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To: Kleon; bushpilot1; All
“And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.”
Doesn't that contradict Vattel’s definition?

Actually no, in fact it holds the Law of Nations/Nature in its purest form. That is, that citizenship is derived by heredity from the parent, not that of the soil which is the feudal definition. Natural law as laid out in the law of nations was & is the code of International law but not all countries held fast to it as they do today. Even merry ole England has now dropped their feudal form and changed their laws to state that children born to aliens are not English citizens at birth.

However, during the revolution, it was England's feudal definition that had to be contended with. American citizens who traveled to England and other countries that still practiced feudal citizenship were subject to having foreign citizenship forced upon their children born there. Those children were registered and during the war of 1812, the Brits would board ships and any male found to have been born in England, regardless of parentage was taken and forced into the British Army. But is wasn't always that way. When England was founded, it was the citizenship laws of nature/nations that was originally founded and that is the ancient laws the founders spoke of and the laws they put in place for the new country.

10 posted on 05/12/2010 3:17:28 PM PDT by patlin (1st SCOTUS of USA: "Human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law.")
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To: patlin
Actually no, in fact it holds the Law of Nations/Nature in its purest form. That is, that citizenship is derived by heredity from the parent, not that of the soil which is the feudal definition.

I'm talking about the specific quote from Law of Nations, which is tossed around here a lot, which says a natural-born citizen is "those born in the country, of parents who are citizens."

It seems to me that the first Congress contradicted this definition when they said someone born outside the country could be a NBC.

11 posted on 05/12/2010 3:23:11 PM PDT by Kleon
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