“Since the US Constitution refers to the “Law of Nations”, which is a reference to Vattel’s Law of Nations that defines a natural-born citizens as (Book 1, Section 19, Paragraph 212): “
I really want to be polite, but this argument is obviously dead wrong for several reasons.
First, your link goes to Article I, Section 8 - which deals with the “Powers of Congress.” It has nothing to do with the natural born citizen reference in Article II
Second, the quote makes it obvious that the “Law of Nations” does not refer to any book. The Consitition reads:
“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;”
Unless Vattel’s book was in fact agreed by nations to be binding international law (which it wasn’t), the quote obviously doesn’t refer to Vattel’s book, or any other book for that matter.
Finally, our grammer rules are not the founders’ grammer rules and sometimes they capitalized nouns as they do in German.
In short there is no serious argument that Vattel’s book controls anything. If the framers wanted an explicit requirement that ‘natural born citizen’ meant that the parents had to be citizens at the time of the birth the could’ve put it in. They didn’t.
There is no distinction in the law between ‘natural born citizens’ and simply ‘born citizens.’ There is not one single official document, no birth certificate, no passport, etc. that draws such a distinction. That ought to tell you something.
“Unless Vattel’s book was in fact agreed by nations to be binding international law (which it wasn’t), the quote obviously doesn’t refer to Vattel’s book, or any other book for that matter.”
I know. If Karl Marx had written a book called “International Law,” would we be under pressure to assume that’s what the law is talking about every time that phrase happens to pop up these days? No.
While I assume you meant to be polite, you were dead wrong for several reason.
While the reference to Article 1, Section 8 may be referring to the body of international common law known as law of nations, by far the most popular edition was Vattel’s, published in 1758, and in Benjamin Franklin's hands in 1762. The other famous authors of compendia of the law of nations, Grotius, Pufendorf, Bynkershoek, Wolff were not nearly as successful as Vattel, partly because some had a partisan religious positions and also because Vattel was particularly succinct.
Vattel’s Law of Nations was our nation's first law book, the core curriculum at our first law school, an important move because, in spite of claims by some Obama cadre, we firmly rejected British Common Law along with monarchy and King George. Thomas Jefferson converted some divinity curriculum to make room for law and mathematics at William and Mary in 1779. The first required text was Law of Nations.
In 1790, Alexander Hamilton, whose original specification for presidential eligibility didn't require a natural born citizen, but was changed at John Jay's suggestion in a note to Washington, said this about Vattel in a note to Washington on Sept 15 1790:
But Vatel, perhaps the most accurate and approved of the writers on the laws of nations, preserves a mean between these1 different opinions.
The Constitution is not a reference book. It is a book of principles and guidelines. To keep it relevant the Framers defined very little, wanting its meaning to be understood by all citizens and not doled out by mandarins in white wig's. It depends, intentionally, upon the common language and the common law of the time. Founder and Framer and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson talks about this at great length, dismissing any notion that our framers depended upon the loose collection of dicates writen to protect royalty called English Common law. In Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, Madison (p37) points out that unless we make the effort to understand the language of the framers, we will lose the protections, the guarantees in the Constitution.
The notions of jus sanguinis and jus soli, inheritance by blood and by having been born on the same sail, are discussed by Aristotle and Cicero at length, and quoted by James Wilson and Vattel. They are concepts from the natural law. It natural to most that man's morals, ethics, and allegiances, will be most strongly indicated by his parent's allegiances. To parents, this is a common idea, but a powerful one.
The U.S. was a new nation, but for over two hundred years before its emancipation, a trading nation. Many, perhaps most, though I haven't counted, of the early Supreme Court cases involved trade and the implications of citizenship. That was the subject of The Charming Betsy, and The Venus, both John Marshall cases. In the Venus Marshall, in 1814 quoted Vattel as the most concise source of the meaning of a natural born citizen. Obots will distract with arguments that Marshall used the French “native” and “indigene” but don't waste time over that. Marshall may have been showing off his French, because there were already over ten English editions of Vattel published in the U.S. and they all used “natural born citizen” in the translation associated with “born on the soil of citizen parents.”
The U.S. used Vattel more than any other legal reference. Between 1789 and 1820 there were 92 citations in pleadings to 14 for Pufendorf. The numbers for citations in testimony are similar. Those numbers are form an article on Law of Nations by F.S. Ruddy in the Grotian Society Papers of 1972. Vattel was U.S. common law, according to Justice Joseph Story, a founder, like Marshall and Wilson.
John Marshall pointed out that words in the Constitution are all effective. Article 1 Section 2: “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States.”
The Framers didn't require that Representatives be natural born citizens. If there were no difference the Framers would not have used the different term, “natural born citizen.” These men were not careless with their language or their logic. The distinction was, as expressly stated by Chief Justice Morrison Waite, based upon notions “At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar” clear, even to the only justice appointed by an ineligible president before Obama, Justice Gray of Wong Kim Ark fame. Gray repeatedly cites Minor, and then quotes the whole passage. Gray cites Marshall who quotes Vattel. There is no doubt that the the Constitution doesn't equate the two definitions, because the the 14th Amendment, and no Amendment, can alter the interpretation of another provision of the Constitution by implication. If a provision is to be amended, it must be done explicitly. So your correcton may have been wrong; for the U.S. law of nations and Law of Nations meant the same body of ideas. It is not unlike Wagner's Dictionery and Webster's Dictionery. We used Vattels refernce to law of nations. And your equivalence between citizen and natural born citizen is outright wrong. Even Pat Leahy gets that, when he agreed with Judge Michael Chertoff in Senate Res 511, Apr 2008, when Chertoff said:
“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied. “That is mine, too,” said Leahy.?