Anchor Baby
The Post Email
Posted on 8/13/2020, 7:52:25 AM by Lower55
https://www.thepostemail.com/2009/10/18/4-supreme-court-cases-define-natural-born-citizen/
The article at the lunatic fringe website is either by a legal moron or a willfully deceptive con man.
Case in point, first up The Venus.
The author of this 2009 abortion, John Charlton, did not give a link to The Venus (or any other case cited). The court opinion appears in the U.S. Reports captioned THE VENUS, Rae, Master, at 12 U.S. 253 (1814). The associated opinions (there are more than one) may be viewed or downloaded in facsimile PDF copy at the following link at the Library of Congress. Other links herein similarly go to the U.S. Reports at the Library of Congress.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep012/usrep012253/usrep012253.pdf
(Oct. 18, 2009) — The Post & Email
[excerpt]
WHAT THE VENUS CASE SAYS ON CITIZENSHIPIn the Venus Case, Justice Livingston, who wrote the unanimous decision, quoted the entire §212nd paragraph from the French edition, using his own English, on p. 12 of the ruling:
Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says:“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.
“The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are strangers who are permitted to settle and stay in the country. Bound by their residence to the society, they are subject to the laws of the state while they reside there, and they are obliged to defend it…
Justice Livingston did not write the "unanimous" opinion. Justice Livingston did not write any opinion. At 12 U.S. 317 it states:
LIVINGSTON, J. concurred in opinion with the Chief Justice.
Chief Justice Marshall did not write the Opinion of the Court. Chief Justice Marshall wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Quite obviously, nobody wrote a "unanimous" opinion in the case.
The Opinion of the Court, handed down on March 12, 1814 starts at 12 U.S. 273 where it states:
Saturday, March 12th. Absent....LIVINGSTON, J.WASHINGTON, J. after stating the facts of the case, delivered the opinion of the majority of the Court as follows:
The Opinion of the Court was a majority opinion written by Justice Bushrod Washington. Justice Livingston was absent.
But wait, there's more.
The Vattel quote, attributed to Livingston as writing for a "unanimous" Court, is not taken from the majority Opinion of the Court at all. It appears at 12 U.S. 289 in the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Marshall. Marshall was discussing international relations, not domestic law, and he was dissenting from the majority opinion.
As for the assiten attempt by John Charlton, or sundry birthers, to attempt to apply the irrelevant Law of Nations by Vattel to United States domestic citizenship determinations, it appears they do not understand what the Law of Nations is. The Swiss Vattel wrote a book in French entitled (in translation) The Law of Nations. Vattel died while the Americas were colonies. His book was about a body of law called the Law of Nations. It is defined in Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Ed., and the definition is exceedingly short.
law of nations. See INTERNATIONAL LAW.
The Law of Nations is nothing more than the old fashioned term for International Law.
As a sovereign nation, the United States determines United States citizenship by reference to its own laws, without reference to international law. American citizenship is not decided in The Hague.
The imaginary rule that someone with a claim to a second citizenship cannot be eligible for President is nonsense. If this were a real rule, Iran could confer Iranian citizenship upon all Americans not named Kamala Harris, leaving her as the only person in the United States eligible to run for President. That would be an example of the law of unintended consequences.
As for the other cases mentioned, but not linked, the author is equally inept or dishonest.
In Minor v. Happersett 88 U.S. 162 (1875) there was no matter of citizenship before the Court, and none was decided by the Court. In the Record of Transcript, Petition at 7, is found the Agreed Statement by the parties,
It is admitted by the pleadings that the plaintiff is a native-born, free white citizen of the United States and of the State of Missouri; that the defendant is a registrar, qualified and acting as such; that the plaintiff, in proper time and in proper form, made application to him to be registered, and that the defendant refused to register the plaintiff solely for the reason that she is a female, (and that she possesses the qualifications of an elector in all respects, except as to the matter of sex, as before stated.)
In dictum, at 88 U.S. 167, the Chief Justice Waite stated:
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.
And having found it NOT necessary to resolve the doubts of some other authorities on a question NOT before the Court, the Court proceeded to NOT resolve them. This doubt was resolved in a series of subsequent cases in Federal courts and resoundingly by the U.S. Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) where it was actually before the Court.
At 169 U.S. 678-680
Mr. Justice Miller, indeed, while discussing the causes which led to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, made this remark: "The phrase, 'subject to its jurisdiction,' was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States, born within the United States." 16 Wall. 73. This was wholly aside from the question in judgment, and from the course of reasoning bearing upon that question. It was unsupported by any argument, or by any reference to authorities; and that it was not formulated with the same care and exactness, as if the case before the court had called for an exact definition of the phrase, is apparent from its classing foreign ministers and consuls together—whereas it was then well settled law, as has since been recognized in a judgment of this court in which Mr. Justice Miller concurred, that consuls, as such, and unless expressly invested with a diplomatic character in addition to their ordinary powers, are not considered as entrusted with authority to represent their sovereign in his intercourse with foreign States or to vindicate his prerogatives, or entitled by the law of nations to the privileges and immunities of ambassadors or public ministers, but are subject to the jurisdiction, civil and criminal, of the courts of the country in which they reside. 1 Kent Com. 44; Story Conflict of Laws, § 48; Wheaton International Law, (8th ed.) § 249; The Anne, (1818) 3 Wheat. 435, 445, 446; Gittings v. Crawford, (1838) Taney, 1, 10; In re Baiz, (1890) 135 U. S. 403, 424.In weighing a remark uttered under such circumstances, it is well to bear in mind the often quoted words of Chief Justice Marshall: "It is a maxim not to be disregarded, that general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision. The reason of this maxim is obvious. The question actually before the court is investigated with care, and considered in its full extent. Other principles which may serve to illustrate it are considered in their relation to the case decided, but their possible bearing on all other cases is seldom completely investigated." Cohens v. Virginia, (1821) 6 Wheat. 264, 399.
That neither Mr. Justice Miller, nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases, understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench, in which Chief Justice Waite said: "Allegiance and protection are, in this connection" (that is, in relation to citizenship,) "reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other: allegiance for protection, and protection for allegiance." "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. It is sufficient, for everything we have now to consider, that all children, born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction, are themselves citizens." Minor v. Happersett, (1874) 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.
At 169 U.S. 688:
This sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is declaratory of existing rights, and affirmative of existing law, as to each of the qualifications therein expressed—" born in the United States," "naturalized in the United States," and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof "—in short, as to everything relating to the acquisition of citizenship by facts occurring within the limits of the United States. But it has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.The effect of the enactments conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of American parents has been defined, and the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion of the United States, notwithstanding alienage of parents, has been affirmed, in well considered opinions of the executive departments of the Government, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
At 169 U.S. 691:
"The child born of alien parents in the United States is held to be a citizen thereof, and to be subject to duties with regard to this country which do not attach to the father."The same principle on which such children are held by us to be citizens of the United States, and to be subject to duties to this country, applies to the children of American fathers born without the jurisdiction of the United States, and entitles the country within whose jurisdiction they are born to claim them as citizens and to subject them to duties to it.
"Such children are born to a double character: the citizenship of the father is that of the child, so far as the laws of the country of which the father is a citizen are concerned, and within the jurisdiction of that country; but the child, from the circumstances of his birth, may acquire rights and owes another fealty besides that which attaches to the father." Opinions of the Executive Departments on Expatriation, Naturalization and Allegiance, (1873) 17, 18; U. S. Foreign Relations, 1873-74, pp. 1191, 1192.
At 169 U.S. 693-694:
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke, in Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;" and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides—seeing that, as said by Mr. Webster, when Secretary of State, in his Report to the President on Thrasher's Case in 1851, and since repeated by this court, "independently of a residence with intention to continue such residence; independently of any domiciliation; independently of the taking of any oath of allegiance or of renouncing any former allegiance, it is well known that, by the public law,.an alien, or a stranger born, for so long a time as he continues within the dominions of a foreign government, owes obedience to the laws of that government, and may be punished for treason, or other crimes,—as a native-born subject might be, unless his case is varied by some treaty stipulations." Ex. Doc. H. R. No. 10, 1st sess. 32d Congress, p. 4; 6 Webster's Works, 526; United States v. Carlisle, 16 Wall. 147, 155; Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a; Ellesmere on Postnati, 63; 1 Hale P. C. 62; 4 Bl. Com. 74, 92.To hold that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries, would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.
And in Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 305 (1939) the Court noted at 307 U.S. 329-30:
Second. It has long been a recognized principle in this country that if a child born here is taken during minority to the country of his parents' origin, where his parents resume their former allegiance, he does not thereby lose his citizenship in the United States provided that on attaining majority he elects to retain that citizenship and to return to the United States to assume its duties.This principle was clearly stated by Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont in his letter of advice to the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, in Steinkauler's Case, 15 Op. Attys. Gen'l, 15 (1875). The facts were these: One Steinkauler, a Prussian subject by birth, emigrated to the United States in 1848, was naturalized in 1854, and in the following year had a son who was born in St. Louis. Four years later Steinkauler returned to Germany taking this child and became domiciled at Wiesbaden where they continuously resided. When the son reached the age of twenty years the German Government called upon him to report for military duty and his father then invoked the intervention of ihe American Legation on the ground that his son was a native citizen of the United States. To an inquiry by our Minister, the father declined to give an assurance that the son would return to this country within a reasonable time. On reviewing the pertinent points in the case, including the Naturalization Treaty of 1868 with North Germany, the Attorney General reached the following conclusion:
"Young Steinkauler is a native-born American citizen. There is no law of the United States under which his father or any other person can deprive him of his birthright. He can return to America at the age of twentyone, and in due time, if the people elect, he can become President of the United States; but the father, in accordance with the treaty and the laws, has renounced his American citizenship and his American allegiance and has acquired for himself and his son German citizenship and the rights which it carries, and he must take the burdens as well as the advantages.