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."

[1010RD]

Maybe you need a break. Try the Religion threads. You can reason over there. ;-]

[bushpilot1]

Uniform Title: Droit des gens. English Author/Creator: Vattel, Emer de, 1714-1767. Published: Dublin : printed for Luke White, 1787. Format: Book Physical Desc.: lxxiv, 728p. ; 8⁰. Language: English Note: Reproduction of original from the British Library. Citation: English Short Title Catalog, ESTCT60748. Reproduction: Electronic reproduction. Farmington Hills, Mich. : Thomson Gale, 2003. Available via the World Wide Web. Access limited by licensing agreements s2003 miunns Note: Stanford University Libraries also has the microfilm version: http://library.stanford.edu/searchcat?ckey=580114 Series:

[The Pack Knight]

That shows that the term “natural born citizen” was in use before the drafting of the Constitution, but I don’t think that is in dispute. What is in dispute is what “natural born citizen” was understood to mean at that time, and these naturalization acts provide no guidance as to that issue.

I think we’ve established that there were at least two definitions of “natural born citizen” extant at the time (assuming for the sake of argument that Vattel’s “naturel or indigenes” was understood at the time to translate to “natural born citizen”). There was the English common law definition, as explained by Blackstone, and there was Vattel’s definition, which was probably derived from French law at the time.

I’ve yet to see any conclusive evidence that one definition or the other was more generally accepted in the United States in 1787. Absent such evidence, it seems far more likely that the English common law definition was used, since virtually all other American law was based on English, not French, law. Also, from what I’ve seen of the early Supreme Court cases that cite Vattel, Vattel was used primarily as a source on international, not domestic, law.

[rxsid]

Original French version of Vattel's Law of Nations:

Emer de Vattel, Le droit des gens, ou Principes de la loi naturelle, vol. 1 (of 2) [1758]

From Chapter XIX, 212 (page 248 of 592):
Title in French: "Des citoyens et naturels"
To English: "Citizens and natural"

French text (about citizens): "Les citoyens sont les membres de la societe civile : lies a cette societe par certains devoirs et soumis a son autorite, ils participent avec egalite a ses avantages."
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To English: "The citizens are the members of the civil society: linked to this society by certain duties and subject to its authority, they participate with equality has its advantages."
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French text (about "natural" born citizens): "Les naturels, ou indigenes, sont ceux qui sont nes dans le pays, de parens citoyens"
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To English, gives this: "the natural, or indigenous, are those born in the country, parents who are citizens"

The last translation regards citizens who were "natural born." Pretty straight forward to me.

[Mr Rogers]

“the natural, or indigenous, are those born in the country, parents who are citizens”

I guess I don’t see how that one sentence in a book would lead to everyone assuming that the phrase “natural born citizen” refers to someone who is a citizen by birth AND has TWO citizens for parents.

A) It doesn’t use the phrase “natural born citizen”

B) It wasn’t intended as a legal dictionary, and

C) there is another and obvious source for NBC that IS a legal definition, and it specifically allows for two alien parents.

That doesn’t make you wrong. I think a sample of quotes from the time indicates that both views were held, and no one thought to define which was being used.

Would the SCOTUS try to force removal of a sitting President over a phrase that had more than one original meaning? I think not, particularly when they have an escape provided for them by WKA and other like rulings.

Nor do I think Congress would act, even if the Supreme Court DID rule one must have two citizen parents to be a NBC. They would amend the Constitution, and the states would ratify it. Just IMHO.

[bushpilot1]

The law of nations; or Principles of the law of nature: applied to the conduct and affairs of nations and sovereigns
by Emer de Vattel

English

1787

New York : Printed for Messrs. Berry and Rogers, no. 35, Hanover-Square.

[bushpilot1]

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/internationalhrcolloquium/documents/RamseyPaper.doc.

II. The Law of Nations as Supreme Law

The Constitution’s Article VI declared that the Constitution, treaties and laws of the United States made up the “supreme Law of the Land.”

This Part instead asks whether and how the Vattel/Blackstone “law of nations” became part of the “supreme Law” defined by Article VI.”

I. The Framers and the Law of Nations

A. The Framers’ Commitment to the Law of Nations

To begin with uncontroversial background, the constitutional generation in America recognized a set of international rights and duties they called the “law of nations.”

The Constitution’s text directly acknowledged this law: Article I, Section 8, gave Congress power to “define and punish … offenses against the law of nations.”

While the Constitution did not define the phrase, it invoked the Enlightenment conception of a system of rights and duties arising outside U.S. domestic law, from the nature of the international system, which was binding (at least in some senses) upon the United States and its citizens.”

[Spaulding]

Amazing replies from you, rxsid, bushpilot1, El Gato, Uncle Chip, and others. This is the colloquium where we prepare ourselves to teach the truth to others.

I'm reminded often of a wonderful mathematician at U.T. Austin, R.L. Moore, who assigned students theorems to be proved more than half of which were false. The result was three or four Fields Medals (the Nobel equivalent for mathematics), and many famous mathematicians. The trolls help us by seeking the weaknesses in our arguments. There are few weaknesses left, and any of you could immediately convince an audience that truth and logic was on your side (trolls are not not motivated by truth but by a goal, and some, by being paid; we don't argue with egos).

Just a couple of comments: Subjects are not citizens in U.S. law. American Indians were subjects, protected but not presumed to have allegiance to the republic, and certainly not eligible to public office.

From George D. Collins in The American Law Review; Sep/Oct 1884:

There is nothing in the Constitution to indicate the the term “citizen” was used in reference to the common-law definition of “subject,” nor is there an act of Congress declaratory of the common-law doctrine, and the subject of citizenship being national, questions relating to it are to be determined by the general principles of the law of nations.

What the principle of international law is in respect to this particular question, we will now inquire. Vattell thus defines natural born citizen: “The native or natural citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens:” and he continues: “As the society can not exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers and succeed to all their rights.”

There is nothing new here for you historians, but this is yet another confirmation that our legal system accepted law of nations as our common law.

I haven't time today, nor my son's photographic memory, but there is a supreme court decision in which the term subject and common law interpretations are dismissed as irrelevant for our federal legal foundation. Probably, one of you will recall the case and justice.

I do encourage all of you to take your knowledge outside the relatively polite environment of Free Republic because your knowledge of the truth will help to make us free. Most citizens do not know the truth. It is clear that media figures are afraid of going it alone. The will be isolated and ridiculed. But if we can pry open the door, they may follow. I believe we cannot let a blatant attack on presidential requirements go unchallenged. Obama’s colors are become clear to the naive. But ineligibility should not be allowed to succeed by tacit approval.

If anyone can see a path to proposing a Constitutional Amendment, like the one proposed by Orrin Hatch in 2003 to make Schwarzenegger eligible, that might be tactic to break the veil of silence in the legislature. Hatch, of course, now denies that he understands the Vattel/Marshall definition. He is, of course, lying, but so are the rest who all signed Senate Res. 511 in 2008 asserting the two citizen parents component of natural born citizenship in order to insure that they would face McCain, who might as well have been working for the Democrats. For them, politics is their security, their path to bonus income. For us the Constitution guarantees our freedom to each create our own security. Know any Congressmen who might be willing to try to pass an amendment to make Obama eligible? What do we think chances are it would pass? Polls showed Hatch with about 30% support. But the issue would be brought to the public to decide!

[bushpilot1]

“A stronger statement may be from The Nereide (1815), in which Chief Justice Marshall, writing for the Court, said that the Court was bound by the law of nations unless an act of the legislature directed otherwise.”

link above

[bushpilot1]

Hamilton in his Pacificus essays directly claimed that the law of nations was part of “the laws” in the take care clause:

“The Executive is charged with the execution of all laws, the laws of Nations as well as the municipal law….

The President is the constitutional executor of the laws. Our treaties and the “”laws of nations”” form a part of the law of the land.”

link above

[bushpilot1]

As to the law of, nations generally, see Vattel’s Law of Nations; Wheat. on Intern. Law; Marten’s Law of Nations;

Chitty’s Law of Nations; (Chitty’s is a translated copy)

Puffend. Law of Nature and of Nations, book 3; Burlamaqui’s Natural Law, part 2, c. 6;

Principles of Penal Law, ch. 13; Mann. Comm. on the Law of Nations; Leibnitz, Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus;

Binkershoek, Quaestionis Juris Publici, a translation of the first book of which, made by Mr. Duponceau, is published in the third volume of Hall’s Law Journal;

Kuber, Droit des Gens Modeme de I’Europe; Dumont, Corps Diplomatique;

Mably, Droit Public de l’Europe; Kent’s Comm. Lecture 1.

[El Gato]

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.

That could be because only one court has addressed the issue. The others dismissed on issues of "standing" and "justicibility". No federal court has addressed the issue.

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.”

The problem with that statement is that the statutes say the citizens at birth under the statutes are not naturalized, but the courts say they are. The Courts recognize at least two sort of "naturalized" citizens, the "naturalized in the US" and the "Naturalized at birth under the statutes. Another "class" of naturalized citizen are those naturalized "en mass" by statute. Such as occurred after the US acquired California, Texas, Hawaii and Alaska.

No reason they would not recognize more than one class of citizen by birth (and in fact those born outside the country of two citizen parents are citizens by birth are they not, as well as by statute).

[rxsid]

"George Washington Consulted the Legal Treatise "Law of Nations" as America's New President on his first day in office.

Clearly, the framers thought highly of Vattel's "Law of Nations"

"There was a news account recently that President George Washington borrowed the legal reference book "Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law" and never returned it to the library in New York and now owes a huge past due fine on that book. This new current events story ties into the importance of that book to George Washington and the other founders. Attached is an image and an the account what the new President was doing with the book in 1789 in New York. The new President was found consulting that book by visitors to his office in New York in 1789.

New York was then the capital of the USA. See attached highlighted section of the history book, This Was New York, The Nation's Capital in 1789, by Monaghan & Lowenthal, published by Books for Libraries Press of Freeport NY. I have a copy of this rare book. But it can also be viewed online at Google's book site. "

http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2010/04/george-washington-consulted-legal.html

[rxsid]

An example of Jefferson writting in French, citing Vattel (multiple times in the book).

Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State) to Mr. Genet, Plenipotentiary of France - Philadelphia June 17 1793

You think Sir, that this opinion is also contrary to the law of nature, and usage of nations. We are of opinion it is dictated by that law and usage; and this had been very maturely enquired into before it was adopted as a principle of conduct. But we will not assume the exclusive right of saying what that law and usage is. Let us appeal to enlightened and disinterested judges. None is more so than Vattel. He says

1. 3, f. 104 Tant qu un pcuple neutre veut jouir surement de cet etat il doit mon trer en toutes chofcs une exacte impartialite entre ceux qui se font la guerre Car s il savorlse Pun au prejudice de Pautre il ne pourra a pas se plaindre quand celui ci le traitera comme adherent et associe de son ennemi Sa neutralise seroit une neutralise frauduleuse dont personne ne veut etre la dupe Voyons done en quoi consiste cette impartialite qu un pcuple neutre doit garder
...

Pg. 29.

A message of the President of the United States to Congress relative to France and Great-Britain : delivered December 5, 1793, with the papers therein referred, to which are added the French originals.
Thomas Jefferson - 1793. Philadelphia : Published by order of the House of Representatives, Printed by Childs and Swaine

[bushpilot1]

Read earlier two English descent parents made a natural born citizen..in the 1700s in South Carolina..lost the..www. link. Will look for it.

[bushpilot1]

Wondering where to locate a French translation of the US Constitution is located. Natural born citizen.

[bushpilot1]

http://research.history.org/Files/Archaeo/ResPubs/Ethnicity%20and%20Identity%20Formation.pdf

“The society that developed in the Chesapeake was so unique that British officials often made explicit distinctions between English-born(settlers) and the natives (native-born whites)...”

The “natives” born to parents in the colonies..

[Uncle Chip]

<>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.<>

If that’s the case then why did the Congres’s Naturalization Act of 1790, cited also by the Senate’s SR511 for McCain, follow Vattel’s definition along with Founder/Historian David Ramsay????

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

[Uncle Chip]

It makes no provision for the citizenship of persons born within the United States whether to citizen parents or not.

And you would be wrong. Read it again and pay closer attention to that little clause beginning with "that may".

"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:"

It says clearly that "children of citizens of the United States ... shall be considered natural born citizens" --- even though they may be born overseas.

Thus "jus sanguinis", birth to American parents [plural] was the determining factor of natural born citizenship to them.

[The Pack Knight]

Come on, do you seriously think “that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States” means that provision also applies to children born inside the United States? Is that really how you read statutes, or just the ones where you’re trying to read it to say what you want it to say?

It certainly does extend jus sanguinis citizenship to children born outside the United States. Now where does it deny jus soli citizenship to children born inside the United States?