Replies

Was there a “point” to all that?

Yes, it was to make clear the contradistinction betrween birther delusions and actual laws.

A natural born citizen “IS” “a citizen by BIRTH”, BUT under the Constitution the eligibility to be president requires other things. ALL citizens by birth do NOT meet those requirements.

You are absolutely correct. Some natural born citzens do not meet the requirement to be 35 years old, or to have been 14 years a resident of the United States.

If you know of any additional requirements enumerated by the Constitution, please quote that part of the Constitutional which enumerates the additional requirements to which you refer.

The term “natural born citizen” by todays standards was a poor choice of words, but back then everyone knew what it meant.

Yes, as the Court stated, the term is directly taken from the English term natural born subject. The term subject was changed to citizen to reflect the change of the unitary sovereign to the sovereign being the people of the states in a collective sense.

ALL the framers and founders at the time were aware of Vattel’s definition of “natural born citizen”.

Proof of claim abjectly absent. Proof that ALL framers and founders were fluent in French abjectly missing.

There is ample proof that each and every one of the original thirteen states adopted English Common Law as their domestic law. There is ample proof that the Constitution was written in the language of the English Common Law, and there is a citable claim that Blackstone's Commentaries of the English Common Law sold more copies in the colonies/state than in England. The Supreme Court has stated that the Constitution cannot be read without resort to the English Common Law.

The Swiss Emer de Vattel was dead and buried before the Declaration of Independence, much less the Constitution. During the lifetime of Vattel, no such republican government existed, nor did citizen sovereigns exist. Vattel did not write a single word about them.

Vattel wrote a book on the Law of Nations. The Law of Nations was the archaic term for International Law. International Law is a body of law that grew up by custom and usage between nations. It's only application is between two or more nations. It has no application to the domestic law of any nation.

U.S. citizenship determnations are not made in the Hague.

As Congressman Ray Thornton proved, Congress may not add any conditions for holding Fredeal elected office beyond what the Constitution enumerates. U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995).

https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep514779/

U. S. TERM LIMITS, INC., ET AL. v. THORNTON ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS
No. 93-1456. Argued November 29, 1994-Decided May 22, 1995*
Respondent Hill filed this suit in Arkansas state court challenging the constitutionality of §3 of Amendment 73 to the Arkansas Constitution, which prohibits the name of an otherwise-eligible candidate for Congress from appearing on the general election ballot if that candidate has already served three terms in the House of Representatives or two terms in the Senate. The trial court held that §3 violated Article I of the Federal Constitution, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed. A plurality of the latter court concluded that the States have no authority "to change, add to, or diminish" the age, citizenship, and residency requirements for congressional service enumerated in the Qualifications Clauses, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 2, cl. 2, and Art. I, §3, cl. 3, and rejected the argument that Amendment 73 is constitutional because it is formulated as a ballot access restriction rather than an outright disqualification of congressional incumbents.
Held: "Section 3 of Amendment 73 to the Arkansas Constitution violates the Federal Constitution. Pp. 787-838.
(a) The power granted to each House of Congress to judge the "Qualifications of its own Members," Art. I, § 5, cl. 1, does not include the power to alter or add to the qualifications set forth in the Constitution's text. Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 540. After examining Powell's analysis of the Qualifications Clauses' history and text, id., at 518-548, and its articulation of the "basic principles of our democratic system," id., at 548, this Court reaffirms that the constitutional qualifications for congressional service are "fixed," at least in the sense that they may not be supplemented by Congress. Pp. 787-798.
(b) So too, the Constitution prohibits States from imposing congressional qualifications additional to those specifically enumerated in its text. Petitioners' argument that States possess control over qualifications as part of the original powers reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment is rejected for two reasons. First, the power to add qualifications is not within the States' pre-Tenth Amendment "original powers," but is a new right arising from the Constitution itself, and thus is
*Together with No. 93-1828, Bryant, Attorney General of Arkansas v. Hill et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
not reserved. Second, even if the States possessed some original power in this area, it must be concluded that the Framers intended the Constitution to be the exclusive source of qualifications for Members of Congress, and that the Framers thereby "divested" States of any power to add qualifications. That this is so is demonstrated by the unanimity among the courts and learned commentators who have considered the issue; by the Constitution's structure and the text of pertinent constitutional provisions, including Art. I, § 2, cl. 1, Art. I, § 4, cl. 1, Art. I, § 6, and Art. I, § 5, cl. 1; by the relevant historical materials, including the records of the Constitutional Convention and the ratification debates, as well as Congress' subsequent experience with state attempts to impose qualifications; and, most importantly, by the "fundamental principle of our representative democracy . . . 'that the people should choose whom they please to govern them,"' Powell, 395 U. S., at 547. Permitting individual States to formulate diverse qualifications for their congressional representatives would result in a patchwork that would be inconsistent with the Framers' vision of a uniform National Legislature representing the people of the United States. The fact that, immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, many States imposed term limits and other qualifications on state officers, while only one State imposed such a qualification on Members of Congress, provides further persuasive evidence of a general understanding that the qualifications in the Constitution were unalterable by the States. Pp. 798-827.
(c) A state congressional term limits measure is unconstitutional when it has the likely effect of handicapping a class of candidates and has the sole purpose of creating additional qualifications indirectly. The Court rejects petitioners' argument that Amendment 73 is valid because it merely precludes certain congressional candidates from being certified and having their names appear on the ballot, and allows them to run as write-in candidates and serve if elected. Even if petitioners' narrow understanding of qualifications is correct, Amendment 73 must fall because it is an indirect attempt to evade the Qualifications Clauses' requirements and trivializes the basic democratic principles underlying those Clauses. Nor can the Court agree with petitioners' related argument that Amendment 73 is a permissible exercise of state power under the Elections Clause, Art. I, §4, cl. 1, to regulate the "Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." A necessary consequence of that argument is that Congress itself would have the power under the Elections Clause to "make or alter" a measure such as Amendment 73, a result that is unfathomable under Powell. Moreover, petitioners' broad construction is fundamentally inconsistent with the Framers' view of the Elections Clause, which was intended to grant States authority to protect the integrity and regularity of the election process by regulating election procedures, see, e. g., Storer v. Brown, 415 U. S. 724, 730, 733, not to provide them with license to impose substantive qualifications that would exclude classes of candidates from federal office. Pp. 828-836.
(d) State imposition of term limits for congressional service would effect such a fundamental change in the constitutional framework that it must come through a constitutional amendment properly passed under the procedures set forth in Article V. Absent such an amendment, allowing individual States to craft their own congressional qualifications would erode the structure designed by the Framers to form a "more perfect Union." Pp. 837-838.
316 Ark. 251, 872 S. W. 2d 349, affirmed.

NATURAL BORN SUBJECT, 7 Anne c5, 5 Eliz, Dyer 224

7 ANNE, c. 5, 1708

An Act for naturalizing Foreign Protestants.
[Whole Act except part printed rep. 10 c. 9 (c. 5 Ruff.)]
3. . . . the children of all natural born subjects born out of the ligeance of her Majesty her heires and successors shall be deemed adjudged and taken to be natural born subjects of this kingdom to all intents constructions and purposes whatsoever.
(a) Guines and Gascony,
(b) add assented
(c) and kept

Case XCI. 5 Eliz. Dyer, 224. Alien, Denizen. 7 Co. 22 b. 20. Vaugh. 282. 2 Vent. 6.

A bastard born at Tour-nay in France, when H. 8 had subdued it, between English parents, is a natural subject of England; and continues so although Tournay be won back by the French: for he was born in obedientia & ligeantia regis Angliæ. By the two chief justices and other judges.
The law is the same although the mother be French; or the father and mother French; for the reason is alike: such also is the law, if an husband and wife who are aliens have issue born in England, where the parents were born in France. If a Frenchman marries an English woman, and has issue born in France; this issue is not a natural subject of France; as appears by a book called Treasure de Francois in the title De droit de Aubien, i.e. de alienigenis. It * seems reasonable that our law for the future should not shew more favour to the issue of aliens born in England, than the issue of English parents receive abroad in France. See my Repertory, title Alien and Denizen.
* See above 1, 2. 10 W. 3, cap. 1. 11 & 12 W. 3, cap. 6. 7 Annæ, cap. 5. 1 G. 1, cap. 4. 5 G. 1, cap. 2. 4 G. 27, cap. 21.

See also:

Stanley v Bernes, 3 Hagg. 373 (1830) at 436: “The general and primary rule is, that the national character of the person is acquired from the place of birth, though some exceptions even to that rule have been framed, not by the common law, but by special acts of parliament; as for instance, in favour of persons born abroad, but of natural born British parents.”

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R42097.pdf

Congressional Research Service Report

Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement

Jack Maskell
Legislative Attorney
November 14, 2011

[excerpt]

Although the eligibility of native born U.S. citizens has been settled law for more than a century, there have been legitimate legal issues raised concerning those born outside of the country to U.S. citizens. From historical material and case law, it appears that the common understanding of the term “natural born” in England and in the American colonies in the 1700s may have included both the strict common law meaning as born in the territory (jus soli), as well as the statutory laws adopted in England since at least 1350, which included children born abroad to British fathers (jus sanguinis, the law of descent).
The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term “natural born” citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth,” either by being born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at birth.” Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an “alien” required to go through the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen.

169 U. S. 702.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in the declaration that
"all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,"
contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization. Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law. But citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution. Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization.

Wong Kim Ark at 169 U.S. 649, 658-59:

It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.

Wong Kim Ark at 169 U.S. 662-63:

In United States v. Rhodes (1866), Mr. Justice Swayne, sitting in the Circuit Court, said: "All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . . We find no warrant for the opinion that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution."

Lynch v. Clark, 1 Sandf. 583 (1844), as published in New York Legal Observer, Volume III, 1845

It is an indisputable proposition, that by the rule of the common law of England, if applied to these facts, Julia Lynch was a natural born citizen of the United States. And this rule was established and inflexible in the common law, long anterior to the first settlement of the United States, and, indeed, before the discovery of America by Columbus. By the common law, all persons born within the ligeance of the crown of England, were natural born subjects, without reference to the status or condition of their parents.
[...]
And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. "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," &c. The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. Suppose a person should be elected President who was native born, but of alien parents, could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the constitution? I think not. The position would be decisive in his favor that by the rule of the common law, in force when the constitution was adopted, he is a citizen.