We have neither. We have United States law. I have no doubt that Vattel influenced the Constitutional Congress to a very great extent but over time our definition of Natural born Citizen has been asserted through practice and SCOTUS decisions/holdings.
Natural law is very logical: a child born in a nation of citizen parents is a Natural born Citizen. No legal statute is required to determine that child’s citizenship.
James Madison was the man who wrote the U.S.Constitution, and during his Presidency he had a very definite belief in what exactly constituted a U.S. citizen: a person born of U.S. citizen parents was therefore a citizen, and just the fact of being born in one of the original thirteen colonies didn’t equal citizenship. This was the definition, in fact, written into the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The naturalization of children born to U.S. citizens overseas was dealt with by the very first U.S. congress in 1790. Unfortunately, they got it wrong!
They included in the Immigration & Naturalization Act language to alert the State Department that Americans born abroad are “natural born” citizens” and are not to be viewed as foreigners due to foreign birth. These children were not granted citizenship via that US statute, rather automatic citizenship was stated as a fact that must be recognized by immigration authorities. These children were not citizens by any other means than natural law, and statutory law was written to insure that their natural citizenship was recognized.
Well, this was not a reasonable explanation. It fails to recognize that Congress only has powers over naturalization and cannot define “natural born Citizen”, which has nothing to do with naturalization.
If Congress wants to tell the State Department something, they don’t have to enact legislation to do it. But more important is that all of the following naturalization acts, 1795, 1802, etc., were also passed to naturalize the children of U.S. citizens born abroad. And the words “natural born” were repealed in the 1795 Naturalization Act and never returned again. Why? Because naturalization of someone’s citizenship, requiring a legal staute, is at odds with natural law.
It took the 14th Amendment AND the Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court decision to cement in place the idea that a person born under the jurisdiction of the United States could be a United States citizen at birth no matter the parent’s citizenship.
Yes, natural law is both logical and simple.
The natural law that gave rise to "natural born subject" as well as the later American form "natural born citizen" was simple, and derived from the Bible.
The Bible said that people should be subject to authorities that God had put in place.
England became a Christian country, and adopted this philosophy into their law, extending it slightly to the very logical conclusion that if a person was born into a realm, then he was to be a subject OF that realm, and of the governing authority over it.
Very simple.
And THAT is where we got "natural born subject" (which became "natural born citizen" in the United States), and THAT is why it never mattered whether a person's parents were subjects or citizens or not. Just as long as they themselves were there in obedience to that authority. And if they were there as aliens in amity, with the permission of the King and under his protection, then their children, born in the realm, were natural born subjects OF the realm.
James Madison was the man who wrote the U.S.Constitution, and during his Presidency he had a very definite belief in what exactly constituted a U.S. citizen: a person born of U.S. citizen parents was therefore a citizen, and just the fact of being born in one of the original thirteen colonies didn’t equal citizenship. This was the definition, in fact, written into the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Sigh.
Madison said that when it came to allegiance (the kind of allegiance that created citizenship) there were two ways to go: place of birth, or parentage. He said that PLACE OF BIRTH was the MORE CERTAIN of the two, and that it was WHAT APPLIES IN THE UNITED STATES.
The naturalization of children born to U.S. citizens overseas was dealt with by the very first U.S. congress in 1790. Unfortunately, they got it wrong!
Yes, our prominent early leaders were all a bunch of goofups, weren't they? I seem to hear this pretty regularly from birthers. Like when DL attacked William Rawle.
It took the 14th Amendment AND the Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court decision to cement in place the idea that a person born under the jurisdiction of the United States could be a United States citizen at birth no matter the parent’s citizenship.Only in the case of blacks. By the time of US v Wong Kim Ark, the government had begun to wander from its earlier principles, and the Wong Kim Ark decision brought it back to the way Founders and Framers set things up.
I agree, that's where the current definition became cemented into the public mind, but neither the 14th Amendment, nor Wong Kim Ark makes such a claim. The claim is read into both the amendment and the decision. We have been dealing with the legacy of this error ever since.