Posted on 01/12/2024 11:30:39 PM PST by CDR Kerchner
Bogus. NBC has been discussed in detail in the US Supreme Court and YOUR interpretation is wrong.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649
see #38
Per the abstract: "Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that no one but a “natural born Citizen” is eligible to be President of the United States. Modern conventional wisdom generally holds that the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes anyone made a U.S. citizen at birth by U.S. statutes or the Constitution. But that conventional wisdom is under attack in academic commentary and open to doubt on textual grounds. If anyone born a U.S. citizen is eligible, the word “natural” in the eligibility clause is superfluous. Further, in general in eighteenth century legal language, natural meant the opposite of “provided by statute” (hence “natural law” and “natural rights”). And plausible arguments can be made for a narrow meaning of “natural born” on the basis of either traditional English common law or eighteenth-century continental public law. To this point, modern scholarship has provided no comprehensive response to these objections.
"This Article defends the broad view of the original meaning of the eligibility clause. Although it finds that the usual sources of original meaning—the Constitution’s drafting and ratifying history, and contemporaneous commentary—are inconclusive on the meaning of “natural born,” it argues that meaning of the phrase in English law provides a useful guide. Under traditional English common law, a “natural born subject” meant, with minor exceptions, only a person born in English territory. But beginning in the seventeenth century, in a succession of Acts, Parliament extended the meaning of “natural born” to include some persons born abroad to English parents. In adopting the phrase “natural born” from English law, the American framers likely understood that they were using a phrase without a fixed definition and subject to at least some legislative alteration through the naturalization power. That conclusion in turn provides support for the modern view that Congress can create categories of “natural born” citizens by statute, although that power is likely subject to some limitation to preserve the original purpose of the eligibility clause."
Trying to understand Constitutional terms without understanding the common law is an exercise in futility.
“...that they broke away from common law system itself, denied.”
Evidence that they did not believe themselves to be unconstrained in their ability to interpret/pick and choose said common law ?
This is just silly.
Does anyone think that Donald Trump Jr. has "dual allegiance" to Czechoslovakia, a country that doesn't even exist anymore?
I refer you to my prior citations from post #39:
"It only assumes, what has always been conceded, that the common law may properly be resorted to in determining the meaning of the terms used in the Constitution, where that instrument itself does not define them."
"The common law of England is obligatory in this state by immemorial usage, and consent, so far as it corresponds with our circumstances and situation. As we have no treatise upon our laws, we are under the necessity of becoming acquainted with the English code for the purpose of understanding our own. The operation of the English common law, is ascertained by no general rule, and is bounded by no known line: it can be learned only from the decisions of our courts. A common law peculiar to ourselves, resulting from our local circumstances, has been established by the decision of our courts; but has never been committed to writing."
Does this answer your question?
I refer you to previously posted statements regarding all your “previously cited” subsequent legal mumbo-jumbo.
Why can’t you simply answer the question of WHY it was a qualification without going into all the bullSchiff about ‘such and such a judge said this’?
You cannot rationally argue against the articles’ conclusion regarding the Original Intent without being more dishonest.
-fJRoberts-
"Natural law" was a big thing in 1776 and 1787. People nowadays do not even know what it is. They don't grasp this "natural law" stuff. They think you can pass a statute to change the laws of nature.You cannot pass a statute to change the laws of nature.
https://youtu.be/xU6eTVZUWJg?si=oU7jzURl87HKg3d6
The Laws of Nature
“Does this answer your question?”
Yes, The founders believed the they were not unconstrained to interpret/pick and choose: “...it can be learned only from the decisions of our courts.”
Why can’t you simply answer the question of WHY it was a qualification without going into all the bullSchiff about ‘such and such a judge said this’?
Because the very nature of the common law system is based on court decisions and case precedent. If something is not defined explicitly constitutionally or by statute, then one may resort to the common law for an understanding of terms.
You may not like it, but that's the way it is.
As I noted your ‘arguments’ are distinctly similar to ‘What is a woman?’.
That is more a case for adherence to the original intent of the Constitution, is it not? We’ve seen, “in living color”, what ignoring it brings us. We are still living with our mistakes.
Actually, no, it is not a case for intent. Where, as here, the plain text meaning of the words are clear, intent is not to be considered. It was the words that were ratified, not anyone's intent. All persons born in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens of the United States.
"A Matter of Interpretation," Federal Courts and the Law, by Antonin Scalia, 1997. This book contains an essay by Antonin Scalia and responses to that essay by professors Ronald Dworkin, Mary Ann Glendon, Laurence Tribe, and Gordon Wood. There is a final response by Antonin Scalia.
To demonstrate the breadth of legal agreement on the point of interpretation, I quote from Laurence Tribe and Antonin Scalia.
Laurence Tribe, pp. 65-6
Let me begin with my principal area of agreement with Justice Scalia. Like him, I believe that when we ask what a legal text means — what it requires of us, what it permits us to do, and what it forbids — we ought not to be inquiring (except perhaps very peripherally) into the ideas, intentions, or expectations subjectively held by whatever particular persons were, as a historical matter, involved in drafting, promulgating, or ratifying the text in question. To be sure, those matters, when reliably ascertainable, might shed some light on otherwise ambiguous or perplexing words or phrases — by pointing us, as readers, toward the linguistic frame of reference within which the people to whom those words or phrases were addressed would have "translated" and thus understood them. But such thoughts and beliefs can never substitute for what was in fact enacted as law. Like Justice Scalia, I never cease to be amazed by the arguments of judges, lawyers, or others who proceed as though legal texts were little more than interesting documentary evidence of what some lawgiver had in mind. And, like the justice, I find little to commend the proposition that anyone ought, in any circumstances I can imagine, to feel legally bound to obey another's mere wish or thought, or legally bound to act in accord with another's mere hope or fear.
Antonin Scalia, responding to Dr. Tribe, p. 133
He is correct that we both regard as irrelevant the intentions of the drafters....
- - - - - - - - -
It is similar with statutory construction. It is the words that are enacted, not the intent of the individual law givers.
Aldridge v. Williams, 44 U.S. 9, 24 (1845)
In expounding this law, the judgment of the Court cannot in any degree be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself, and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.
United States v Union Pacific Railroad Company, 91 U.S. 72 (1875)
In construing an act of Congress, we are not at liberty to recur to the views of individual members in debate nor to consider the motives which influenced them to vote for or against its passage. The act itself speaks the will of Congress, and this is to be ascertained from the language used. But courts, in construing a statute, may with propriety recur to the history of the times when it was passed, and this is frequently necessary in order to ascertain the reason as well as the meaning of particular provisions in it. Aldridge v. Williams, 3 How. 24; Preston v. Browder, 1 Wheat. 115, 120 [argument of counsel -- omitted].
Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244, 254 (1901)
In expounding this law, the judgment of the Court cannot in any degree be influenced by the construction placed upon it by individual members of Congress in the debate which took place on its passage nor by the motives or reasons assigned by them for supporting or opposing amendments that were offered. The law as it passed is the will of the majority of both houses, and the only mode in which that will is spoken is in the act itself, and we must gather their intention from the language there used, comparing it, when any ambiguity exists, with the laws upon the same subject and looking, if necessary, to the public history of the times in which it was passed.
- - - - - - - - -
Wong Kim Ark at 169 U.S. 658-59:
It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established. In the early case of The Charming Betsy, (1804) it appears to have been assumed by this court that all persons born in the United States were citizens of the United States, Chief Justice Marshall saying: "Whether a person born within the United States, or becoming a citizen according to the established laws of the country, can divest himself absolutely of that character otherwise than in such manner as may be prescribed by law is a question which it is not necessary at present to decide." 6 U. S. 2 Cranch 64, 6 U. S. 119.
In Inglis v. Sailors' Snug Harbor (1833), 3 Pet. 99, in which the plaintiff was born in the city of New York about the time of the Declaration of Independence, the justices of this court (while differing in opinion upon other points) all agreed that the law of England as to citizenship by birth was the law of the English Colonies in America. Mr. Justice Thompson, speaking for the majority of the court, said: "It is universally admitted, both in the English courts and in those of our own country, that all persons born within the Colonies of North America, whilst subject to the Crown of Great Britain, are natural-born British subjects."
Wong Kim Ark at 169 U.S. 662-63:
In United States v. Rhodes (1866), Mr. Justice Swayne, sitting in the Circuit Court, said: "All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . . We find no warrant for the opinion that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution."
The principle of English common law regarding citizenship carried on for three centuries before independence, and it continued after independence, with all thirteen original states explicitly adopting so much of the English common law as was not inconsistent with the Constitution, either in their state constitution or state statute law.
So your position is that the Founding Fathers f’d up writing the Constitution but these guys 80+ years fixed it, right?
While I can see the point and agree with the Tribe/Scalia view that we must adjudicate according to the actual texts, I vehemently disagree that those texts can be at all separated from their original meanings.
-fJRoberts-
Where to start, where to start?
At the beginning.
George Washington had parents who were not citizens. So did Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. That makes eight of the first nine terms served by one who had one or two non-citizen parents. With an alien father, Chester Arthur served as both Vice President and President. With alien parents Obama served two terms as President and Harris has served one term as Vice President. That is thirteen times someone of alien parentage was sworn in as President or Vice President.
Neither the provision which required natural born citizens, nor the provision which created an exception for those who were citizens when the Constitution was ratified, said a word about the parents with regard to eligibility.
As the eligibility clause said nothing about sex, women ran for President decades before they were allowed to vote.
What Trump actually said:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111721484609384209
Donald Trump did not suggest or say anything. He repeated something The Gateway Pundit posted, and did so without comment. With Trump, that probably constitutes trolling.
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
The Founders chose not to provide an explicit definition of "natural born citizen" in the Constitution. Lacking such a definition, the recourse for understanding the term is to refer to the common law.
Had this been a civil law system, the lack of an explicit definition *would* have been an "f up", to use your phrase.
But they didn't; as such, in the course of future disputes, recourse was then had to the common law, which was then built up with each subsequent court case related to citizenship. After any constitutional amendments (such as the 14th Amendment), future court cases were then reinterpreted in light of changes to the supreme law of the land.
If the Founders had wanted to sever us from the common law entirely, they would have said so. But on the contrary, the extant documents of the day indicate that it was retained, overwritten only by subsequent laws and statutes to the contrary.
Yes indeed, the WHY is the root of the issue as to the originalism meaning, intent, understanding, and purpose when they chose that “nbC” term from Natural Law principles.
It is especially important as to the WHY that the “natural corn Citizen” term was added to the Presidential Eligibility Clause of our U.S. Constitution. Read more about that here: http://www.kerchner.com/protectourliberty/naturalborncitizen/TheWhoWhatWhenWhereWhyandHowofNBC-WhitePaper.pdf
CDR Kerchner (Ret)
Citing 1866 judge’s declaration of the definition of ‘natural born citizen’ is exactly akin to giving credence to a state election official’s decision of Trump insurrection and removal from the ballot.
sorry to step on your toes, but will not let you get away with untenable illogic. politely not naming it idiocy.
-fJRoberts-
“Exactly akin”?
Those situations are not even remotely similar.
For one, “insurrection” actually has a statutory definition, and Trump hasn’t even been *indicted*, much less convicted, for same.
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