Sherman,
Look at the entire text.
http://supreme.justia.com/us/169/649/case.html
You will find this passage, which is most often quoted by legal theorists.
Here the Justices refer to English Common Law to define what a “natural born citizen” is and explicitly say that the reason they refer to English Common Law is that “we do not have US Common Law”
124 U.S. 124 U. S. 478.
II. The fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance, also called “ligealty,” “obedience,” “faith,” or “power” of the King. The principle embraced all persons born within the King’s allegiance and subject to his protection. Such allegiance and protection were mutual — as expressed in the maxim protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem — and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects, or to those who had taken an oath of allegiance, but were predicable of aliens in amity so long as they were within the kingdom. Children, born in England, of such aliens were therefore natural-born subjects.
DISCLAIMER: I really really wish that Congress would explicitly define this and kill the “anchor baby” option. However, till that happens, this case law prevails.
Thanks,
Software Engineer
A great deal of it is taken up in reviewing the history of US law regarding citizenship, and IMO makes it very clear that the principles are identical to those of English common law. That jus solis applies rather than jus sanguinis.
In fact they make it very clear that the constitutional provisions regarding citizenship must be interpreted in the light of common law. While they don't spend a lot of time specifically discussing the NBC issue, as it wasn't relevant to the case, there is no logical reason this provision wouldn't also use common law definitions in the absence of specific direction to do otherwise.
Such allegiance and protection were mutual ... and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects
Unless I'm confused this is a clear implication that only these two classes of subjects/citizens exist. That natural born = native born = citizen at birth. It makes no sense for him to discuss natural-born as compared to naturalized if natural-born are only a subset of the larger native born/citizen at birth group.