Sorry, I dropped out way back when...
Has anyone here yet made the case that legally or by statute it was determined that Vattel’s definition of Natural Born Citizen was what the founders meant when writing the Constitution? Because without that, the rest of this thread is irrelevant.
Other than a showcase to learn that Rush, Coulter, Hannity, and Cheney - at the very least - are Obots! :)
There's only 2 ways to determine this - by amendment or by SCOTUS decision. Statute don't count. And, NO, it has never been determined that it is Vattel's definition - just as NBC being defined as jus soli alone has never been determined ...
Same thing happened in District of Columbia v. Heller. The meaning of the phrase "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" had to be interpreted from the Founders' intent.
The phrase was ambiguous in today's vernacular - gun control advocates said it meant that only the militia could bear arms. Gun rights people said it meant that they had a legal right to own a gun.
Gun rights advocates won.
FYI: This CURRENTLY only applies to federal districts - there is another case [about the same issue] coming up before the Court concerning States' authority to ban guns ...
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the 1975 Minor versus Happersett decision cited Vattel's common law definition as part of the majority opinion, stating accordingly:
"The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents."
This paragraph from Justice Waite's majority opinion has never been disputed.
Look at it from another angle. Instead, look at the actions of the Founders and the action and laws enacted by the US government. The very 1st US Congress from 1789 to 1791 passed the 1790 Naturalization Act where the children of former alien fathers passed on their naturalized US citizenship onto their children upon the fathers who became US citizens. It did not matter if those children were born inside the United States since their fathers were still foreigners; the children did not become citizens until their father became US citizens. If for some reason a father of a child failed to become naturalized or was a unsuccessful applicant, the children of that child could apply for citizenship independently when he reached the age of 21. Jus Sanguinis was a dependent factor for children to become US citizens from their naturalized fathers. What was Obama's father - Kenyan right?
It was all the same under the tighter restrictions in the 1795 and the 1798 Naturalization Acts up until the 14th Amendment:
"Section 1 - “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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;"
Nothing changed in the 14th Amendment except citizenship upon birth. It says citizens - not natural born citizen, and conveying natural born citizen because of the 14h Amendment is a complete fallacy. The Supreme Court 1898 decision of making Wong Kim Ark a citizen is a far cry from making him a natural born citizen. Who were the parents of Wong Ark? They were subjects to the Emperor of China. Even the celebrated by leftists everywhere in the highly flawed Indiana Appeals Court of Ankeny opinion admits that the Wong Kim Ark was not declared a natural born citizen. The accurate understanding of the 14th Amendment is that it conveyed naturalization at birth and not natural born citizenship.
Jus Sanguinis is just as important to becoming a natural born citizen as being born inside the United States since both of these factors have to be met. There is nothing from the liberal spin machine is going to change these facts in history.