What else would they be?
You've not even gone that far, because you haven't actually provided any precedents of Rawle's to look at to support your assertion.
You mistake my meaning. I am referring to the Courts declaring Vattel the correct source of natural born citizen, and the lawyers of Pennsylvania should have followed that. Instead, Rawle chose to buck "precedent."
Nothing cited by you or myself supports the contention that his ideas about birthright citizenship were motivated by his anti-slavery fervor.
I've already told you that I did this research 10 years ago, and I no longer have a ready reference to all the stuff I found. I found enough to convince me, and at the end of the day, I'm the only one *I* feel the need to convince of anything.
The Notion that Rawle deliberately wrote English common law as the source of citizenship ties in neatly with his efforts to abolish slavery.
Is this not how slavery was abolished in England? I am certain this is *THE EXACT* argument that made slavery illegal in England.
So wouldn't it be natural for Rawle (British trained lawyer) to apply this same idea in America?
But on a different subject, I started reading your Ramsey, and he makes perfect sense on one point.
Not only does the previous conventional wisdom rest on surprisingly thin scholarly foundations, it faces daunting textual and historical challenges. If anyone born a U.S. citizen is eligible to the presidency, the word "natural" in the Eligibility Clause seems superfluous. To give it meaning, there should be some "born" citizens who are not "natural born." Further, in General in eighteenth-century legal language, "natural" meant the opposite of "provided by statute." Natural law was the opposite of positive law; natural rights were rights that predated codification. The most obvious meaning of "natural born Citizen" thus is not a person who claims citizenship from a statute, but rather a person whose citizenship comes from the natural state of things.
This is exactly correct.
And then here, he goes off the rails.
Modern U.S. law generally grants citizenship at birth to persons born abroad with either a U.S. citizen mother or a U.S. citizen father. If foreign-born citizens deriving citizenship only from their mother are eligible to the presidency, it cannot be because the American Framers adopted the English rule in effect at the time of the founding. Rather, it is because the Framers conveyed to Congress, through the Naturalization Clause, the power to define “natural” citizenship.
Absolutely incorrect and wrong. Congress has no such power. You cannot turn a man into a woman by creating a law. So too you cannot make a "natural" citizen out of a naturalized citizen.
"Naturalization" is an adoption process. It is not a direct descendant by birth process.
This is where I lose any enthusiasm I may have had for reading his opinion. You can't get this so very wrong and then conceivably produce anything reasonable thereafter.
Which Courts declared Vattel to be the "correct source" of natural born citizen?
So too you cannot make a "natural" citizen out of a naturalized citizen...This is where I lose any enthusiasm I may have had for reading his opinion. You can't get this so very wrong and then conceivably produce anything reasonable thereafter.
Precisely because he demonstrates (with sources) the historical instances of the British Parliament doing just that with regards "natural" citizenship. The connection with the common law is essential to that understanding (your incredulity notwithstanding).
[Ultra Sonic 007] One can believe that slavery is immoral, and that the slaves deserved freedom, without then claiming they therefore qualified as citizens.[DiogenesLamp] What else would they be?
They were considered a form of property. The 14th Amendment was necessary as they could not be naturalized. They could not be naturalized because they were not aliens. They had no municipal status whatever.