we don't have to assume anything about Vattel and the definition Minor used for Natural Born Citizen. The wording is almost verbatim. Compare:
Vattel - "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. "
Minor - " ... all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens ..."
No, you can be native born and not be natural born, but to be natural born, you pretty much have to be native born.
The ‘Swiss dude’ was highly influential on both the Constitution and on U.S. courts. See post 91.
“Correct. Natural born citizen is the only type of citizenship for which there is no legal statute. It needs none because it is natural law.”
Of course there’s a distinction between the laws of God and the laws of man. But this notion people have that statutes can never cover natural born status because it’s something that, I don’t know, just is, is totally silly. I know citizenship seems natural because there’s “blood” and “soil” involved, and all that. But the United States doesn’t exist in nature. It exists because of a set of man-made laws known as the Constitution. No Constitution, no U.S., no natural born citizens of the U.S. Therefore, natural born status, however indirectly it may seem, is the result of statute.
There’s plenty of other “natural” laws that get codified into man-made law. For instance, murder is bad according to the nature of things. Accordingly, we have statutes outlawing murder.
“Minor v. Happersett (AFTER the 14th amendment) explained ..
‘The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.’”
If that decision was after the 14th amendment became law, the justices ought to have been aware of the fact that the 14th amendment itself would overturn whatever the Framers thought about what constituted a natural-born citizen. That is, of course, if citizen-at-birth=natural-born-citizen is like 2+2=4, and I think it is.
“The ‘Swiss dude’ was highly influential on both the Constitution and on U.S. courts. See post 91”
Why does everyone ignore the fact that the 14th amendment changed who is considered citizens at birth? Who cares what European philosophers were popular with lawmakers a century ealier, in light of that fact? There’s far too little attention paid to the fact that whatever the Framers thought natural born meant, our Constitution has been amended since then.
“to be natural born, you pretty much have to be native born.”
Don’t we consider the children of citizens born abroad natural born citizens? That’s the case so far as I’s aware.
“Don’t we consider the children of citizens born abroad natural born citizens”
Or at least citizens from birth, which is the same thing.
That decision was after the 14th amendment, and it didn't overturn what the Framers thought about what constituted a natural born citizen. You're confusing the concept of native born with natural born. They knew you could be native born and still not be a citizen ... which is part of the reason why the 'sujbect' clause was in the 14th amendment.
The premise of your question is flawed. Natural born isn't just about being a citizen at birth. Vattel already recognized you could be a citizen at birth, but not be natural born. These people were the children of what he called "inhabitants."
"The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners, who are permitted to settle and stay in the country. ... These are a kind of citizens of an inferior order, and are united to the society without participating in all its advantages."
An inferior citizen who doesn't participate in all the countries adavantages, such as being eligible to hold the office of president. Vattel continues ..."
"Their children follow the condition of their fathers; and, as the state has given to these the right of perpetual residence, their right passes to their posterity."
IOW, he's saying that if your dad was a foreigner, then you're not considered to be a natural born citizen, even though you would be a citizen at birth of the country you reside in. This describes Obama ... if he was actually born in Hawaii. Citizen at birth, but not a natural born citizen.
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