“You know full well that no translation of Vattel used NBC until AFTER the Constitution was adopted, and you know there were other sources available for that phrasing.”
That is complete BULLS***. The Law of Nations was written long before the constitution, and the many french speaking members of the constitutional congress, including Ben Franklin, USED Vattel’s work and referred to it in letters etc. Even George Washington had a copy, as was VERY well publicized just a couple of months ago, he forgot to return the copy he HAD to the Library he BORROWED it from.
The only one trying to obfuscate history appears to be YOU.
Vattel’s work was translated multiple times before the Constitution was written, but not with the phrase “natural born citizen”. The French does no support that translation. “Natives” and “indigenous” would be the transliterated words used by Vattel, so the french speaking members would NOT have thought about ‘natural born citizen’. Had they wanted to follow Vattel, they would have inserted the words ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’. They did not.
English common law had established use of ‘natural born subject’, and it was natural for the Framers to use ‘citizen’ instead of ‘subject’, since a republic has no king. Multiple Supreme Courts rulings have used British common law to determine the original intent of the Founder’s phrase.
It is dishonest to pretend the Founders were using Vattel in writing NBC when you know full well that Vattel did not use the phrase in French, and no translator used it until AFTER the Constitution was written. Vattel was changed to match the Constitution’s phrase, not the Constitution using Vattel.