Scalia often brought this up in the context of discussing so-called "legislative intent" that is based on the stated motivations of one or more of the people involved in drafting it. He pointed out that they're often is disagreement about what legislation may mean, and the different people may vote for a piece of legislation for different reasons. He also noted that some statements of legislative intent are self-serving to advance the interest of the particular drafter, and may not even have been public knowledge. He thought it would be wrong to ascribe a meaning to a document when that meeting had never been clearly stated publicly prior to its passage.
He also pointed out that in the more modern context, many statements contained in the Congressional Record were never actually stated on the floor at all, but were simply submitted by an individual legislator in writing at some point. Theu are just that individual legislator's attempt to steer future courts and how they may interpret the legislation, when in fact that intent, and do not reflect the common understanding of how those words were used at the time.
For something like the ratification of the Constitution, where the provisions were debated hotly at the state levels, you would have to look at the most commonly understood meaning of words and phraaes used in the Constitution across the colonies as a whole.
The fact that a particular group of drafters may have had an idiosyncratic understanding that was different from the common understanding should not impact the interpretation of the Constitution.
Exactly right.
For something like the ratification of the Constitution, where the provisions were debated hotly at the state levels, you would have to look at the most commonly understood meaning of words and phraaes used in the Constitution across the colonies as a whole.
I would think the understanding of Philadelphia/Pennsylvania would be the most definitive because *THAT* is where the convention was held, and *THAT* was the US Capitol at the time. The states talked to each other. It is completely reasonable to believe that what Philadelphia Pennsylvania thought was the meaning was also what other states thought was the meaning.
Were it otherwise, it would have provoked a dispute over the meaning.
And the common understanding of “natural born Citizen” at the time to John Jay and George Washington is clear in the letter from Jay to Washington in Aug 1787 that a “natural born Citizen” was one who born free of “foreign influence”. And that requirement would apply to anyone who would be eligible to be the Commander in Chief of our military forces after the founding generation was gone, per Article II Section 1 Clause 5 of the Constitution, the presidential eligibility clause. And that would exclude people born as dual-Citizens for sure. It would obviously be a person born with unity of citizenship and sole allegiance to the United States. Jay and Washington understood this. The term would preclude anyone born with foreign influence via their circumstances at birth or by birth. And likewise most of the framers fully understood it too. For if they didn’t understand the “nbC” intent and purpose, Washington would have explained it to them as to why it was necessary to be added into the Constitution for presidential eligibility once the founding generation was gone since Washington was the President of the Constitutional Convention. That point, in addition to the fact that many of the framers such as Franklin and others having read Vattel for many years would have known what the naturel nés Citoyens were in his 1774 French version of The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law — per his Vol.1, Chapter 19, Section 212, since most were fluent in French, the diplomatic language of the time. And Jay and Washington are responsible for the “natural born Citizen” term to the presidential eligibility clause. It is thus clear that Washington and the framers new and understood what it meant to them in 1787 when they put it into the Constitution, a person born in the country to parents who were both citizens of the country when their child was born.