The 35 years of age requirement in Article II, section one, clause 5 was ratified in an era when the average life expectancy was around 35 years or so.
Would you disregard that provision absent a constitutional amendment too???
The constitution was never intended to be a menu. Every one of it’s requirements are essential.
Except that the definition of natural born citizen is not spelled out as explicitly as the age requirement in the Constitution.
Except that the definition of natural born citizen is not spelled out as explicitly as the age requirement in the Constitution. I am reminded of something I read awhile back. A guy said that he had a Polish dictionary from the 1880s. Under definition of "Horse", it said: "Everyone knows what a horse is."
So too was it in 1787. Everyone at the time knew what a "natural born citizen" was, and they didn't think they needed to define it, because everyone involved in putting it into the constitution already understood what it meant.
The 1700s usage of the term "citizen" all stems from Vattel. Prior to 1760, all the English dictionaries I could find defined "citizen" to mean "someone who lives in a city."
Only in Switzerland was the word used to mean someone who was a member of a nation state. It was Vattel's usage of the word which was adopted by Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence, and later by the framers writing the US Constitution.
The correct English word for the time period was "subject." They stopped using "subject", because they stopped using the system that produced subjects based on birth on the King's soil.
"Citizen", means Vattel's definition. It is inherent in the usage of the word.
And here is a page from a 1817 law book which specifically says that Vattel was the source for "Citizen".
The constitution gives an explicit definition for only one provision, that of treason. Terms such as “well regulated militia,”, “interstate commerce”, and “freedom of speech” are best understood in light of the times that the framers construed them. Many of those terms that the founders adopted were explained in the 1758 treatise on international law that was probably the most pre-eminent and frequently referenced study on those subjects at the time.
The Natural Born Citizen eligibility clause has never been directly adjudicated by SCOTUS. But it has been obliquely addressed in other cases.
In 1814, the SCOTUS heard a case known as the Venus Merchantman case. Among other issues, it concerned itself with the impressment of US merchant sailors by the British Royal Navy into their service on the high seas. That SCOTUS, ALL of whom being members of the founding generation defined what a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN was by quoting the entire 212th paragraph of Emmerich De Vatel’s Law of Nations, which was considered to be THE treatise on international law and was referred to regularly by statesmen at the time. That definition, which was incorporated into the majority opinion authored by Justice Livingston follows:
Quote of section 212, Chapter 19, Book 1, Law of Nations, by Vattel, written in 1758:
Ҥ 212 - Citizens and Natives. 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 natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents
who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the
children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and
succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what
it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen,
on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The
country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens
merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of
discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they
were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of
a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of
his birth, and not his country. “
Note that the above reference was made in 1814, 54 years before the adoption of the 14th amendment, which makes no reference to, nor does it modify Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the constitution, no matter what the original intent might have been. The framers of the constitution were patriarchs, who believed that the citizenship status of the children followed that of the father. It is clear that they were concerned with undue foreign influence upon the office of the presidency, PARTICULARLY from a father owing allegiance to a foreign sovereignty.
To believe that the framers would have accepted that a person born a British subject, (as Obama himself admitted to being owing to his FATHER) when they had to exempt themselves with the grandfather exemption in clause 5 of Section 2 in order to be POTUS eligible, beggars belief and logic. Subsequent rulings of the SCOTUS in Minor vs Happersett, and Wong Kim Ark vs US serve only bolster this conclusion.
I believe that the court is reluctant to examine this issue, given the ghastly implications for the actuality of an illegitimate POTUS having made executive decisions for 2 terms, and the reality of an ineligible VP casting votes as the President of the Senate. How would all of their actions be unraveled? It would be a God awful mess of the worst sort...