Vattel never said or wrote “Natural Born Citizen”. He wrote “The native, or indigenous...”, and 10 years AFTER the Constitution was written, a translator turned that into NBC.
The translator may have pulled the phrase from the Constitution, but the Constitution most certainly did NOT take it from Vattel.
The Supreme Court, as you well know, disagrees. They said this was the nomenclature known to the framers of the Constitution. Also, you DO understand that when Vattel says native (as in native born), it STILL means you have to be born to citizen parents. The framers would have understood this too. Under such an understanding of being a native or natural citizen at birth, you STILL HAVE TO HAVE citizen parents in order to be a natural citizen, a native or indigenous, etc., ... and as Vattel, John Jay, the Supreme Court, John Bingham, etc., would acknowledge ... free of foreign ties. Under all circumstances, Obama does not meet any of these definitions.
Incorrect. As I posted earlier Benjamin Franklin obtained 3 copies of the work in the original French not the English Translation. This was because that was the language of diplomats, of which Franklin was.
I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the Law of Nations. Accordingly, that copy which I kept has been continually in the hands of the members of our congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author.”
- December 9th of 1775, Franklin wrote to Vattel’s editor, C.G.F. Dumas, Benjamin Franklin
footnote from birther.org:"Please note that the correct title of Vattel's Book I, Chapter 19, section 212, is “Of the citizens and naturals”. It is not “Of citizens and natives” as it was originally translated into English. While other translation errors were corrected in reprints, that 1759 translation error was never corrected in reprints. The error was made by translators in London operating under English law, and was mis-translated in error, or was possibly translated to suit their needs to convey a different meaning to Vattel to the English only reader. In French, as a noun, native is rendered as “originaire” or “indigene”, not as “naturel”. For “naturel” to mean native would need to be used as an adjective. In fact when Vattel defines "natural born citizens" in the second sentence of section 212 after defining general or ordinary citizens in the first sentence, you see that he uses the word "indigenes" for natives along with "Les naturels" in that sentence. He used the word "naturels" to emphasize clearly who he was defining as those who were born in the country of two citizens of the country. Also, when we read Vattel, we must understand that Vattel's use of the word "natives" in 1758 is not to be read with modern day various alternative usages of that word. You must read it in the full context of sentence 2 of section 212 to fully understand what Vattel was defining from natural law, i.e., natural born citizenship of a country. Please see the photograph of the original French for Chapter 19, Section 212, here in the original French if you have any doubts. Please do not simply look at the title as some have suggested that is all you need to do. Vattel makes it quite clear he is not speaking of natives in this context as someone simply born in a country, but of natural born citizens, those born in the country of two citizens of the country. Our founding Fathers were men of high intellectual abilities, many were conversant in French, the diplomatic language of that time period. Benjamin Franklin had ordered 3 copies of the French Edition of “Le droit des gens,” which the deferred to as the authoritative version as to what Vattel wrote and what Vattel meant and intended to elucidate.".