Research - Vattel & the meaning of the Constitutional term "Natural Born Citizen"

http://www.loc.gov/index.html ^ | 5/12/2010 | many

[rxsid]

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 from the U.S. Constitution states:

"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States."

[jamese777]

It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other.”
It’s considered proper to provide a link, so that people can read your quote in context.

Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2, Document 6, James Madison, House of Representatives, 22 May 1789Papers 12:179—82.

As the title indicates this speech was about Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2. which reads:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

It was not about “natural born citizenship, but rather citizenship at the time of the Declaration of independence.

the “in general” in your a quote. Madison is saying “citizenship” is determined by place of birth, not natural born citzenship, which doesn’t even enter into the criteria of eligibility to the House of Representatives.

---

There is no distinction between a citizen-at-birth and a natural born citizen that has ever been codified in the law of the land or rendered in any decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Therefore James Madison’s opinion applies.

[restornu]

mark

[restornu]

ctr

[bushpilot1]

ARTICLE III

Les consuls et vice consuls respectifs ne pourront être pris que parmi les sujets naturels de la puissance qui les nommera.

3
The respective Consuls and Vice Consuls shall only be taken from among the natural born subjects of the power nominating them.

A Philadelphie le 24 Juillet, 1781.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hlawquery.html type naturels

[Spaulding]

“...as Mr. Rogers points out, that no English translation of Vattel’s work extant at the time the Constitution was drafted”

Replying to trolls serves the purpose of informing others so let's clear up this lie: There were between 1759 and 1834 ten translations of his (Vattel’s) work in England, and from 1796 until 1872 eighteen translations, or reprints of translations, published in the United States.

Vattel was by far the most quoted legal source in pleadings in American cases, by almost a factor of 4, between 1790 and 1820. (Nussbaums Concise History of the Law of Nations, 1962).

Most lawyers and every framer understood Vattel during the Continental Congress and particularly afterword because Vattel served as the principal reference in the writing of the Constitution. Jefferson taught the course on Vattel beginning in 1779 at William and Mary. Madison was President of William and Mary, and future chief justice John Marshall a student. Vattel was used at virtually every college offering legal studies since it is by far the most authoritative source of maritime and international law, in addition to providing the structure for the U.S. government. (Read it. There are a number of sites with the entire text on line and an elegant paper binding by Liberty Fund available from Amazon.)

British common law is law by and for an oligarchy, changed at the will of the crown and privy council. England has no written constitution unless you count the Magna Carta, which most English ignored for five hundred years. The meaning of natural born subject was of particular interest because it defined legal heirs. Changes in the definition usually followed the birth overseas of someone with royal blood. The idea of a Constitutional government was described by Vattel. We are its Guinea pigs, and are seeing its weaknesses.
This nonsense about translations is the usual obot diversion. One of framers, a President between the Revolution and the ratification, Dr. David Ramsay, restated the definition perfectly clearly in an essay after he had returned to his medical practice. It is Vattel’s definition, and there has never been another. (You can find the Ramsay essay in the latest appendix to the Kerchner/Appuzo appeal at http://puzo1.blogspot.com )

Another way to understand “born on the soil of citizen parents” is to consider that the phrase, not a new idea by any means, was assigned to several words early in its history. Vattel could have, and did say, jus soli AND jus sanguinis - from the soil AND from the blood, but appears to have coined the term natural born citizen for clarity and convenience. (There is a lenthy analysis of the origin of the term in an essay by Greshak for which Apusso has a pointer). But it is the meaning that counts, the phrase. The history is clear and our leaders are afraid to impose the constraints upon only our president and vice president that define a Constitutional president.

Since Barack Obama told us that he wanted a new bill of rights and to rewrite the Constitution, he has been true to his word. Obama doesn't care whether or not he is a Constitutional president because he and his regime planned thoroughly so that no legal authority would challenge him. By the time he is finished the Constitution will have even less validity than the window dressing it now provides to some federal cases. With it will fall the 1st and 2nd amendments, which are already under attack. By ignoring his ineligibility we are invalidating the protections guaranteed by the Declaration and the Constitution. He correctly predicted that and is being proved correct.

[bushpilot1]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=990CE0DC153BE233A25751C1A96F9C946496D6CF

[Uncle Chip]

The answer to your question, Pack Knight, can be found in the following links. Let’s say for the purposes of discussion that Vattel’s word “indigenes” had been left untranslated from the French into the English version until after the Constitution was written. And then the translators took the phrase “natural born citizen” from the Constitution and inserted it in place of “indigenes” in Vattel’s work a few years later.

So what???

The fact that the French/English translators of Vattel’s work settled on the English phrase “natural born citizen” for the French word “indigenes” right at the time that the Constitution was being circulated and read far and wide is a solid indication that the two were equivalent in meaning and inextricably intertwined.

It is actually an academic exercise of futility as to which came first — the word or the meaning — like the chicken or the egg???? Which came first to Vattel’s mind ??? the word “indigenes” or the meaning of the word “indigenes”???

What is relevant is that early on, while both were being popularly read and studied, the two merged and settled down with each other, and none of the Framers of the Constitution ever objected. One Supreme Court Justice used the word “indigenes” in his writings and another used its English equivalent “natural born citizen” — and no one ever objected or disputed it. They meant the same thing then and throughout American history —

http://www.thepostemail.com/2009/10/18/4-supreme-court-cases-define-natural-born-citizen/

http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/04/02/founder-and-historian-david-ramsay-defines-natural-born-citizen-in-1789/

http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/04/10/lifelong-democrat-breckinridge-long-natural-born-citizen-means-born-on-the-soil-to-a-father-who-is-a-citizen/

http://theobamafile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm#LeahyResolution

[Mr Rogers]

“Replying to trolls serves the purpose of informing others so let’s clear up this lie: “

If you have evidence I’m mistaken, please present it. Every source I’ve found says the first time Vattel was translated using NBC was AFTER the Constitution was written.

If I am wrong about that, show me and I’ll retract the statement and argument. Until then, please try to answer arguments instead of the much more typical name calling.

“One of framers, a President between the Revolution and the ratification, Dr. David Ramsay, restated the definition perfectly clearly in an essay after he had returned to his medical practice. It is Vattel’s definition, and there has never been another.”

Beats me - I’ve never read Ramsey. Others defined it differently, using it as the equivalent of born inside the USA. That is why there is a dispute - different folks used it in different ways. I could pull up ample quotes from people and lawyers in the same time frame that used it in the sense WKA argued for - hence the dispute.

“The fact that the French/English translators of Vattel’s work settled on the English phrase “natural born citizen” for the French word “indigenes” right at the time that the Constitution was being circulated and read far and wide is a solid indication that the two were equivalent in meaning and inextricably intertwined.”

Not hardly. If it were, it would have been translated thus from the beginning. All it shows is one translator used it AFTER the Constitution was written. And since “Indigenous” is the transliterated form of Vattel’s French, it obviously conveys the meaning well - except then the whole “Vattel is Scripture” movement falls apart...

[Uncle Chip]

<>Beats me - I’ve never read Ramsey.<>

Here, read it and learn:

http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/04/02/founder-and-historian-david-ramsay-defines-natural-born-citizen-in-1789/

<>If it were, it would have been translated thus from the beginning. All it shows is one translator used it AFTER the Constitution was written.<>

And why would he do that if they did not mean the same thing??? And other translators followed. And there was no dispute.

And what makes you think that it wasn’t that way in earlier translations??? Where did John Jay get the phrase “natural born citizen” and how come Washington adn the other Framers understood it enough to put it into Article II and then into the Immigration Act of 1790???

By your reasoning we should all abandon the word “Christ” since it was at some point substituted for the word “Messiah” by some Greek translator well after he had come. It’s ludicrous.

[Mr Rogers]

“And what makes you think that it wasn’t that way in earlier translations??? Where did John Jay get the phrase “natural born citizen” and how come Washington adn the other Framers understood it enough to put it into Article II and then into the Immigration Act of 1790???”

I don’t think it was that way in earlier translations because I’ve seen earlier translations, and they don’t attempt to translate the word. This also agrees with what El Gato has posted, and I trust him even while we disagree.

Where did John Jay get the phrase? Several court rulings indicate they think it came from natural born subject, and another birther posted an extract from that time frame where the French read ‘natural subject’ and it was translated as ‘natural born citizen’. The guy posting it thought it proved natural means NBC, while I think the phrase natural subject would reasonably be translated NBC, if the natural born subject theory is true.

SHANKS V. DUPONT, 28 U. S. 242 (1830) tends to support this. It uses phrases like “British born subjects” instead of just British subject. The woman was considered a citizen even after her marriage to a Brit:

“The marriage of Ann Scott with Shanks, a British officer, did not change or destroy her allegiance to the State of South Carolina, because marriage with an alien, whether friend or enemy, produces no dissolution of the native allegiance of the wife.”

Also, “If they were originally British subjects, but then adhering to the states, the treaty deemed them citizens.”

Thus subject and citizen are interchangeable, depending on the form of government.

[Uncle Chip]

This is an excellent source of information —

[Uncle Chip]

And yet we find Vattel's definition behind the wording of the Naturalization Act of 1790 right after the Constitution was written:

"And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:"

Note that children of citizens were to be "natural born citizens", according to them, no matter where they were born. And the father not the mother was the determining factor of that citizenship.

[El Gato]

There is no distinction between a citizen-at-birth and a natural born citizen that has ever been codified in the law of the land or rendered in any decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Actually there has, but not for citizen at birth due to birth in the US. But that's not suprising, the only time it would matter, and thus be anything but dicta, would be in a Presidential or VP eligibility case.

However citizen at birth due to statutes is another matter, such as those born abroad to one or both US citizen parents. They are, for Constitutional purposes, "naturalized at birth". (They do not come under the 14th amendments criteria for example).

Now in dicta, Courts, including the Supreme Court, have favorably citied the "born in the US to parents who are citizens" definition.

Plus in Wong Kim Ark, Binney was quoted in a manner indicating a distinction between "citizen child of an alien" and "natural born child of a citizen". They have the same rights, said Binney, but indicated by his language that there is a distinction. He did NOT say "The child of alien born in the US is a much a "natural born citizen" as the child of a citizen", but rather "The child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle". The principal being birth in the country.

The 14th amendment merely extended that principal to *all* persons.

[jamese777]

Actually there has, but not for citizen at birth due to birth in the US. But that’s not suprising, the only time it would matter, and thus be anything but dicta, would be in a Presidential or VP eligibility case.

However citizen at birth due to statutes is another matter, such as those born abroad to one or both US citizen parents. They are, for Constitutional purposes, “naturalized at birth”. (They do not come under the 14th amendments criteria for example).

Now in dicta, Courts, including the Supreme Court, have favorably citied the “born in the US to parents who are citizens” definition.

Plus in Wong Kim Ark, Binney was quoted in a manner indicating a distinction between “citizen child of an alien” and “natural born child of a citizen”. They have the same rights, said Binney, but indicated by his language that there is a distinction. He did NOT say “The child of alien born in the US is a much a “natural born citizen” as the child of a citizen”, but rather “The child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle”. The principal being birth in the country.

The 14th amendment merely extended that principal to *all* persons.

---

You are wrong about “the 14th Amendment’s criteria”. Those criteria are so amazingly simple as to be hard to misinterpret: there are two categories of citizens and only two categories of citizens: born citizens and naturalized citizens. Born citizens can be president, naturalized citizens cannot.
If a person is “naturalized at birth” they are still “naturalized.”
Here’s the current law of the land.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/8/1401.html

Thus far no court has ruled that Obama doesn’t qualify as a natural born citizen due to one of his parents not being a US citizen.

With specific regard to Obama, those courts that have commented on the issue in their dismissals have used the 14th Amendment’s words “ALL PERSONS...” to include presidential candidates and presidents. There is definitely a constitutional mandate that presidents be “persons!” ;-)

U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark,169 U.S. 649,658 (1898)
“The notion that there is any common law principle to naturalize the children born in foreign countries, of native-born American father and mother, father or mother, must be discarded. There is not, and never was, any such common law principle. Binney on Alienigenae, 14, 20; 2 Amer.Law Reg.199, 203.
Here is nothing to countenance the theory that a general rule of citizenship by blood or descent has displaced in this country the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within its sovereignty.”

U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark,169 U.S. 649,671,673 (1898)
“The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes.”

[The Pack Knight]

Where did John Jay get the phrase “natural born citizen” and how come Washington adn the other Framers understood it enough to put it into Article II and then into the Immigration Act of 1790???

Blackstone's Commentaries defined "natural-born subject". Relevant to this discussion, Blackstone says, in Book I, Ch. 10, "THE children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally fpeaking, natural-born fubjects, and entitled to all the privileges of fuch. In which the conftitution of France differs from curs; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien."

John Jay, along with a number of other Founders, was a subscriber to the original edition, of which Book I was published in 1765. Blackstone's Commentaries were of paramount importance to the practice of law in 18th century America.

As far as I can tell, the only prominent source of the phrase "natural-born" in relation to citizenship that existed at the time John Jay wrote his letter was Blackstone's.

[rxsid]

"Treatise on Citizenship, by Birth and by Naturalization, with References to the Law of Nations, Roman Civil Law, Law of the United States of america, and the Law of France; Including Provisions in the Federal Constitution, and in the Several State Constitutions, in Respect of Citizenship; Together with Decisions Thereon of the Federal and State Courts"
by Alexander Porter Morse (1881)

"The true bond which connects the child with the body politic is not the matter of an inanimate piece of land but the moral relations of his parentage 4"
[4 Vattel sect 216 220 ] Pg. 12

"7 Under view of the law of nations natives or natural born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens." (Vattel, book 1, cited as source. Most probably the 1797 version).
[5 Vattel Book I p 101] Pg. 12

"A citizen in the largest sense is any native or naturalized person who is entitled to full protection in the exercise and enjoyment of the so called private rights 3 The natural born or native is one who is born in the country of citizen parents 4"
[4 Vattel Droit des Gens 1 io xix sect 212 Ed Paris 1863] Pg. XI

[The Pack Knight]

"And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:"

Yes, the Naturalization Act of 1790 does not allow children of non-citizens born outside the United States to be natural born citizens. It makes no provision for the citizenship of persons born within the United States whether to citizen parents or not.

It seems to me that the implication of this act is that those born in the United States are inherently natural born citizens, while children born to citizen parents outside the United States are natural born citizens only by Act of Congress and subject to the conditions of this statute.

[El Gato]

another birther posted an extract from that time frame where the French read ‘natural subject’ and it was translated as ‘natural born citizen’

. No it did not. "sujets naturels" was translated as "natural born subjects". We even know who the probable translator was. The translation considered by Congress was in Charles Thomson's hand, making him the likely translator. He was the secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1789. IOW, the entire existence of that body. He is known to have translated an early version of the Bible from Greek to English. I'm sure translation of a diplomatic note from the French was not much of a challenge for him.

[rxsid]

The phrase "natural born citizen" appears in a 1774 English translation of the book Institutio Oratoria (in Latin), by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (published in the first century A.D.); this was done in Chapter I of Book VIII.by Patsall.

Natural law <===> Natural Born Citizen <===> Law of Nations (Vattel).

Of course, a number of framers also read Latin.

[rxsid]

The term "natural born citizen" found in a number of Naturalization acts of Massachusetts between the times of the United States Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) and the ratification of the United States Constitution by all thirteen original states (May 29, 1790).

February 28, 1785
Nicholas Rousselet & George Smith

"natural born citizens"

Massachusetts. Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1784-85. Boston: Reprinted by Wright and Potter, 1890 or later, from Adams & Nourse, 1784. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=_X8QAAAAYAAJ 124-5.

February 7, 1786
Michael Walsh

"natural born citizen"

Massachusetts. Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1784-85. Boston: Reprinted by Wright and Potter, 1890 or later, from Adams & Nourse, 1784. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=_X8QAAAAYAAJ 507-8.

July 7, 1786
Jonathan Curson & William Oliver

"natural born citizens"

Massachusetts. Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1786-87. Boston: Reprinted by Wright and Potter, 1893, from Adams & Nourse, 1786. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=n4AQAAAAYAAJ. 53-4

October 29, 1787
Bartholomy de Gregoire & others

"natural born Citizens"

Massachusetts. Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1786-87. Boston: Reprinted by Wright and Potter, 1893, from Adams & Nourse, 1786. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=n4AQAAAAYAAJ. 571-2

November 21, 1788
Elisha Bourn & others

"natural born Citizens"

Massachusetts. Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1788-89. Boston: Reprinted by Wright and Potter, 1894, from Adams & Nourse, 1788. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=M4EQAAAAYAAJ 38-9.