Question -- constitutional meaning of "natural born."

Vanity | 4/9/11 | Publius

[publius1]

Question- constitution speaks to presidential requirement ob bring a "natural born" citizen: "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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Is "natural born" the same as "native born"???

[Jim Noble]

Not defined by the Constitution or the US Code, awaiting case law, don’t hold your breath.

[musicman]

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[publius1]

constitution speaks to presidential requirement ob bring a “natural born” citizen = “ob bring” is “of being.”. iPad spell Check attacks again!!!

[ransacked]

Born in the United States to parents both in this Country legally, lawfully, and citizens of.

[the invisib1e hand]

Natural born: congenital or native i.e. “natural born fool.”

[umgud]

So if you have a C-Section, you’re out?

[reasonisfaith]

Not the same. It was established years ago on this forum, when Donald Trump was praising Obama for being such a political success.

[mamelukesabre]

Depends what time frame you are talking about. The supreme courts have dumbed down the definition over the last 200+ years. By most recent interpretation, if obama was born in hawaii, he is natural born. By the interpretation in use at the time of obama’s birth, he would not have qualified as a natural born citizen even if he was born in hawaii.

[iowamark]

Is "natural born" the same as "native born"???

Neither of those terms is defined by the Constitution or the law. Perhaps someday Congress will attempt it.

[The_Reader_David]

ransacked is staking out the position that the Founders’ notion of “natural born citizen” was that of the Swiss jurist Vattel. The contrary position holds that the Founders’ notion of “natural born citizen” corresponded to the British notion of “natural born subject”, which would be the same as native born (cf. Blackstone).

Without a case law ruling on the meaning from a court, which position holds is a matter of debate. It is one of the outrageous things about the courts avoiding the Obama eligibility question that we do not have a clear interpretation of the phrase. If it is read according to Vattel’s notion, then the birth certificate is an irrelevancy (unless it’s being hidden because Barack Obama, Sr. was not the father, but some, embarrassing U.S. citizen like the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, in which case showing that he lied in his “auto”biography and was born in Hawaii would prove Obama’s eligibility). If read according to British custom as explained by Blackstone, the location of Obama’s birth matters.

[Christian Engineer Mass]

“So if you have a C-Section, you’re out?”

Of course not.

[the invisib1e hand]

iPad spell Check attacks again!!

the one on the iPhone is a hoot, too.

[supercat]

Would it be fair to say that when the Constitution was written, a natural born citizen would be one who was never wholly or partially a citizen of any other country? Seems pretty clear that Barack would fail that test.

[Always Right]

Whatever Obama is, isn’t.

[ScubieNuc]

Here is a link with good information. http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2009/08/law-of-nations-and-not-english-common.html

In short, a natural born citizen is one born in a country to parents (notice the ‘s’, as in two citizen parents) who are citizens of the same country. So NO, Obama is not a “natural born citizen”.

The problem is that the vetting process for presidential candidates is basically non-existant. People just assume there is a through review, but there is not.

[PieterCasparzen]

See posts by Elle Bee, Spaulding, others; search for keyword naturalborncitizen.

Copy of a post of mine follows:

Hence, the Chester Arthur example is not and cannot be treated as any precedent since the nation was not aware of the truth about his father’s and mother’s non-U.S. citizenship status at the time of his birth.

Interesting, since it appears that the question of applicability of precedent would become the focus when the Natural-born issue is finally acknowledged for a week in the media, and I believe at some point it will be. From a practical standpoint, if this issue makes reelection probabilities dire enough, centrist Dems would attempt to primary nobama out, which would perhaps be the smartest thing for them to do, as the D party could move to the center and the R would have to move more solidly to the right. Except who would the D's select (besides the thoroughly worn-out clintonistas) ? Well, whatever, my real points for comment follow.

Well, I found a reference to a SCOTUS case from 1874 that referred to "natural-born". The link to Justia.com follows the relevant snippet from this women's suffrage case, "MINOR V. HAPPERSETT, 88 U. S. 162 (1874)",

"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. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts."

The text I cite above appears to be quite telling in the logic of the actors of today.

If this ruling were the latest precedential ruling, it would make sense then, that the man elected in 2008 and his true backers, whoever they may be, are exerting such tremendous effort to establish the newly-minted State of Hawaii as his birthplace. That birthplace enables him to claim "natural-born" based on being in the second classification of children in the cited reference, those born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. Absent that birthplace fact, he would fail the meaning of "natural-born" cited within this opinion on both counts, as the father he claims is acknowledged to not be a U.S. citizen.

Please comment; I very much look forward to more case research and opinions regarding the precedents of this case. Please keep them research-oriented; are there any legal scholars or "lay" people out there who can do some digging ?

If this holds water, then perhaps this is the case that needs to be presented, "Occam" style.

I am not sure of Mr. Trump's true aims, so I try to write in an unbiased tone regarding his efforts which, so far, appear to have certain commonality with most Americans, however I caution that his overall vision may be less than ideal, as indicated by some simplistic protectionist bandages that he has advocated. In his defense, I would like to remind that the amount of his assets affected by slumping Real Estate may be motivating his desire to see the nation restored.

[omegadawn]

obama admitted in 2004 during his debate with Keyes that he was not a natural Born Citizen, but somehow he now is a Natural Born citizen. so it’s VERY recent history that the meaning of “natural born” has become confused. Perhaps it more based on the fact that obama is black that he is allowed to call himself a natural born citizen.

At the time obama was elected to the Senate he was proclaimed as the first African born American to be elected to the Senate. Stange how it appears that he was born in two different countries at the same time!!!!

[livius]

It’s not defined, but we have to remember that the Founders were writing not only to set up the laws for the future, but to handle their own situations, since obviously the country didn’t even exist at the time of their births. Hence the specification that persons had to be citizens at the time of adoption of the new Constitution, and also the residence requirement of 14 years.

Personally, I think they probably just meant “born here;” “natural” is used in that sense in other languages, such as Spanish. Natural and native are actually both descended from the Latin word nasci, meaning to be born, and I think people are creating an artificial distinction when they try to oppose them.

[Tucsonican]

So if you have a C-Section, you’re out?

In such a case an appropriate determination will be made by a panel of celebrity judges which will account for 50% of the determination and the other 50% will be determined by international text message voting.